Category: Media
-
How Risk is Changing
The world seems more dangerous today than it ever has before, but study after study shows that we’re safer now. Hans Rosling’s Factfulness, Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist, and Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature are three books that dig into this. In part, life feels more dangerous today because we have so much information about bad things that happen…
-
Secret Stories: Microsoft, Activision, Spotify, Joe Rogan, Neil Young, Facebook
When a big business story hits I try to ask myself, “what else is going on?” When Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, for example, the obvious story was that the ecommerce giant wanted to tap into the nearly $800B annual U.S. grocery business. Less obvious was that by buying Whole Foods Amazon also acquired…
-
Micro-post: Why I miss “Glee”
The last episode of Glee aired in March of 2015, more than six years ago. I still miss it even though the suds-to-singing ratio got out of whack in the final seasons, so I didn’t watch regularly. Despite the high school soap opera—or maybe because there’s no escape from high school until graduation for most…
-
It’s time: subscribe to your local paper; turn off your ad blocker. We did.
We live in Portland, and a few years back we let our subscription to the local paper, The Oregonian, lapse because we just weren’t reading it regularly. Then came Coronavirus, and suddenly I found myself checking the OregonLive home page daily, multiple times per day. It didn’t take long for the penny to drop: we…
-
Who will create the best streaming video experience?
At this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, TiVo announced the release of a new gadget, the TiVo Stream 4K. On the surface, the TiVo Stream 4K looks like other “dongles” — Amazon’s Fire Stick, Google’s Chrome Stick, and the Roku Streaming Stick are all examples — that plug into a TV’s HDMI slot…
-
Why Amazon made “The Boys”
Amazon Prime Video’s new superhero satire is too niche to be a big hit, but it pieces into Amazon’s strategy of taking shrewd advantage of the blind spots of other businesses. As I write this sentence, I have watched six of the eight episodes of “The Boys”— the superhero series that Amazon released on Friday, June…
-
Why Google Should buy eBay: Digital Assistant Wars
Last week, Allison Prang reported in The Wall Street Journal that eBay, under pressure from activist investors, is planning a strategic review of its assets, including its classified ad business and StubHub, in order to “drive meaningful shareholder value.” This is code for “we want to sell off a bunch of things in order to…
-
All the news that’s fit to ignore
I missed the mid-terms last week. It was great. Don’t get me wrong: I voted early by mail, so I did my civic duty. It’s what happened after I dropped my ballot that’s interesting. Due to travel in the wilderness and no access to the internet or other media, on Tuesday, November 6, I didn’t…
-
2023: Why Comcast should worry
For years I’ve thought that—while Comcast’s cable television business had a future that made polar bears wince in sympathy—its lock on the cable internet business made the company invulnerable. Sure, cord-cutting and cord-shaving are eroding cable TV. Younger people in particular, unless they are big sports fans, don’t bother to subscribe (cord-nevers). However, Comcast still…