Category: Media

  • 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…

  • Amazon’s real reason for launching “Free Dive” isn’t about ad revenue

    Late last month, the business rumor mill exploded with the story that Amazon subsidiary IMDB was to launch “Free Dive,” an ad-supported streaming video service that would be free to anybody who had an Amazon Fire TV device. Free Dive would be distinct from Amazon’s mostly ad-free Prime Video on Demand service because no Amazon…

  • AQ: The President’s No-Lose Media Equation

    Here’s a thought experiment: what if the White House held a press conference and nobody came? What if the president tweeted and nobody saw it? What if late-night talk show hosts didn’t mention the president once during their monologues? These things would disturb the president more than the sharpest satirical barb because the president understands…

  • The half-life of brands: Amazon’s algorithmic strategy

    Although what comes next will offend generations of power-mad English teachers, red-pen-wielding copy editors, and Spelling Bee conquistadores, these days most people don’t need to learn how to spell. Spellcheck saves us from having to do work that we don’t care about and that we don’t have time to do anyway. Plus, more and more…

  • Will Oculus Go kill the TV set?

    Smart glasses, heads-up display, augmented reality, mixed reality, virtual reality: no matter what you call them, computer screens that you wear on your face are poised to change how we interact with information, the media we consume, and how much reality we share with people around us. It’s reasonable, for example, to expect that the…

  • Why it’s easy to label things as “fake news”

    On March 10, a MarketWatch story, “How biased is your news source? You probably won’t agree with this chart,” featured the remarkable Media Bias chart created by patent attorney Vanessa Otero. (go here FOr a larger version.) This is the third version of Otero’s chart. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with how she rates…

  • Apple and original TV: a strategy teardown

    The world’s most valuable company is spending more than a billion dollars on new TV shows. The question is why? Last week, the New York Times published, “Apple Goes to Hollywood. Will Its Story Have a Happy Ending?,” a useful but incomplete article by John Koblin. The article is useful because it describes how Apple…