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Happy Tuesday, and welcome back to What I’m Hearing+, my weekly dispatch on the streaming industry and the analytics behind it all. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe.
Before we get started, a quick reminder for Inner Circle members: On Thursday I’ll be chatting about this article and more in a private, off-the-record call with Puck’s executive editor Ben Landy. The conversation kicks off at 4 p.m. ET. Upgrade your membership to I.C. ahead of the call to join—hope to see you there!
Tonight, a closer look at the next phase of the streaming arms race and Hollywood’s new fixation on “capital efficiency.” But first…
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| About Those Yellowstone Cancellation Rumors... |
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| Rumors about Yellowstone’s potential demise—which is inevitable, one day, but may be part of a Kevin Costner renegotiation strategy—present, at the very least, an interesting thought exercise. There’s an argument that by sunsetting the series, Paramount can move the streaming rights for the show, as well as the new spinoff, to Paramount+, keeping the franchise front... |
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| Streaming’s “Capital Efficiency” Wars |
| Hollywood’s “arms race” era, when everyone was singularly focused on building up their own exclusive libraries, is over. Welcome to the age of “capital efficiency.” |
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| The conventional wisdom in the streaming business is a bit like the Mark Twain joke about New England weather: if you don’t like it, wait 15 minutes. In the beginning, the thinking in Hollywood was that there were only a few big streamers, Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video, none of which yet posed an existential threat, so why not license them The Avengers or The Office and enjoy the hundreds of millions of dollars in fees? This era, of course, was followed by a mad scramble by virtually all the major players—Disney, WarnerMedia, NBC Universal, Paramount—to launch their own platforms and claw back hits to out-walled-garden each other. As Bob Iger famously put it, “We had been selling nuclear weapons technology to a third world country, and they were now using it against us.”
Now, in this post-Covid, post-correction, belt-tightening era, Hollywood has realized that winning market share is hard, and the streaming business is expensive and comparatively... |
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| FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT |
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| The Kamala Question |
| News and notes on what keeps Biden’s team up at night. |
| TARA PALMERI & PETER HAMBY |
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| Shari’s Secret Letter |
| What do two lawsuits and a “careless” private email reveal about Paramount’s M&A ambitions? |
| ERIQ GARDNER |
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| Late Night Endgame |
| A candid conversation with Grammys executive producer Ben Winston. |
| MATTHEW BELLONI |
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