Paramount's strategy of purposeful digital rot doesn't even make sense

The legacy companies (Disney, NBCU, Paramount, WBD, Fox) are stuck in a purgatorial period between media systems, trying to wring out the massive but rapidly declining profits of the linear age while transitioning to the sports streaming era. It’s like that puzzle in Die Hard with a Vengeance where Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson must move exactly the... See more

It is one that's dominated by in-house client mediocrity factories, lowest-cost content bullshit artists, automated intent fracking, and business portfolios increasingly populated by the withered corpses of once vibrant and profitable brands.

Studios are already moving titles to streaming channels.

I have a gut sense that a Paramount Global overseen by Sumner Redstone , instead of his daughter, Shari , would have reached a different conclusion. After all, what is now known as Paramount Global was built on Sumner’s litigation risk-reward calculus.

There is a lot of excitement about traditional TV companies transitioning to streaming, but an unavoidable conclusion is that the streaming business is structurally much less profitable than traditional TV.

“Genre, medium, and format are secondary concerns and, in some instances, they seem to disappear entirely.” One piece of intellectual property inspires a feeding frenzy of podcast, documentary, and miniseries offshoots. Single episodes of streaming-service TV can run as long as a movie. Visual artists’ paintings appear on social media alongside the... See more

Over the past decade it has become a kind of factual netting that holds the whole digital world together.

Trouble arrived early in the 21st century, when upstart companies powered by new digital technologies began to challenge the status quo. Entertainment executives reflexively dismissed the threat. Netflix was “a channel, not an alternative.” Amazon Studios was “in way over their heads.” YouTube? No self-respecting artist would ever use a DIY platfor... See more