Continue reading »]]> It’s coming.

Holy shit is it coming.

Enjoy the Holidays, my media friends, because you are in for a shitstorm of cuts in 2014.

It will not be pretty.

It seems that media company CEOs are hell bent on proving to Wall Street that their companies can be growth companies.

Unless they fire every employee and start a new company by themselves in a garage, they cannot be growth companies the way Wall Street would like.

20% margins just will never happen again in the movie, TV, print, music industries – so deal with it.

But these CEOs are guys (all guys) who think they can do anything.

But they will fail.

And then they’ll cut.

And… it will not be pretty.

Tribune got things started.

Sony will be next. 

My company’s CEO has called 2014 “The Year of the Hammer.”

No one will make it through unscathed.

First to go will be the packaged media folks. Those who support the production and distribution of DVDs and CDs and magazines, etc.

Gone.

Next will be the slow growth businesses – like movies and Broadcast TV production.

Slates will be slashed, storytelling risk-taking will cease to exist. Since no one can seem to do comedy anymore on Broadcast, they will be relegated to the epic mini-series format like “Under The Dome” and live Sports to stay afloat.

Then, finally, the low margin businesses will be hit – like console games. With the exception of a few huge titles, it’s a tough business and it certainly doesn’t help these overly-ambitious / delusional CEOs hit their targets.

So what’s going to be left? TV production for cable and over-the-top. Why TV gets ownership over Internet content production is baffling to me. But they do.

By the end of 2014, giant media companies with their film studios, broadcast networks  and massive real estate leases will be much much leaner and the quality of the product will be much much worse.

Hey, but a point of margin here and a point of margin there adds up to… 2 points.

Auld Lang Freakin’ Syne.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

Continue reading »]]> Hey, there was a new survey by the Pew Research Center about what people like to watch online.

Turns out – people like to watch pretty much everything…

Comedy: 58%

How-To: 56%

Educational: 50%

Music: 50%

News: 45%

This is a silly survey because it says 28% like to watch Animation; 27% Political; and 27% Sports.

People just like to watch what is interesting. To stick it in genres is pointless.

Does that mean now more people will try to create comedy? Or educational videos?

No, there will still be just as much crap and just as much good stuff on the internet.

Silly survey.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

Continue reading »]]> Really sad.

The people who created this show really thought they had another “Friends.”

Oh, well.

Next time – be more funny – and stop trying to write for the idiots who you believe are not as smart as you.

Chin up, maybe Basic Cable or Netflix is ready for your groundbreaking style.

Gone are the dreams and dancing.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

P.S. – If you’re wondering what’s up with this bullshit post – read this.

Continue reading »]]> If other blogs didn’t steal my stuff years ago, I would have said R.I.P. Journalism – but “R.I.P.” as a way of saying a something is dead is also dead.

So, what do I mean by “Journalism Is Dead?”

Very simple. Journalism is dead. I’ll prove it.

The online media “information” space has been taken over by the Press Release. Companies issue press releases or send emails to blogs like Deadline.com or TechCrunch and that becomes the news of the day. No one is actually out in the field unless you consider a guy with a camera in the face of a drunken celebrity at TMZ real journalism.

Very few – VERY FEW – are actually digging up stories, creating news – trying to right the wrongs. It’s all controlled by someone other than journalists.

So here’s my experiment…

I didn’t really write over the summer because I was working on a book – so my numbers were pretty terrible on this blog. I was doing pretty well when I was constantly writing about how Facebook sucks. But now it’s terrible.

Last month I had very few eyeballs on this site because I really wasn’t around and only posted one time. Pretty sad.

In September 2013 – OnMedea had 1,167 hits. A real low for the site – but my own fault. In October, I am at 574 hits for the month – mostly because of the old Sean Hannity story – but really terrible.

Now I’m mostly going to do what others “media” blogs do for the rest of the month (Press Releases, hearsay, etc. – with my own little comments here and there) – whatever takes the LEAST amount of time – and give updates on how my numbers change.

Should be an interesting experiment.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

Continue reading »]]> The title is not some abstract reference for reconnecting with a global vision…

She LITERALLY needs to get her voice back.

I’m not sure I can listen to another interview with that raspy, unhealthy voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLbUqKr1Zuk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DicjXPJ1Jg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezrkdKlh3xY

And here’s one of the more recent interviews…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36_hGjnM254

Seriously, Marissa, the company (and your baby) will be just fine if you just don’t talk for a few weeks.

You must rest your voice or you will be talking like Harvey Fierstein before too long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2sC7ny7jUs

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

Continue reading »]]> The first draft of my book is finished (more on that in the coming weeks) and I am back on the job here at OnMedea.

It was an excellent summer with lots of quiet and lots of work.

Other than the entire media spectrum going to Hell in a handbasket, there really is nothing much going on.

Movie studios are imploding and on their current tract will produce fewer and fewer quality films while continuing to bore audiences around the world with sequel after sequel after sequel. Don’t the studio bosses know that the Tentpole Is Dead?!

My parent company, Manka Bros., is apparently abandoning original films altogether.

That’s one sure-fire way to kill your business (with all due respect).

Broadcast networks continue on their painfully slow journey to complete irrelevance. (Thank God for football, huh?)

I declared them dead a couple of years ago but they are still on life support – though brain dead.

Oh, yeah, and we’re about to go to war. The world is, frankly, in chaos. My colleague Lester Aldrich wrote a thoughtful piece on the prospect of going to war from his own perspective as an 88-year-old man who has been through two wars.

But I digress… happy to be back. Have a great weekend.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

Continue reading »]]> I had to interrupt my summer hiatus (I’m working on a book so I haven’t been posting in this space for a few weeks) to say the Emmys Are A Joke.

I’m not talking about the nominations – for the most part, it’s the same actors year after year after year. TV comedy is in big trouble. The only broadcast shows nominated are getting really old. New comedy doesn’t exist on broadcast.

But that’s not at all the point I want to make it.

This is my point:  “HOUSE OF CARDS” IS NOT A TELEVISION SHOW!

It is a series of webisodes.

High-quality webisodes.

It was not produced for television…

It did not air on a television network…

It is not a television show.

“House of Cards” is an internet series produced for online and mobile delivery. The last time I checked, TV shows are produced and distributed for satellite, cable and over-the-air broadcast networks.

The TV Academy can’t just cherry pick internet webisodes that it likes and call them TV shows.

And the TV Academy shouldn’t be claiming the Internet as their own – even though on their website they say: “The Television Academy, the only major organization devoted to the television and broadband screen entertainment industry…”

In reality, they have as much claim over the Internet as I do.

And it would be impossible for the guys in the TV Academy to watch all of the content produced for the Internet (so, to make it easy on themselves, they just give the nominations to Internet content that features big stars - Kevin Spacey, Jason Bateman, Zach Galifinakis, etc.).

Can you imagine these TV Academy members sitting with their iPads watching every series produced by comedy improv troupes around the freakin’ world? “Hey, did you guys see this one from some guys in Des Moines that make fun of working in an office? It’s hysterical! It should nominated for an Emmy!”

On top of that, the TV Academy refuses (because of arrogance) to even acknowledge The CW as a legitimate producer of programming (how “The Gilmore Girls” on old The WB never got a nomination is still one of the great injustices in entertainment history – and that’s no platitude) and yet they’ll throw a few nominations to Netflix to prove some kind of point. To show that the TV Academy is aware of the future and is very much on the cutting edge of content production.

But they’re not. When you think of the TV Academy – you still think it’s just a room of old white guys longing for the days of Norman Lear and the three powerful networks that everyone watched. Remember when the cable industry had to form their own pathetic award show (the Cable ACE Awards) because the TV Academy didn’t allow cable shows to be nominated?

Now, anyone can be nominated for an Emmy. Maybe I’ll produce a series of webisodes about my dog and submit it for consideration. It won’t even be looked at because my dog doesn’t look like Kevin Spacey.

You never know, maybe the TV Academy is changing with the times – and if they are – maybe they should change their name.

“The Transmedia Academy Of Arts & Sciences!”

Now THAT has a ring to it.

A couple of years ago, I wrote “Broadcast Networks: On Death And Dying” to illustrate that Broadcast Networks are in complete denial that one day they will just be another button on the grid – the master grid that gives equal weight to every type of format imaginable on our connected TVs (broadcast, cable, YouTube, Netflix, games, family videos… everything equal).

Ted Sarandos of Netflix is absolutely correct when he says: “Television is what’s on the screen – not how it gets there.”

But that doesn’t mean “House of Cards” should get an Emmy nomination.

It’s not a TV show!

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

Continue reading »]]> Hollywood doesn’t need to panic yet – but the powers that be should seriously start thinking about changing film slate strategies.

This is great news for filmmakers, terrible news for Hollywood’s bottom line.

Tentpole movies, when they work, print money for years and years and years – through sequels and licensing, etc. etc.

But, like what happens with obesity, if you give someone a double-quarter pounder meal with super-sized fries every once in a while – it probably won’t make you fat.

If you give someone that meal every freakin’ day for the rest of their lives – they’ll be fat and die much sooner than is necessary.

Hollywood studios have booked a tentpole movie practically every weekend for the next five years.

This is unsustainable and only a matter time before audiences yell bullshit, back away from the Big Mac and change their diet.

This is not to say that these movies are going away completely. There is always an appetite for a great event film spectacle. When they hit, it’s the greatest experience. And I hope that never goes away.

But everything can’t be a tentpole.

Yesterday, I saw the Deadline.com story on Disney’s announced animation slate (see picture).

Personally, I CANNOT WAIT for “Untitled Disney Animation Movie 2017!” And I really can’t wait for the Untitled Toy that my daughter will want.

Studios, especially on the live-action side, have no idea which movies are going to rise up from the pile to get a greenlight five years in advance.

They just know that they have to make 5-6 tentpole movies a year to hit their revenue and profit targets. You can’t make a decent budget projection if you have slated “Silver Linings Playbook 2″ or the next film from Alexander Payne.

Tentpoles are necessary for financial planning. But it’s become so much of a science and so NOT much of a creative endeavor that I fear they are suffocating the goose that’s been laying the golden eggs for the past 10 years.

And, seriously, audiences just can’t take it anymore.

They aren’t crying for “Marvel Character #1,000″ to finally have his or her own movie!

“Remember that character that cleaned the floors in ‘The Amazing Spider-man Comics #43′? He totally needs his own movie!”

But Hollywood thinks it can do it and that audiences will keep lapping it up.

And this summer, they will –  ”Man Of Steel” and “Pacific Rim” both look fantastic and I’ll be seeing them both on opening weekends with millions of others.

Again, Hollywood doesn’t need to panic yet.

I wrote a couple of years ago that audiences will never tire of super heroes – that the characters who are shoved quickly into movies should not be blamed for the failures of mortal film executives and writers to tell their stories well.

But there is only so much heavy lifting these characters can do – they’re superheroes, they’re not God.

It’s time for Hollywood to take more risks, be more experimental, have more fun. Don’t be afraid to fail.

Film production IS McDonalds these days. The food looks and tastes exactly the same every time (and, sure, there is some comfort in that). But when was the last time you heard an employee at McDonalds say their job was fun and totally creative?

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea