Chopping Up Truth In Media Since 2009
Thanks Shakespeare, you gave the proper weight to what President Trump has done to his country.
High treason is not a joke!
Not something to be ignored because some will get tax cuts.
We sugar coat it.
Who cares if someone running for office undermines our democracy?
Who cares – as long as he secures our borders and keeps Mexicans out?
No.
Please watch:
2019 is going to be my “Year of Blogging Dangerously” – because America is in a bad place right now.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
GO PRIVATE.
There will never – ever – be enough growth and margin improvement to satisfy Wall Street.
Maybe short-term the studios will get a bump by telling investors they are going to make 100 comic book movies over the next 5 years – but after that flattens out – there’s nothing left to grow on top of that.
And it’s all Wall Street’s fault. You can’t blame studio executives. They have to appease Wall Street or they’re out.
I mean, my company, Manka Bros. just announced a trilogy of films based on the board game CHECKERS!
Wall Street’s insistence for high margin growth in such a mature business is destroying creativity (again, note all the sequels and re-makes and re-hashes and re-dos) and in it, ruining any realist opportunity for growth.
To grow the way Wall Street would like, 21st Century Fox (for instance) would need to have an “Avatar” one year (and double the amount of TV production); two “Avatars” the next year (and double again the doubled amount of TV shows); four “Avatars” the following year – and so on and so on. And they would all have to preform as good or better than the first!
And the market is saturated already.
There are too many choices and studios don’t have the monopoly on content creation that they once did.
And the moguls long for those days.
Sorry, fellas, they are not coming back.
It won’t be cheap to go private – billions and billions – but there is plenty of private equity out there that would love an asset that consistently pumps out up to $1 billion in pure profit.
Without the need to top profits year after year, the content produced can be more experimental, and thus, much more interesting and exciting for the consumer.
It would even allow for the occasional down year when things just didn’t work out. Hollywood IS a cyclical business, after all.
Hollywood Studios are sacred treasures in this country (and around the world) and should not be allowed to just fade away because Wall Street wasn’t happy with the growth prospects.
We must do what we can to save these institutions and going private is the best way.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
The internet is blowing up today on the news that “Community” will be exhumed and given a 15 episode Season 6 on Yahoo!’s video streaming service called Yahoo! Screen.
This, I suppose, is a big get for Yahoo! because now people have heard of Yahoo! Screen.
It’s also, obviously, a real life saver for many “Community” fans who, apparently, have been walking around the Earth like the cast of “The Leftovers” after the Rapture.
Don’t get me wrong, I consider myself a dork for many television shows and would be upset if they were cancelled but this spontaneous ejaculation of joy today is on par with the Brazilians reaction to winning the shoot-out against Chile in the World Cup.
This news also creates an interesting scenario in that most of the rabid fans that love “Community” so much hate Yahoo! equally as much.
It should be a fun experiment for Yahoo! (they have nothing to lose and a boatload of cash coming from the Alibaba IPO). And it could just be another nail in the coffin of Broadcast TV.
I just hope Dan Harmon and company are up to the task. It’s one thing to make an announcement on Twitter – it’s another thing to sit in a writer’s room and realize – “Ah, shit, we’re doing this on fucking Yahoo!”
There are insanely high expectations going into this streaming video show (it’s no longer a TV show).
Sucking could result in a mass suicide.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
It’s going to be a long summer for Jeffrey Katzenberg and DreamWorks Animation. It may just be the last summer those two names are associated with each other.
Sure, they’ve got “How To Train Your Dragon 2” coming out. And, sure, it’ll do $500 million worldwide and make a decent profit.
But not enough to convince anyone that DWA isn’t a dead-company-walking.
By early next year, something will have to happen – maybe a sale, maybe a shutdown – but business as usual is not an option.
This failure seemed to happen in slow motion – nearly 10 years with a terrible, unsustainable business model.
I seriously doubt the Company Mission was this: “We’re going to produce two animated movies a year – and one of them will fail. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”
In baseball, getting a hit fifty percent of the time would be superhuman.
In Hollywood, fifty percent sucks.
When your job is to produce animated feature films, and over half of your movies bomb, there is something wrong with you. It means, you are incompetent and, deep down, you really don’t know what you’re doing.
Big Hollywood animated feature films is the ultimate fish-in-a-barrel/low-hanging-fruit type entertainment. Kids of a certain age will see almost anything. And parents need these diversions to pass the time on a hot summer afternoon or a miserable cold winter day.
But I suppose over the half time, parents would rather be miserable than go see a DreamWorks Animation film.
I’m not saying everything has to be “Frozen” – but nothing should ever be “Turbo” or “Mr. Peabody & Sherman.”
From the beginning, I never understood the Animation unit IPO.
If the reason was just to get enough cash to pay-off Paul Allen at the expense of giving up your dream of building a giant entertainment conglomerate on par with the other majors, then that was truly short-sighted and weak.
Taking the whole company public was really the only option – a piece of it was just too small. I’m sure there was a reason – but it was mistake nonetheless.
Seriously, you went from producing content like this:
To content like this:
AwesomenessTV and OTT, in general, is not going to be enough to save the company – though it will be a nice asset for someone to pick up on the cheap – after the whole OTT bubble bursts (any moment now).
So, I’m sorry, Jeffrey, it’s time for you to just enjoy your money and your philanthropic work (cocktail parties, clambakes at Geffen’s house, etc.). You do many great things for the world – producing movies isn’t one of those things.
Sorry.
It is very possible that Khan Manka, Jr. – as he wrote himself – is the Last Hollywood Mogul.
Good luck to you.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
5/12/14 UPDATE: AT&T to acquire DirecTV! Lock the doors – it’s scary out there.
2/12/14 UPDATE: Holy Crap, 2014 just got a whole lot uglier (and it was already hideous) with the announcement of Comcast acquiring Time Warner Cable!
ORIGINAL POST:
It’s coming.
Holy shit is it coming.
Millions are getting pummeled with a horrible winter but brace yourselves further, because you are in for a shitstorm of job 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, or 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.
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 (serious like a heart attack).
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 (OTT).
Why TV gets ownership of 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.
But lighten up, Spring is coming.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
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
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
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
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
The PGA and professional golf, in general, is an absolute joke.
How many times during The Masters did we hear that Tiger Woods should withdraw himself from the tournament in order to protect the ‘integrity of golf’?
This is such bullshit.
First of all, the officials missed the call and it wasn’t until after Woods gave an interview that some caller alerted the Augusta Nationalist (my spelling) Golf Club officials that Woods incriminated himself.
Some caller? I can imagine this was the way the scene played out:
Augusta National Golf Course – 19th Hole
Inside a paneled lounge, several white men with southern drawls are drinking scotch and smoking cigars. There is a general laughter that never seems to die down.
Suddenly, a perspiring office worker bursts into the lounge.
OFFICE WORKER: Gentlemen, someone has just called and said Tiger Woods admitted during an interview to stepping back a yard to take a drop.
An Augusta Member (we’ll call him Scooter) drops his smile.
SCOOTER: Aw, Bubby, can’t ya see we’re having our scotch and smoking our cigars. Tiger’s a good ol’ boy and a surprisingly good golfer.
OFFICE WORKER: But more people are calling in. And they’re Tweeting, too!
Another member (we’ll call him Hootie) puts down his scotch and turns grave.
HOOTIE: Tweetin’? Gentlemen, we had better address this issue. Can someone please get a copy of that videotape or film of this interview and set it up in the Hogan Room anti-chamber for our immediate review? Bring your glasses, gentlemen. I have decided that scotch will be allowed for one time only in the Hogan Room.
Etc etc etc (I could go on forever with these guys).
We all know what happened. Tiger got a retroactive two stroke penalty and basically was removed from the tournament – at least in spirit. Commentators no longer praised his play or got excited when he made a good shot.
Golf Channel analysts called his decision to keep playing a disgrace and an error in judgment that will follow him the rest of his career and taint his legacy.
Oh, really? What would have made the situation right?
Maybe they should have put him in stocks outside of Butler Cabin for the duration of the tournament and he could have been released by the new champion.
Maybe Tiger should have performed hara-kiri like a Japanese samurai on the 18th green because of what he has done to the great game of golf.
Has the great game of golf and its legacy of racism and exclusionary policies really taken a hit here?
You know what hurts the integrity of golf? The Augusta National Golf Club and its past policy of excluding women and minorities and doing VERY LITTLE to correct the problem (adding Lynn Swan and Condoleezza Rice doesn’t really get you there).
You know what hurts the integrity of golf? The hypocrisy of all those who point a finger at Tiger Woods for cheating on his wife when half the field at The Masters is on wife number 2 or 3 or 4 – with countless girlfriends in between (or during).
You know what hurts the integrity of golf? Old white men commenting that the sole black golfer competing in the tournament should quit when you know they wouldn’t ask that of Fred Couples if he committed the same infraction.
You know what hurts the integrity of golf? Playing a tournament at a club that was founded by a man – Cliff Roberts, the first Augusta Chairman – who once said: “As long as I’m alive, all the golfers will be white and all the caddies will be black.”
You know what hurts the integrity of golf? Those crappy looking green jackets that are mythologized to appear as though they were made by the hands of God.
The Masters – ‘a tradition like no other’ – and golf, in general – had better change its ways or it will be going the way of the dinosaur and the Republican party before too long.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea