Chopping Up Truth In Media Since 2009
OK – this is not much of a post. For a little more meat, check out “Facebook Must Be Stopped” or “The X Factor Is Terrible”.
I was flipping through my Variety today and this full page ad stopped me in my tracks. The image sort of (I guess) speaks for itself.
Would you trust these guys with your Life Insurance?
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
There is an evil temptation that far too many companies are having trouble resisting – the temptation to launch a new product or service on Facebook.
Every month, when the number of Facebook users seem to go up by 100 million or so – to a current tally of 750 million (let’s be serious, about half are most likely fictional or animals), the CEOs of most entertainment and technology companies get the crazy urge to somehow “tap into that customer base.”
This crazy urge must be resisted. Why? So Facebook is destroyed and the people of the world can go on to a much more interesting existence.
In my opinion, doing business with Facebook is the equivalent of doing business with China. Companies feel they need break into the Chinese market because there is FREAKING 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE THERE! “If we just get 0.0001% we’ll be successful. It’s a no brainer!”
And nearly every company goes there with their hat in their hand – giving every insane concession imaginable just to get in the door – and, eventually, come home with a giant footprint on their ass.
Reminder: The Chinese government can do whatever they want. The deal signed means nothing. If they don’t like your attitude or your product or just feel you’re getting a little “too friendly”, they’ll cut you off and send you home a miserable failure. And it doesn’t matter how many cartons of cigarettes or bottles of Slivovitz you give local officials. When it’s over, it’s over.
This is also true of Facebook.
I firmly believe Facebook could absolutely destroy Zynga (and numerous other companies) overnight. They have that power.
Granted, there is too much money at stake with Zynga’s upcoming IPO, so they probably won’t exert that power. But do you think the Zynga executives are going to do anything to antagonize Facebook… ever? Mark Zuckerberg knows the power he has over Mark Pincus.
That is another reason why Facebook must be stopped. Too many people are believing the hype and are afraid of being left behind.
Every day, Facebook dominates technology news. Press release after press release announces Facebook’s new initiatives and services. Their PR department sends out a press release, websites rewrite them slightly and, pow, you have technology news with a narrative controlled by… Facebook.
This week came a “leak” that they will be going into the Music business by blending streaming services such as Spotify, rdio and MOG into the Facebook user experience.
After all, why should anyone have to leave Facebook to listen to music? Why should anyone have to leave Facebook ever?
(I am working on a product that integrates Facebook into my morning shower. There must be a way to combine my Facebook news feed with the water from the shower head so my friend’s status updates directly enter my pores and absorb into my brain. But I digress….)
Spotify is a great service. They don’t need Facebook. People on Facebook don’t complain about having to toggle away from Facebook in order to go onto Spotify. It ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Spotify and other media companies need to resist the temptation of the 750 million non-paying users (which includes millions of dogs and cats who don’t really care what songs they listen to).
And look at this growth chart (left). 7.3 billion users in 2015 vs. only 7.2 billion people alive on the planet!
Major media companies (including my parent company Manka Bros. Studios) need to realize that Facebook needs them more than they need Facebook. (Manka Bros. is actually working on a ‘Facebook Killer’ – Caligula – to launch later this year but I fear it will be more of the same.)
Content is the driver of everything in media. Put a great movie on a crappy 13 inch black & white TV and it’s still a great movie and people will watch it. Put a shitty movie on a 110″ inch HD television screen with Dolby SurroundSound, movie lighting and a cocktail, and it’s still a shitty movie that no one will watch.
Facebook needs to realize that the only reason they are popular is because we all have this urge to see what our friends from high school and college look like now. That’s it really. It’s not to watch “The Dark Knight” for 30 Facebook Credits or buy pigs on “Farmville” (millions do it, I know, and why not? – it’s right there in front of us and we’re freakin’ bored with our lives).
But I think it’s time to break away and see what else is out there in the world.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
OK – so the U.S. got downgraded by S&P (AA+) for the first time in its history. Whatever. It’s all just a game anyway.
Most talking heads throughout the weekend will say Monday will be a bloodbath on Wall Street and that many investors will be clamoring to yank out their cash.
But I must remind anyone who has money in the market (me!), out of the market and all those on the fence that “nobody knows anything.”
This phrase, coined by William Goldman in “Adventures In The Screen Trade” (worth a read even for non-screenwriters), is absolutely true in almost all industries and in almost all cases where someone is trying to predict the future.
In the movie business, the phrase was basically referring to the major studios’ inability to know what movies would work at the box office and what movies would fail. As it turns out, with all the historical data at our fingertips… nobody knows anything.
And the same goes for Wall Street:
Meredith Whitney, hotsy-totsy Queen of the Double-Dip, has no clue where the markets are going (though she seems to be praying for a downturn – probably more out of concern for her reputation than for the country).
That whack job Ray Dalio – founder of Bridgewater Associates (subject of a brilliant piece by John Cassidy in the New Yorker) – has no clue where the markets are going (though, to be fair, the whack job has been more successful than most in guessing lately).
The government, your parents, your children, Warren Buffett, CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, your friends on social networks – nobody knows anything.
If they did, then Wednesday night I would have received a text or seen a tweet or a Facebook status update that said “The Dow will fall 512 points tomorrow – you may want to make a couple of portfolio moves.”
I didn’t get that message from any of those people who “know so much”. Just like I won’t get any correct message this weekend about what will happen on Monday. Because nobody knows anything about what will happen on Monday!
So this weekend, as we all think about our personal finances, don’t make knee-jerk decisions based on something someone says on television or an internet blog.
This may sound overly simplistic, but just go with your gut and calm the freak down. There are a lot great healthy American companies out there and they deserve your confidence.
But, then again, I don’t know anything either – and I certainly don’t know how “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is going to perform this weekend – perhaps $35 million, perhaps $65 million. It’s a crap shoot.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
I did it!
So, my mom sent me a check for $50 because she wanted to buy a piece of my growing media empire. (The growing part is a yet-to-launch blog on the insane nightlife of La Canada, CA called “La Canada Nights”.)
I told my mom her share of the company would be based on a $1 billion valuation (as it seems that’s the only valuation there is for a company these days).
For that $50 she will own 0.00000005% of the company. As part of my deal with Manka Bros., I own 50% of OnMedea (valued at $500 million), Manka Bros. owns another 20%($200 million) and Khan Manka, Jr. owns the remaining 30% ($300 million). My mom’s share will come out of my piece.
While some would say this is an outrageously high valuation and a sign that we are truly in a bubble – it’s really no more ridiculous than Airbnb, LinkedIn, Zynga, Groupon, Facebook or (fill in Y Combinator’s next spin-off here).
You could argue – hey, your annual revenues are in the low four figures, Zynga makes hundreds of millions (mid nine figures).
Point taken.
But here’s my point: A pumped up valuation is exactly that.
The key question for the entire financial ecosystem of Silicon Valley is, why do you do it? Answer: Because you can’t stop yourselves.
A fair valuation is not even on your radar because greed and jealousy take over. ‘That guy over there is 21 and got $200 million, I’m 25 and I’m only getting $100 million? F that!’
Why is everyone so desperate to reach THE BIG $B? Is just because of that one line of dialogue in “The Social Network”? Goddamn that is shallow… oh, yeah, right… I forgot who I am writing about.
Seriously, what’s wrong with a $350 million FAIR valuation and then show the world that you can grow and be worth more? Or a $50 million FAIR valuation? This obsession with “BILLION” is going to bring the entire system crashing down in the next year or so.
Bullshit is bullshit is bullshit…
But I digress… today, yippee-ki-yay, OnMedea is worth $1 billion dollars!
Suck on it.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
Today, I read an analyst report written by Vasily Karasyov of Susquehanna Financial Group titled “The Death of Superheroes”.
Salacious title? Certainly.
A title that would get the attention of every media executive around the world? Absolutely.
A title that’s total bullshit? Definitely.
According to this report, over the past ten years movie studios have plucked 16 superheroes (or super groups) from the obscurity of the basements of geeks and put them smack dab in the global spotlight for everyone to see.
Some have been really good, made lots of money and spawned sequels, rebirths and regurgitations (e.g., “Spider-Man”, “Batman”, “Iron Man”, “X-Men”).
Others were shit and lost a lot of money (basically the rest of them).
For the most part, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Good = success. Bad = no success.
Over that same time, about 2,000 other movies were released to varying degrees of success. These included huge non-comic book movies like “Harry Potter”, “Lord of the Rings”, “Pirates of the Caribbean”, “The Hangover”, and, sure, even Woody Allen’s biggest hit ever “Midnight In Paris”.
So while it seems every other movie that comes out is a comic book movie, nothing could be further from the truth. But that’s not the point I want to make.
Here’s the point: People are not tired of Superheroes. You cannot blame the superhero for the failure of corporate mortals.
If every comic book/superhero movie were unbelievably great, audiences would flock to them and they would all be huge hits.
Seriously, if the studios would have put out 16 awesome, well-made, true to the source comic book movies, they would have had, guaranteed, 16 big hit, profitable movies.
But this didn’t happen and it never will happen. Why? Because movie studios always try to make good movies. Regardless of what some people think, the executives at movie studios are not trying to suck.
Every movie that is made (with all those millions of dollars at stake) start off with a single dream – to be really good and to make money (maybe not in that order). Everyone, at every level, works very hard to make these films as good as humanly possible.
But somewhere along the chain – from concept to the day of release – something happens to make them suck.
And in most cases, lots of things happen to make them suck.
The movie-making process is subjective. One person’s gold is another person’s shit.
What Hollywood IS GUILTY OF is genre rape.
Once one high-concept or genre film hits it really big (i.e., “Alice In Wonderland”) suddenly every studio in town needs to have that high-concept or genre type film in the pipeline ASAP.
Because of “Alice In Wonderland”, over the past year every studio had to have as many fairy tale scripts as they get their hands on including THREE FREAKIN’ “SNOW WHITES”!
My God, even Manka Bros. – my studio – bought the rights to “Hey Diddle Diddle” and plans to spend well over $150 million to produce something we know will fail. Sorry, boss.
Go down any list of genre and you’ll see one movie that started the entire feeding frenzy. “Scream” spawned hundreds of crappy horror movies. “Harry Potter” got everyone out there trying to find the next great children’s fantasy series. Vampires, zombies… it’s just a case of mass brainlessness.
But here’s the shocker. What do I think needs to be changed? Nothing.
Movies should continue to be made and they should be made as well as possible.
Some should be based on comic books because it’s really great source material.
Others should be based on the Bible, or Dickens or Broadway . Because it’s really great source material.
And yet others should be based on ideas people think up on their own (imagine that!) – because the brain is capable of coming up with a really great source material.
“Hollywood” isn’t broken and the Superhero isn’t dead (Christopher Nolan could turn any deep catalog comic book character into a franchise – even something like “Gerbil Girl”) – everyone involved in the process just needs to concentrate more on entertaining the audience and less on just filling a summer slot.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
P.S. – Why the hell is “Glee” at Comic-Con? If you want to talk about something that’s dead… it’s Comic-Con. And IT WAS killed by the movie studios. If you want a good laugh, read the transcript from Khan Manka, Jr.’s keynote address to last year’s Comic-Con.
With one mighty slap, Wendi Deng Murdoch may have saved her husband’s company.
No longer was the story about hacking or impropriety or ethics, it was about a wife coming to her 80-year-old husband’s defense when he was attacked.
Rupert Murdoch is a hated man, obviously. He runs a company without ethics or moral compass with a history of crushing anyone who got in his way.
At the Phone Hacking Scandal Hearing, as question after question came from the Members of Parliament, he denied denied denied.
Rupert sat there stone-faced, acted like he couldn’t hear questions (maybe he actually has bad hearing) and then calmly placed blame on junior executives.
James Murdoch sat there red-faced, embarrassed – a completely worthless deer-in-headlights.
All of their answers were the answers of cowards.
Social networks were salivating at the possibility that Rupert’s empire would fall. The press were poised to rake them over the coals without mercy…
… and then he was attacked by an idiot comedian with a pie tin full of shaving cream (or whipped cream) – and Wendi Deng Murdoch went into action without thought or fear. She smacked that guy with a mighty right hand and he went down.
With one slap, the narrative of the story had changed, the old man got a little boost of sympathy and the entire hearing became a circus.
Any public judgments against News Corp. or Rupert or James had been pushed to the back – almost forcing news outlets to refocus the story on “Who is Wendi Murdoch and Where Did She Learn To Punch?”
Splitting the media attention was what was needed to get Rupert off the hot seat and this dumb ass activist being punched to the ground by Wendi Deng Murdoch accomplished that to perfection.
It makes you wonder if it was planned that way by News Corp.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
… and Wall Street shrugged.
Zynga announces a $1 billion IPO and every freakin’ investment bank in New York is clambering to get in on it.
These are the very same banks that were recently slobbering all over LinkedIn and would most likely kill anyone who tries to stop them from getting in on the Facebook IPO.
What am I missing here?
AMC Networks (AMC, IFC, WE, Sundance) represents highly-regarded premium television content (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Killing, Walking Dead, etc.) – the kind of content Hollywood needs people to watch. The kind of content only Hollywood can make. And the kind of content people really love.
Sounds likes a win win win. And a buy buy buy.
Zynga represents little $1 digital pigs for sale in Farmville. Not what you would call premium content.
Sounds like a lose lose lose.
“Mad Men” or “Digital Pig”? AMC Networks or Zynga? Which would you imagine to be the Wall Street darling?
Cable Networks (and their two strong revenue streams) are the bread and butter of giant media corporations.
If Wall Street shrugs at a pure-play cable network spin-off like AMC Networks, what does that say about the future of old-school big media? Being an employee of old-school big media, I’m not sure I like what that says.
Should they adapt to the changing (but unproven) business models and stop distributing quality content – focusing instead on selling little digital versions of Don Draper for $1? Or should they continue to do what they best until they simply disappear because their audiences die of old age?
Personally, I blame the whole VC/Y Combinator mentally for creating this unearned enthusiasm for certain companies that are, when you really look at them and see what they produce, pretty boring, uninspired and a waste of time.
But more billionaires will be minted – and I suppose that’s ‘End Game’.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
The year is 2014.The people of the world have abandoned social networking after going out on too many creepy dates.
LinkedIn, once a Wall Street darling, was acquired today by Monster.com for $37,242 – basically the value of the copper wire in the walls of their unfinished (and unpaid for) $1 billion dollar office complex in The Presidio.
At its peak in late 2011, LinkedIn (a groundbreaking social network in which people could send messages to each other) had a market cap of $560 billion – more than the top 2 companies in the world combined.
The stock began its plunge after CEO Jeff Weiner cashed out and left the company to become CEO of Apple at the beginning of 2012. Ironically, Apple’s stock began its plunge immediately after he became CEO.
It’s really a tragic story of greed and the inability to create a product that people can actually use. And if they did use it, it was only because they thought they should be doing it – because others were – and no one wants to be left out. But now everyone is left out.
About the sale, Mr. Weiner said: “I work at Apple now. I’m just thinking about running this company. LinkedIn was just a blip in my long career. It was really Reid’s baby, Reid’s vision (State Senator Reid Hoffman D-Palo Alto). I just worked there.”
And made over $2 billion while there.
Senator Hoffman was unreachable by phone but did release a statement through his office: “LinkedIn should have been my ticket to wealth beyond my wildest dreams. Thinking back, I wish I would have sold all (or even some) of my stock when it peaked like Jeff Weiner did. That bastard made $2 billion! It’s a God damned shame. State politics don’t pay shit.”
So LinkedIn, you were great once (in valuation), but now you’re gone. To quote The Lion In Winter – “The sun was warmer then…”
Shine on you crazy diamond!
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
As soon as I read The Daily Beast story about Facebook’s alleged smear (whisper) campaign against Google, I immediately thought of the scene in “All The President’s Men” with all the newspaper editors sitting around deciding which stories to run the next day.
When Watergate is brought up, there is stiff resistance from a couple of the editors.
This scene (replacing ‘Watergate’ with ‘Facebook’) could easily have played out at The Daily Beast with the change of a few words in the screenplay:
INT. THE DAILY BEAST – BUDGET MEETING
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: Let me tell you what happened when I was having lunch today at Locanda Verde–
TINA BROWN: Correction – when you were drinking your lunch at the bar of Locanda Verde–
The room erupts in laughter.
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: –this Facebook guy, a good one, a pro, came up and asked what is the “Google smear” compulsion with you guys and I said, well, we think it’s important and he said, if it’s so goddamn important, who the hell is Dan Lyons?
INNOVATION EDITOR: Fake Steve Jobs for one – but I digress. Ask him what he’s really saying – he means to take the story away from Dan Lyons and give it to his people at the Sexy Beast.
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: Well, I’ve got some pretty experienced people sitting around, wouldn’t you say so?
INNOVATION EDITOR: Absolutely, and that’s all they do, sit sit sit – every once in a while they reprint Michael Arrington, some reporting–
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: Well, what if Dan Lyons get it wrong–
TINA BROWN: Then it’s Barry Diller’s ass, isn’t it? And we’ll all have to go work for a living.
The room clears, only a couple of Editors and Tina Brown stay behind:
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: I don’t think we should cover this story, period.
TINA BROWN: Go on.
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: It’s not that we’re using unnamed sources that bothers me, or that everything we print Facebook denies.
TINA BROWN: What then?
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: I don’t believe the goddamn story, Tina, it doesn’t make sense.
TINA BROWN: It will, it just hasn’t bottomed out yet, give it time.
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: Look, why would Facebook do it? My God, Google is self-destructing before our eyes – just like MySpace did, Friendster, the bunch of ’em. Why would Burson-Marsteller send emails to bloggers urging them to write negative stories about Google, unless they wanted to get caught? Why would Burson go to Politico, The Washington Post and The Huffington Post, unless they wanted to get caught?
TINA BROWN: Are you saying Google started a whisper campaign against itself?
SEXY BEAST EDITOR: Jill Kennedy at OnMedea thinks it’s possible – Google needs some positive press, corruption’s always a good one. Get off the story, Tina – or put some people on Google’s public relations team – fair is fair, even in our business.
—————————————-
Hey, we’re early enough in this conspiracy where all theories are in play.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
Click here to read the scene from the original script of “All The President’s Men”
While today was an insane day on Wall Street with no one seeming to know anything about why there was so much volatility (Crisis in Greece, Banking Reform, etc.), there was one person who knew all along what would happen. If we would have just listened to her years ago, all of today’s anxiety could have been prevented.
That person? Meredith Whitney.
The brilliant Nostrodamus of Wall Street knew years ago this would happen (as evidenced by the dated quote on today’s stock chart).
Now, I’ve been pretty tough on Ms. Whitney over the past few months (i.e., here and here) – but this is undeniable proof that she really does know what she’s talking about and we’re all idiots for doubting her.
From now on, whatever she says – no matter how ridiculous -should be writ in stone.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea