Ted Sarandos – 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

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

Tag: Ted Sarandos

The Twilight Of The Katzenberg