William Goldman – OnMedea

November 22, 2013May 12, 2014

The Great Media Bloodbath of 2014

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.

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 (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

October 9, 2013October 10, 2013

CBS Cancels ‘We Are Men’

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.

October 9, 2013

Journalism Is Dead

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

September 9, 2013January 17, 2014

Lloyd Blankfein Is A Douche

It’s my shortest blog of the year – but I think the point is solid.

Here’s just one of the many reasons from NYMAG.com

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

August 5, 2011August 5, 2011

Wall Street Reminder: Nobody Knows Anything

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