I worked for a major CDN for quite some time, and there was no shortage of divination and reading-of-tea-leaves regarding who was up, who was down, who is surviving and who will get acquired in the content provider space. OTT media was easy money until everyone rolled out multi-cdn solutions and started putting the screws to each vendor for better prices. It was brutal, but I learned a lot about business watching it happen.
How much of all that AAPL buyout discussion do you think was 100% hopium? Sure Paramount had assets and means, but why would Apple want to acquire that and not rent it? Let studios claw at each others heels to produce viable content while AAPL sits back and pays a premium to choose the best bargain. Apple+ was never interested in being #1; the service is just table stakes at their scale (like Paramount Plus one might argue). AAPL’s business is manufacturing lifestyle products and hype. How was Paramount expecting their acquisition to bolster those pillars?
What was your vantage of the Ugly Sonic debacle (circa 2019)?
What did other execs have to say about Mother! (2017)? It was a beautiful disaster and I loved it, but it couldn’t have had many fans internally.
This CBS/Viacom tug of war had to be brutal as well, but the entire enterprise seems to be all under the Paramount umbrella now. Any regrets?
I have so many questions.
I worked for a major CDN for quite some time, and there was no shortage of divination and reading-of-tea-leaves regarding who was up, who was down, who is surviving and who will get acquired in the content provider space. OTT media was easy money until everyone rolled out multi-cdn solutions and started putting the screws to each vendor for better prices. It was brutal, but I learned a lot about business watching it happen.
How much of all that AAPL buyout discussion do you think was 100% hopium? Sure Paramount had assets and means, but why would Apple want to acquire that and not rent it? Let studios claw at each others heels to produce viable content while AAPL sits back and pays a premium to choose the best bargain. Apple+ was never interested in being #1; the service is just table stakes at their scale (like Paramount Plus one might argue). AAPL’s business is manufacturing lifestyle products and hype. How was Paramount expecting their acquisition to bolster those pillars?
What was your vantage of the Ugly Sonic debacle (circa 2019)?
What did other execs have to say about Mother! (2017)? It was a beautiful disaster and I loved it, but it couldn’t have had many fans internally.
This CBS/Viacom tug of war had to be brutal as well, but the entire enterprise seems to be all under the Paramount umbrella now. Any regrets?