QUOTABLES!
quote of the day
It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner.
Jonas Salk
media
rant n' rave
rantnrave://

Last week was a big one for the media business. The streaming wars are heating up and it was DISNEY’s week with their investor day and the unveiling of some details around their new DISNEY+ service. The street applauded and fans are excited. Even skeptic RICH GREENFIELD noted: "Disney is doing “'the right thing.'" There’s also a lot of talk of whether these legacy media companies know what it takes to compete in this space. From investment to user growth to product. FRED WILSON had a great post about the latter. In “Functionality Vs Content,” he points to some great research from the smarties at MOFFETTNATHANSON. It shows 8 top reasons why people have a NETFLIX subscription. The audience loves the content. Obviously. But that’s not the main reason. It’s the product. The functionality. And in world where the legacy media companies believe content is king, there could be some dangerous strategic missteps in not taking product seriously. The audience wants control. USV’s ANDY WEISSMAN covered the importance last year in his post, “Control.” MATTHEW BALL wrote about product extensively in REDEF ORIGINAL, “Netflix Is a Product & Technology Company (Netflix Misunderstandings, Pt. 2).” NETFLIX's product expertise is at the heart of everything it does, including why and how it makes its original content. This culture is easily overlooked and doing so can be fatal. Netflix is as much a tech and product company as FACEBOOK, GOOGLE or AMAZON. To this point, we think what's exciting about the future of OTT video isn't just the way it's delivered, but how the product and technology can change the content itself. Innovation to date has primarily focused on content delivery: on-demand viewing, ad-free experiences, binge releases, recommendations, auto-play, etc. But the next era is about what happens “After Autoplay: 'Interactive, Personalized & Immersive' Entertainment”… The best television shows are like a really good layer cake. Every bite. Every layer. There’s flavor everywhere. Cake. Icing. Some tasty morsel for you to savor. The best layer cake on TV right now? It’s got to be BILLIONS. It’s a show about power, greed, trust, competition, loyalty, ego, friendship, family, and loneliness. And with that a set of great characters who all get their own arcs at some point. It’s easy to eat. They seem to have 2-3 finales a season. It moves fast. You eat it up. It’s got some camp. It’s got soul. And lots and lots of layers. Yes, I watch for the stories. But I also watch for music supervision. BRIAN KOPPELMAN, DAVID LEVIEN, and team pick every song. And their taste in music is stellar. I SHAZAM the show and then add those tracks to SPOTIFY. I watch for all the who’s who cameos of famous NEW YORKers (When do I get a cameo?). I watch for the locales, especially the restaurants. Last SUNDAY, they opened up at UNA PIZZA NAPOLETANA on ORCHARD STREET. The pie looked so good I went there with LIZ last night. Chef ANTHONY MALGIERI is an artist. I watch for the pop culture references from sports, television, music, and movies. It’s all this flavor that makes "Billions" a great layer cake. Do yourself a favor if you haven’t already, get a slice on SUNDAYS at 9 pm on SHOWTIME… Happy Birthday to TAMIE PETERS THOMAS, JOSH KOPELMAN, JESSI HEMPEL, JENNIFER LAPTOOK LATOURETTE, and VY PHAM.

Jason Hirschhorn, curator

April 17, 2019