As the entertainment industry is reeling from constant disruption, our annual conference convenes
Fast forward to now: Netflix rose steadily, and now it is at a standstill, even though everyone copied the model it created. Streaming is the new model, but everyone is nervous that it won’t last — at least with as many players as have dived into the fray. Hollywood is being overtaken not only by tech companies like Apple and Amazon but also by some younger upstarts such as TikTok. Time Warner (sold again) is one example of many things that seem to be quite permanent. Viacom (unmerged, merged, renamed). And Harvey Weinstein.
Many of us have a mountain of DVDs we don’t want anymore.
It’s become axiomatic at our annualGrill conferenceTo take a step back, and to examine the pace and extent of change in entertainment and media. As last year, the pace of change in entertainment and media was fast and furious this year. The market’s appetite for mergers has not let up even as Wall Street lost its faith in the new streaming religion. Entertainment conglomerates have seen billions of dollars disappear. The trend continues in the workplace, with no visible way to reverse it.
At TheGrill on Tuesday and Wednesday, we will be talking about those things with the experts in their fields, including with Kevin Mayer, the former top strategist at Disney who led a spectacular number of acquisitions (Marvel, Lucasfilm) and is now acquiring companies himself with his partner Tom Staggs — the closest thing I’ve seen to a from the ground-up potential new entertainment major.
We will be exploring the mysterious new planet called metaverse to see if NFTs have any future. Did we not learn anything about the irrational exuberance that was prevalent a generation ago? Podcasting is gaining popularity and the state of live entertainment are on the agenda.
Meanwhile, producers — who will debate business issues at a round table on Wednesday — are laboring under the dictatorship of the “cost-plus”You can model by squeezing incentive in that creative class. That could all be changing.
As I said, change is the only constant these days.
And in truth, we may well observe that what is true in media is the same for our entire society – it’s changing fast before our eyes: climate disruption, civil rights rollbacks, democracy in a vise led by the erosion of trust enabled by technology.
Recently, I attended the memorial to Bert Fields, a monument in entertainment for the past 50 years. He was remembered by many, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dustin Hoffman, and Michael Ovitz. They ruled for decades. Only Hoffman is still in Hollywood. Much – some would say too much – has changed.
“It’s a completely different entertainment business,”At the memorial, one former executive revealed that he once presided over billions in DVD revenue per annum for his studio.
I’ll leave that determination up to the experts. We will be trying to discern the signal from all the change over the next two-days. We hope you enjoy this journey.
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