The Streaming Wars are a case study in the impact of interest rates.

Pre-COVInflation, money was free so it was all about subscriber growth (the VC/SV playbook).

Free money train ends & it’s about becoming financially sustainable.

When the dust settles, the profitable will remain.

2 theories on why the Great Rebundling is coming:

1. Netflix was the default, everything else (except Disney) felt like an experimental subscription for users

2. TV ads are purchased by legacy advertisers and agencies. Streaming doesn’t match their status quo. Digital ads are purchased by the new school. Non-self-serve platforms doesn’t match their status quo.

Ad-supported streaming offshoots got caught in the ad revenue valley between digital and legacy advertising powerhouses while linear TV became less enticing for ad buys. Double whammy.

FT: ‘Shakeout has begun’ after $5bn streaming loss for Netflix rivals

The Great Rebundling is coming.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast & Paramount

face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5bn in the past year from the streaming services they built

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pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses

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a weak advertising market, declining television revenues and higher production costs

Netflix turned a profit and keeps chugging. Sometimes patience is the best strategy. (1st mover advantage never hurts)

Jon Loomer: Are Blogs Making a Comeback?

Social devalues links in favor of videos. Search engines are devolving into AI-powered answer engines. Email open rates are falling.

Channels are composting. While blogs may not be the traffic machines they used to be, they are still a home base you own and can distribute/syndicate your content from.

“The story of Ender’s Game is not this book, though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is the one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.” | Orson Scott Card

Stories are made together indeed.

-Rohan Rajiv

Andrew Rosener on LLMs & AI:

these things aren’t creating new ideas, they are really good at finding solutions from existing ideas.

And putting those things together in creative ways. And lots of different useful stuff.

But if we were to just get lazy as the human species and say “oh, AI is here, we’re done,” we just stagnate. Because these things aren’t creating that next frontier, they’re only remixing a static lexicon of art.

That heady brew of supply shock meets demand spike (free money!) caused the end of the free money train. But the buzz might finally be wearing off, prices came down for the first time since lockdown.

But will the shipping attacks at the Suez cause another supply shock?

Hamburger menu in the top right of the screen is one of the worst mobile UX implementations around.

If you sell a product for kids/families, you should be running podcast ads.

Because survey says:

seven in 10 parents whose children consume podcasts regularly say their child is most likely to seek them out, instead of the parents suggesting them.

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around 48% of U.S. children consume podcasts weekly, with around two-thirds (67%) listening at least monthly.

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Podcasts are family affairs…underscoring the importance many parents place on family co-listening and -watching.

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Kids’ interest is growing

Stories are in our DNA. And podcasts are screen-free entertainment. Win-win.