AI Cuts Costs in Bollywood, Undermining Actor Unions
The Writers Guild just folded on AI for health and pension funding. SAG is next with a proposed “Tilly Tax” on AI actors. But Bollywood shows the real AI savings are dubbing, recuts and catalogue revival—none of which need actors. https://t.co/nP80lTN6gL
AI‑driven India to Add 1
Google projects 1.2B people will come online for the first time by end of 2026—many through AI platforms, not browsers. Bollywood is already making AI films for them. The nightmare for Hollywood: India does not need U.S. IP, U.S. union...
AI Rewards Clear Brands, Punishes Corporate Complexity
AI rewards brand clarity and punishes corporate architecture. Nike $NKE and Starbucks $SBUX failed by adding it. Netflix $NFLX is doing the same thing w/ AI requiring legal review for AI-generated posters. Paramount Skydance is stripping it away, positioning the...
Infrastructure Giants Buying Storytellers Repeat Past Failure
OpenAI (infrastructure) bought TBPN (storytellers) for low hundreds of millions. The founders gave up ad sales and editorial independence. I watched Viacom make this exact bet with XFire in 2006. The storytellers could not run the infrastructure business. Deja Vu...
Short-Term Cash Wins, Long-Term Advertiser
Good for @tbpn for cashing out quickly. Business rationale makes sense. Long-term I think it's a mistake. This is a moment where you want to have relationships with more advertisers than fewer.
SCOTUS Shields Platforms; IP Owners Must Secure Cloud Deals
SCOTUS says platforms are not liable for copyright infringement. Disney's OpenAI deal collapsed. WBD's Superman hits public domain in 2034. The Ellisons own Paramount and Oracle. Every other IP holder needs a cloud infrastructure deal now. https://t.co/frS0mL1rld
Misguided Execs, Not Wall Street, Undermine Streaming
The counterargument is stronger. * Blaming Wall Street's infamous "streaming multiple" ignores every studio executive who convinced themselves that they could go from creative executives to tech executives in the blink of an eye w/o a background in DTC... they...
Premium+ Fails to Boost Posts, Forced X Pro Upgrade Ripoff
I tried Premium+ @nikitabier I didn't do anything that it promised wrt to post-boosting Forcing me to upgrade to X Pro is a ripoff
Fear Overruns Reality: Few Actually Use Sora
Too much irrational fear mongering and not enough understanding of how people were actually using Sora (most weren’t)
Disney's AI Deal Collapse Reveals Supply‑chain Misfocus
$DIS Disney's $1 billion @OpenAI deal collapsed three months after signing and seven days after Iger stepped down. Disney has sued or threatened $GOOG Google, #ByteDance and @midjourney partnered with the one company that just killed its product. The problem was...
Disney's Data Monolith Split Tests New CEO's Resolve
Bob Iger leaves The Walt Disney Company $DIS with a giant database—or “monolith”, like the "Mad Men" episode from Season 7—at the center of its business. The newly announced reorg splits that database in two—one for streaming, one for theme parks. Nobody...
AI Video Tools Blur Creator Lines, Upending IP Rules
Seedance 2.0 and Google's Veo 3 now produce video so good you cannot tell whether it was made by a fan messing around or a creator building a business. That is the real problem. No platform — not ByteDance, not Google, not...
Authenticity Drives Creator Economy’s New Milestone
The creator economy is authenticity, authenticity is what was behind the scenes entertainment. Another notch in the belt for the creator economy
Netflix M&A Aims to Fuel Engagement Through Games, Podcasts
What should be the business objectives behind any future M&A deal by Netflix $NFLX? @Adweek s Mark Stenberg (@MarkStenberg3) asked me for specific deal predictions. A few of my answers are in the On Background newsletter below, alongside some other smart...
AI Video Demand Lags as OpenAI Embeds Sora in ChatGPT
#OpenAI is putting #Sora inside #ChatGPT. Existing data suggests consumer demand for AI video may underwhelm relative to ChatGPT's 920 million weekly chatbot users. For Disney, its licensed 200-plus characters will be available to these audiences under strict conditions that...
