… for Random Weirdness

Tip #1686: Why “IP is the New Prime Time”

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

“Ultimately, it’s about brand and content.” (Peter Csathy)

Angela Watercutter, of Wired, writes: “Controlling Hollywood stopped being just about who had the biggest opening weekend at the box office or a massive hit during prime time. A turf war over intellectual property became a land-grab effort to see who could bulk up their streaming service with the best library of content.”

This article, written by Adrian Pennington, first appeared in NABAmplify.com. This is a summary.

Hands up, who saw WarnerMedia’s blockbuster merger with Discovery coming? Not WarnerMedia chief Jason Kilar who was kept in the dark while three-month long negotiations carried on above his head between AT&T boss John Stankey and Discovery’s president, David Zaslav.

The deal has shaken the industry — because it’s widely considered a shrewd one in which Zaslav in particular has played especially well.

It has also put the streaming wars on a new footing. One in which scale and tentpole franchises are deemed essential if a media conglomerate is going to be one of the handful to succeed.

As WarnerMedia’s head of ad sales JP Colaco said, “We believe that IP [intellectual property] is the new prime time.”

This article starts by looking at what this merger means for AT&T and Discovery, but it goes further and looks at it’s impact on the media landscape as a whole; with stops including Amazon, MGM, Netflix and, um, everyone else.

Here’s the link.