ICYMI: 'I Have to Live' Say Actors; Podcast Carnage

A new series coming, and a catch-up on our recent best

(credit: Fiordaliso)

Hello! Just as we nearly conclude one series (The Squeeze), we start another tomorrow. Guest writer Ken Ziffren, the dean of the entertainment business and a founder of Ziffren Brittenham, will kick off our Glimpse of the Future series with his thoughts on how to talk about and compare each of the streaming services moving forward. Later in the week, James Grimmelmann, a Cornell Law School professor and Yale J.D. who studies how laws regulating software affect freedom, wealth, and power, will tackle the coming impact of A.I. on Hollywood (think ChatGPT and beyond). The series is for paid subscribers only.

Meanwhile, The Squeeze continued its ongoing look at the human toll of the Streaming Wars, this time focusing on actors. Many thanks to known TV actors Richard Robichaux, Jordana Oberman, Dave Higgins and Rebecca Metz for sharing their personal stories about how hard it is to make a living under today’s terms, as well as Ben Whitehair, SAG-AFTRA’s executive vice president, who also weighed in. Metz, a series regular from Better Things and Shameless, continued the conversation on our podcast.

And speaking of podcasts, Entertainment Strategy Guy’s sharp piece on How Podcasts’ Gold Rush Crashed and Burned had people talking, as he describes the market forces and media hype that inflated one of the industry’s biggest speculative bubbles of the past decade.

Here’s what else you may have missed:

• Martini Shot: Pitch Room Chit-Chat Rob Long on the value of awkward, meandering, fake-jokey conversation

• Rushfield: Zaslav's Superhero Hail Mary James Gunn’s big plan, and the Riseborough affair and its discontents

5 Days of The Wakeup

• NETFLIX Wins the Q4 FAANG Race as YOUTUBE $ Drop ends tough week

• META has 1st Annual Revenue Loss Ever, but beats Wall Street fears in Q4

• OSCAR Nom Box Office bumps; PUSS IN BOOTS owns family market

• SNAP stock drops 15% as they still can't find a Profit after a decade

• SPOTIFY adds most Q4 Users ever, still loses hundreds of Millions $$

The Optionist, a newsletter about IP

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