☀️NETFLIX’s ‘HS Catfish’ Doc Soars, New ‘Ms. Rachel’ Does Not
LEGENDARY's million 💰🎥 deal / AMAZON, NETFLIX set big ad deal / U.S. Open surges for ESPN
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on Wednesday, September 10, 2025.
Where APPLE has finally made your high school Spanish useless! Yes, the new AIRPODS Pro 3 have a translation function to help you out in your global travels (well — in “beta,” so be warned).
Of course, my current AIRPODS . . . I wanna say version 2 (🤷♂️) falls out of my ear about 3 times a day due to a bafflingly bad design approach — so I’m glad my high school Spanish has held up pretty well (the new AIRPODS also have a new design, so here’s hoping the last designer was reassigned🤞).
AH: Ya gotta love #BigTech’s ability to read a calendar. A tech association funded by APPLE, GOOGLE and others is launching an initiative called the BLUE HORIZON PROJECT to try and uh, “reset” the industry’s relationship with the Democratic Party that they’ve largely ignored for about a year . . . ya know, just in case November 2026 goes a certain way. Way to keep it real, #BigTech
AND: All other NBCU employees got jealous that the NBC NEWS folks got to come into the office 4 days a week — so now they’ll be doing so as well, starting in January (that’s up from a current 3 days a week policy — Friday will remain choose your own adventure day). So yeah, that January NYC commuting lifestyle is hard to resist.
THEN: WBD is now suing DISH/SLING over the one-day $5 pass thing alongside DISNEY.
OH: PAR+ is adding a multi-view feature this month so you can watch up to 4 UEFA games at once.
AH: ROBINHOOD is giving you another social network that you didn’t ask for — this one allows you to show off by posting your stock trades and also follow those of public figures. No word on whether you can also post your KALSHI bets, so you can really get on the VIP list to the cool parties, but give it a minute.
SO: All of the Bill Belichick / Jordon Hudson stuff generally just makes me sad . . . so I tend to ignore it at this point — but this lame marketing ploy by Hudson’s TCE company to pull a Taylor Swift on Belichick catchphrases that were already copyrighted by the PATRIOTS years ago is just, oof.
Thus, sadly we won’t be getting any merch with “Do Your Job (Bill’s Version),” “Ignore the Noise (Bill’s Version),” “The Belestrator (Bill’s Version)” and “No Days Off (Bill’s Version)” on it — thanks to the Trademark office essentially saying, “Are you serious with this?”
BUT: Let’s redeem ourselves with BILLS QB Josh Allen, who is using his pre-game fashion choices not to showcase an LVMH business that uh, needs your support — but rather to wear hats from his NEW ERA cap line to each game that have been customized by kids at Buffalo’s Oishei Children’s Hospital, which will then be auctioned off with the proceeds going to critical care teams at the hospital.
HMM: Yet another chart around America’s kids with a noted negative change starting in the early 2010s . . . 🤔. School phone bans can’t come fast enough, and Covid certainly didn’t help this — we’re at a risk of a lost generation here, or at least half of one, as that math number curves toward a 50. 😳
PLUS: The RIAA issued its 2025 mid-year report, and U.S. music sales are less than 1% bigger YoY, with streaming revenue growth slowing down considerably. The $5.59B is a new all-time half-year record, though.
Paid streaming: $3.2B (+5.7%)
Subscriptions grew from 99M to 105.3M
Free streaming: $875M (-3%)
Combining these 2 lines — streaming is 84% of total U.S. recorded music revenue.
Physical revenue: $576M (-6%)
Vinyl: $457M (-1%)
CDs: $108M (-22%)
Digital downloads: $138M (-1.4%)
AND: Yeah, Larry Ellison is good for that $10.7M U.K. pub purchase (and PARAMOUNT for that matter) — ORACLE stock is +35% this morning after it significantly raised its revenue outlook to +77% for FY25 (to $18B) due to more new AI-based cloud contracts getting signed.
It’s now projecting that revenue will go from $18B to $146B in 5 years. So, uh, AI adoption — you better hit all of those projected usage growth projections just like the internet did in the early 2000s! 🥴
ORACLE also raised its CapEx / data center spending projections to $35B this FY. They were $21B when the FY started.
Larry Ellison personally gained over $70B on the result (or enough to buy PARAMOUNT like 10x) and is within firing distance of Elon Musk at the top of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
FINALLY: Today’s GOLDMAN conference appearances of note (links to listen in their names):
11:50 a.m. Zaz
1:50 p.m. Mark Shapiro
BONUS: Just a little life inspiration from this story of a 66-year-old guy who retired and went back to LSU as a registered freshman (12 credits!) with a goal of fulfilling a lifelong dream to play in the LSU marching band, which he did last weekend. Plus, I hear he throws the best keggers.
As Kent’s own catchphrase goes — “People retire, but dreams don’t.”
🎥 THE SILVER TV 📺
