Transcript: The Data that Determines What We Watch

Entertainment Strategy Guy reveals the truths, lies and consequences behind streaming numbers

Sonny Bunch (00:07):

Welcome back to The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood. My name is Sonny Bunch from Culture Editor at The Bulwark. And I'm very, very pleased to be joined today by the entertainment strategy guy. Now, the Entertainment Strategy Guy, some call him Mr. Strategy Guy. Some call him the ESG. It depends on what you want to go with here, but I'll leave that off to him. I'm excited to have him on because he is the number one guy for deep dives into stats on what people are watching on streaming and kind of why that matters, which is obviously a very important topic for the world of entertainment at this moment. And we'll be going forward. You can find his work at The Ankler, you can find his work at a Substack, entertainment.substack.com, I think. Is that right?

Entertainment Strategy Guy (00:48):

Yeah. That's correct.

Sonny Bunch (00:49):

You got entertainment.substack.com — I feel like that's a big one. I feel like that's getting max.com 20 years ago and selling it to Warner Bros. for $20 million or whatever this last month.

Entertainment Strategy Guy (00:59):

Yeah. When Substack was going in 2019, people are like, "You have to have a newsletter." And I'd had a blog in a previous life a long time ago and there really was no way to monetize it. So, I hopped on to Substack thing. And when entertainment.substack was available, I was like, "Yes, let's go. I think people will search for that." So, I was happy to have it.

Sonny Bunch (01:18):

That works. That works. All right. So, let's get started here. All right. So, again, the reason I wanted to have you on here is to debunk a very common thing that you still hear as well. I mean I still hear it, but I talk to common folks every day. But you're talking to industry people and you hear things like, well, there's no streaming data, there's no Nielsen ratings type thing. So, how are we supposed to know what people are watching? But that's wrong, isn't it?