☀️ WB A-List Theatrical Spending Blitz Continues
TikTok U.S. Growth Stagnating / Netflix sets next NFL series / Amazon + Michelle Pfeiffer for Christmas
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on TUESDAY, March 19, 2024.
Where according to my favorite kind of people, those who are “familiar with the situation,” NETFLIX is having internal discussions about removing the infamous “Freedom & Responsibility” section of its long-held corporate culture doc, according to the WSJ.
The replacement? “Own your own shit”. . . err, I mean language that would “encourage employees to take ownership for their actions.” I’m sure they’ll figure it out, but I’m here if you need me NETFLIX.
ALSO: According to different “familiar” people with a different “situation” cited by the WSJ, TIKTOK’s U.S. user growth has hit a ceiling. The TT user number currently stands at around 170 Million U.S. accounts (FB is around 205M daily users in US/CAN, and SNAP is 100M).
Oh and uh #shocker, the new shopping/e-comm lever TIKTOK U.S. has begun to pull to boost 💰 is starting to clutter feeds and piss people off (anecdotally). Not having access to the world’s largest music label also probably isn’t helping right now.
And my favorite line from a WSJ piece earlier this month on 20-somethings quitting TIKTOK is that they were doing so “in pursuit of more in-person experiences and tidier homes.” Yeah, those dishes aren’t going to clean themselves GenZ! (Uh, AI still needs a few more years to figure that one out).
SPEAKING OF — TODAY IN AI:
As with all tech matters, the EU is once again taking the lead — this time with AI. It’s set the first of what’s likely to be many guardrails around AI, establishing a legislative framework centered on three risk-based categorization buckets for AI developments (i.e. light risk — an AI spam filter), and appropriate regulations around each.
YOUTUBE announced they’ll use the honor system to police AI content. Yeah, that should do it. The new forthcoming policy makes folks declare whether “altered or synthetic media” exists in the video they are uploading. Granted, if someone lies, and it’s flagged, it could result in an account suspension, etc, so there is some accountability. . . per se.
But uh, seeing how LEGO was the latest company called out for using AI to create images for a new website — without mentioning AI was used to create the images on it (and I’m guessing not paying a graphic artist to do it). . . we’ll see how this goes, eh?
BTW: NVIDIA announced a new, faster AI-processing chip called Blackwell that will be released later this year.
AND: When the CTO of OPENAI gives this kind of response to even basic questions in this great interview with the WSJ’s Joanna Stern last week . . . yeah, maybe some real policies here are helpful (although to note — the EU legislation still has some steps to go before becoming law).
PLUS: It’s been a busy few days in unprompted DISNEY future CEO bake-off talk and top exec profiles out there, huh? 🧐 Oh hi, Nelson 👋 — see you and Jay at the annual meeting in 2 weeks.
BTW: If you were wondering how much a campaign for 2 DISNEY board seats runs ya — it’s about $25 Million according to the WSJ.
OH: Nelson’s campaign took yet another hit yesterday, with shareholder advisory firm GLASS LEWIS advising DIS stockholders to vote for all of the company’s board nominees.
Samesies for George Lucas.
OH: LeBron and former NBA star (and current ABC/ESPN commentator) JJ Reddick are starting a weekly pod called Mind the Game, focused on the real on-the-court intricacies of the game itself, as this promo clip demonstrates.
SO: In honor of March Madness’s uh, “First Four” games tonight 🙄 — Front Office Sports laid out how much money college conferences are guaranteed to receive this year based on the # of their teams that made the tourney (with more 💰 to come depending on tournament performance). Basically, this is why some teams are very upset about being left out, uh, outside of not getting to play of course 🥴, and yes, looking at you BIG EAST (towards the bottom of this list):
PLUS: Because NC STATE won an improbable 5 games in 5 days last week to take the ACC Championship title (quite a spring break!), its coach Kevin Keatts is now $2.5 Million richer. The players who, ya know, played the games got, uh, free hats.
GET PAID: I’ll round out the top here with SPOTIFY’s 2023 data on where the $9 Billion of rights fees it paid out went in 2023, with half going to “indie” labels, and many smaller artists seeing increased gains since 2017.
Note 1: This is money paid to rights holders, not to artists themselves.
Note 2: Thanks to inflation, $10k in 2023 ain’t what it was in 2017.
📽 THE SILVER SCREEN
