Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you.

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I’m at my in-laws this week, so the newsletter will be a little shorter than usual. We’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled programming next week.

Let’s jump into it…

Quick hits

Doomberg is one of the largest newsletters on Substack and built up a lot of its early following on Twitter. Now it’s abandoning the platform. [Doomberg] From the piece: "In September of 2022—only weeks before Twitter became a private company—we had our biggest month ever on the platform: our tweets generated nearly 50 million impressions and led to an incredible 31,000 net new followers. It’s been downhill ever since. Last month, our metrics were off those highs by anywhere between 50-95%."

"Improving your free-to-paid conversion rate is one of the single best ways to increase revenue without adding headcount or marketing spend." [Lenny’s Newsletter]

Any prolonged Hollywood strike will likely be a huge boon to the Creator Economy, both in terms of audience growth and revenue. [WashPo]

Whatever your feelings are on Dave Portnoy, you have to admit that he’s incredibly good at building passionate audiences around everything he does. [Slate]

"While paid trial offers (like a discounted rate for the first month or year) are good at converting readers, Piano Benchmarks 2020-23 analytics found that readers who convert on a full-priced subscription are more likely to stick around longer than other cohorts of subscribers." [Digiday]

Does your company have a podcast strategy?

Podcasts can provide the cornerstone to any content strategy, simply because they can be repurposed into so many different formats, including:

• A longform audio interview

• A longform video interview

• Short video clips that can be distributed on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Reels

• Image captions that can be distributed on Instagram

• SEO-optimized transcripts

• Blog posts summarizing the most important insights from the interview

I know folks who really excel at making this type of content. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want me to connect you them.

More quick hits

You’ve probably seen the news by now that MrBeast his suing the food distribution partner for his burgers. [Bloomberg] We're going to see this happen more and more as creators start launching their own direct-to-consumer products. Delivering a high-quality product at scale is a completely different ball game compared to producing content.

About a decade ago, a bunch of bloggers got together and tried to establish a "curator's code" that outlined rules for giving proper credit when you were using other people's content. I don't think it took, considering that most of the major "meme" accounts today have built huge followings by stealing content. [Tedium]

"Netflix is going to report a profit of more than $5 billion this year. After years of people saying Netflix would never make money, it is now one of the most profitable entertainment companies in the world. Other streaming services can also turn a profit. Give them time." [Bloomberg]

Book publishing has never been a great business, but it's a better time to be an author today than at any other point in history. [Notes from a Small Press]

A cool story of how two twins racked up over a billion views on YouTube and then leveraged that success to shoot a feature-length horror film that took Sundance by storm. [The Ringer]

Let’s take this relationship to the next level

I only send this newsletter twice a week, but I spend multiple hours a day curating media industry news on my social media accounts. You can follow me on these platforms:

1. Substack Notes

2. My private Facebook group

3. My LinkedIn

4. My Threads handle is @simondowens