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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An ode to the platform era of news distribution

The Verge published a fantastic history of the half decade or so when nearly every media company devoted significant resources into pumping out content about HBO’s Game of Thrones. While the piece is ostensibly about the popularity of such content, its true journalistic service is documenting a bygone era when all the major social platforms still sent gargantuan amounts of traffic to news publishers:

Everyone I spoke to agrees there will never be another phenomenon like Game of Thrones. There are various theories why — the fracturing of monoculture, the binge model, the fact that there’s too much TV, the fact that it sucks now, TikTok — but it also means there won’t be another Game of Thrones moment for journalistic outlets.

That’s likely because, as much of a singular phenomenon as Thrones was, it was the focus of a brief era when Facebook was sending a flood of traffic to publications, and nearly every major media company sold out the things that differentiated its publications in order to take a sip. I don’t think there was any illusion about how precarious a reliance on social media would be, but it was surprising just how quickly that source evaporated. Internet platforms shifted away from distributing articles, the page view boom times ended, and still today, publications are reeling.

MSNBC cashes in on its parasocial relationships

MSNBC is experimenting more and more with live events, which makes sense given how much it builds up the brands of its own hosts:

I think [a live event] does two things. I think one, it puts — for the first time, at least as far as I can recall — all of the MSNBC hosts and contributors in the same room with direct access to the people who watch them the most … Secondly, I think what is is really unique and nice is that in TV, you’re sometimes limited by how much you can put into segments, right? You only have eight minutes in this segment, or 12 minutes here, four minutes here, and the conversation is not as organic as it can be in person and on stage. So I think being able to have all these MSNBC hosts and contributors, and then the ability to have them have organic conversations and moments with viewers will really be special. I think people will be better informed and more connected.”

Netflix’s ad unit is still playing catchup

Netflix may be a subscription behemoth, but it’s still struggling to build a solid ad business, mostly because such a large portion of its customer base is still subscribed to the ad-free tier:

In the US, Netflix’s advertising tier is a fraction of the size of Peacock, Hulu, Disney+ and Amazon Prime. (Let’s not talk about YouTube.) That’s true in terms of sales and viewers. A consultant told me this week that there are only four must-haves in the online video TV upfront marketplace: Disney, Comcast, YouTube and Amazon.

Amazon and Disney have taken different approaches to advertising than Netflix. They turned ads on for all of their viewers, telling customers they would need to pay more to avoid ads. While Netflix’s approach was customer-friendly, the Amazon approach delivered a large audience right away.

The economics of ghostwriting books

I’m sure just about everybody has had the experience of looking at a celebrity memoir and wondering: did they actually write that? In many cases, they didn’t, at least not by themselves. There’s actually an entire shadow economy of ghostwriters who do the bulk of the work on these books — not just for celebrities, but all kinds of public figures ranging from big-name CEOs to politicians.

But how does one go about hiring a ghostwriter? And what’s it like to work with one? Dan Gerstein, the founder of Gotham Ghostwriters, an agency that specializes in connecting clients to professional ghostwriters, answered these questions in a recent interview.

You can find the interview over here.

How a fascination with 1990s webzines led to the creation of this very newsletter

The Tilt was kind enough to interview me about the evolution of my media business. This is probably the only time I’ve talked publicly about how submitting short stories to 1990s webzines sparked my initial fascination with digital media:

In the 1990s, he also discovered he could reach a wider audience by publishing short stories on newly available internet channels like webzines.

“It was my first light-bulb moment. I was like, ‘Wow, anybody can post stuff to the web and have just as much access to the global population as The New York Times or any other magazine.’ The internet is really incredible for publishing writing,” Simon says.

Simon got his first dopamine hit when he sold a short story for $10. It spurred him to submit stories weekly to any paying publication.

As a college freshman, Simon blogged to connect with other writers. In 2005, he launched Bloggasm, a blog about publishing on the Internet that marked Simon’s first taste of internet fame and led him to move away from fiction writing.

Hollywood streamers are chasing impossible scale

The New York Times recently interviewed several CEOs at the top streaming companies, and the piece includes this shocking claim:

A streaming service’s profitability depends in large part on how many paying subscribers are needed before those TV shows and movies become cost-effective. There was a time when industry executives hoped that number might be as low as 100 million. But now the consensus among many of the executives interviewed is that the number is at least 200 million, and possibly more.

I’m pretty skeptical. Just because these companies have failed to reach profitability via their tens of millions of subscribers doesn’t mean it can’t be done. My guess is that this is a lie these companies are telling themselves and their shareholders to justify further consolidation.

Buzzfeed’s humiliations will continue until morale improves

It's a testament to how bad things are for BuzzFeed that it's in such a hurry to sell a successful media property like Hot Ones:

First We Feast is profitable and generates about $30 million in annual revenue, largely from brand and licensing deals tied to Hot Ones … While BuzzFeed has explored a sale, the team behind Hot Ones has grown frustrated with their owner, which they feel hasn’t given them the resources to invest in expanding the business of a hit show. They would like to build on their success with Hot Ones-branded hot sauces and create more consumer products, live events or media deals with other streaming services.

I’m looking for more media entrepreneurs to feature on my newsletter and podcast

One of the things I really pride myself on is that I don’t just focus this newsletter on covering the handful of mainstream media companies that every other industry outlet features. Instead, I go the extra mile to find and interview media entrepreneurs who have been quietly killing it behind the scenes. In most cases, the operators I feature have completely bootstrapped their outlets.

In that vein, I’m looking for even more entrepreneurs to feature. Specifically, I’m looking for people succeeding in these areas:

• Niche news sites

• Video channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels

• Podcasts

• Newsletters

• Affiliate/ecommerce

Interested in speaking to me? You can find my contact info over here. (please don’t simply hit reply to this newsletter because that’ll go to a different email address. )

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