I analyzed the media industry for 20 years. Like any large industry, it’s complicated. Despite how it feels, media companies are not run on an emotional basis. Like any big business, they’re managed for profit. How media executives think What you will read below is based my experience meeting with senior executives at CBS, CNN,…
ABC, a Disney property, recently suspended the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and took his show off the air due to pressure from the Trump administration. Some of my friends are suggesting, knee-jerk fashion, that the right reaction is to boycott Disney. But before you do that, you should understand why Disney and ABC made this…
Disney asserted that it has the rights to do whatever it wants with your content, just because you used the #MayThe4th hashtag. That’s not how hashtags work. Here’s what Disney tweeted: Here’s the thing about hashtags: Nobody owns them. If I want to use #MayThe4th in my tweet about Star Wars linked to porn, I…
via GIPHY Did Disney insist on taking down GIFs of Baby Yoda? It looks that way. If so, it’s the stupidest move ever. Baby Yoda (or at the very least, a baby that looks just like him) is a character in The Mandalorian, the new Star Wars series on Disney+. And he’s popular, because he’s…
Let’s review a few facts about race and its portrayal onscreen, okay? George Washington and Abe Lincoln are white. Donald Trump is white. Joe Biden is white. Mark Zuckerberg is white, too. Barack Obama is black. So is Kamala Harris. So is Nelson Mandela. So is Malcom X. If you wish to portray these people…
Salesforce and Disney have given up on acquiring Twitter, citing its troll problems. To succeed in tech you need either profits or growth; Twitter has neither. So somebody’s going to buy it that doesn’t care about the users. As a result, if you’re a user, you can expect a very scary future — scarier than any ghosts…