At the 2019 Emmys on September 22, the four broadcast networks collectively had one show that won an award. On November 12, the Disney+ streaming service launches. These two milestones mark the end of television’s first era and the beginning of another. Center CEO Jeffrey Cole explains.
The next 12 months will see the most important transformation in the entertainment industry — at least since the beginning of television in the late 1940s. We are six weeks from Disney firing the first and most important salvo in the coming television streaming war. November 12 will mark the launch of Disney+ at the Netflix-killing price of $6.99 per month. (I recently took advantage of a great promotion and bought a three-year subscription at $3.88 per month.)
A year from now, after disruption and transformation, there will be new combatants in the streaming battle, while old ones will be injured or eliminated. When the smoke clears, we will see a different playing field in a changed industry.
We are at the end of the first era of television. It should be celebrated. (more)
The internet is ubiquitous. It is difficult to get away from it, especially because of the continuous connection available through smart phones. This perpetual linkage provides many benefits, including some that are job-related.
But is it possible to have too much of a good thing? For example, what if users begin to feel that they can never get any desired sense of separation for the world of work?
In the Center’s Digital Future Survey, we asked those who use the internet at work if technology has made it harder for them to separate their work life from their personal life. (more)
From the Center’s Digital Future Study.
Infographic by Joanna Kim.
See all of the Center’s infographics here
From near annihilation, the company behind Windows, Surface, and Xbox came back to join Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google at the top of the tech world. Center director Jeffrey Cole explains how they did it.
By Jeffrey Cole
Recently, I was speaking at a conference when someone asked, “Who is currently the best CEO of a media, technology, or entertainment company?” Despite all the work I do in the industry, I didn’t have a ready answer to the question. After carefully thinking, I came to a surprising conclusion: the best CEO in the industry succeeded the worst. The company is Microsoft.
It isn’t that one followed the other: Steve Ballmer deserves to be remembered as one of the worst CEOs ever not just by looking at who followed him but based on his record. And Satya Nadella is the best not in comparison to Ballmer, but because he reinvented one of the great but moribund technology companies.
The big four (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google) should have always been thought of as the big five–adding Microsoft to its august company. But Microsoft fell behind the others and stagnated for many years because of poor management. Now, five years after Steve Ballmer stepped down, it is the biggest of the five. (more)
Amazon Prime Video’s new superhero satire is too niche to be a big hit, but as chief strategy officer Brad Berens describes, it pieces into Amazon’s strategy of taking shrewd advantage of the blind spots of other businesses.
As I write this sentence, I have watched six of the eight episodes of “The Boys” — the superhero series that Amazon released on Friday, June 26th.
“The Boys” is great fun, occupying similar thematic territory as the Deadpool movies. In other words, it’s a live action, profane, funny, dramatic, sad, action-packed satire of the many hit superhero movies and television shows released over the last decade. It takes particular aim at DC Comics’ Justice League since several characters are thinly-veiled versions of league members: Homelander is Superman; Queen Maeve is Wonder Woman; Black Noir is Batman; A-Train is The Flash; The Deep is Aquaman.
The conceit, put simply (and please forgive the bad language), is a question: what if superheroes were assholes? If you have a stomach for dark humor and violence clad in tights, then the show is well worth watching.
But this is not a review… (more)
How often, if ever, do you look at and shop for goods on the internet, but when it comes time to buy, you purchase from local stores?
If you are among the internet users to do so, you are not alone in this endeavor. It has been a consistently common activity for a strong majority of users for many years. (more)
From the Center’s Digital Future Study.
Infographic by Wencheng Jiang.
See all of the Center’s infographics here
BTS fandom has swept across America over the past two years. Xin Song, a visiting scholar at the Center, explores how social media helped the group become a household name.
By Xin Song
BTS, the Korean boy band, has become big in America. By one measure, BTS is even bigger than the president: according to CrowdTangle, from November 17, 2018 to February 17, 2019, the K-pop band topped the Twitter charts with 407 million interactions, while President Donald Trump as runner-up only got 104 million. Given that BTS had already achieved status as the most tweeted-about celebrity/celebrity group in the preceding two years, maybe this ranking should have been no surprise.
BTS has become a global phenomenon. Time magazine named the group the “biggest boy band in the world.” Forbes magazine featured an article on BTS mania entitled “The K-Pop Group That Finally Won America Over.” Three BTS albums landed No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart in less than a year; the last group to accomplish this feat was the Beatles.
All of this has occurred even though BTS has never released an English-language album. Most of their songs are in Korean, and only one of the seven boys speaks fluent English. How did this K-pop act become so popular? And how did they manage to break into the American mainstream market? One thing is for certain: social media played a critical role. (more)
Legislators and regulators have the “Big Four” in their cross hairs, but Center director Jeffrey Cole asks: is it fair to compare these companies to the Trust Busting of the 19th and 20th centuries?
By any objective measure, the “Big Four” (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google) are so big and powerful they control their industries, causing many critics and governments to question whether they are monopolies. In any normal environment, they would be broken up. The Big Four have become some of the biggest and most successful companies in history, and that size and success is making them targets.
Indeed, at least three of the four are genuine monopolies. Google accounts for over 90% of search in every country in the world except China. Placing advertising in and around search has built Google in 20 years into one of the most profitable companies ever. In those 20 years, Google and Facebook have been responsible for 40% of advertising disappearing from television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. (Facebook is just 15 years old.)
Facebook has 2.4 billion users around the world out of 7 billion people on the planet, or more than one-third of every man, woman, and child. But Facebook’s reach is more impressive than that since 1.3 billion people, the Chinese, can’t get Facebook. So, Facebook reaches 2.4 billion out of 5.7 billion, or 42%. And it’s still more impressive than that because the 5.7 billion figure includes non-users of the internet. Today there are about 3.4 billion people who are online and not living in China. 2.4 billion of them are on Facebook, or 70%. No other platform comes close to this, and this percentage doesn’t include Facebook’s wholly-owned Instagram or WhatsApp. (more)
With a smartphone in your pocket, you almost never have to experience negative emotional states, and that’s a problem. CSO Brad Berens explains.
By Brad Berens
One reason there’s an obesity epidemic is that humans evolved in a world of caloric scarcity: getting enough food wasn’t easy for most of the population for most of human history. It still isn’t easy for many, many food-insecure people.
However, the people who are food secure find themselves in an evolutionary conundrum: our instincts tell us to eat a lot whenever we can because there may not be food later. If we follow our instincts, we get fat. To stay fit, we have to make an unnatural choice: stop eating even though there are still calories available.
This conundrum is relatively new. We’ve had decades to get used to calorie-convenient things like supermarkets, fast food, frozen food, microwaves, and food delivery. We’ve also had decades of fitness gurus telling us to exercise (the first one I remember was Jack LaLanne) and diet after diet, all trying to help us fight our instincts.
Someday, medical science may develop ways to tweak our metabolisms to crave less food as easily as we use glasses to tweak our vision: wouldn’t that be nifty?
Today, we have to choose to be B.L.U.E.– bored, lonely, or uncomfortable…ever. Those are unnatural choices! However, choosing to be B.L.U.E. is just as important as choosing to eat less so as not to get fat and die prematurely. (more)
One of the many benefits the internet has to offer is that it can increase contact between and among people who share hobbies or recreational activities.
How many people use the internet for this purpose?
The Center has asked this question in its Digital Future Survey since 2007. (more)
The Center’s new 147-page “Surveying the Digital Future” report includes more than 100 issues that explore the impact of digital technology on American users and non-users.
New subjects in the study include views about using body-implanted chips for increased security, fake news, mainstream media, and regulation of social media.
Download the report here.
Nearly 60 percent of American banking customers would consider moving their money to accounts offered by familiar companies, such as online retailers, search engines, or big-box stores, even though they have no experience with financial services, according to a new study on the future of money and banking by the Center.
“We strongly believe banking is the next industry to be completely disrupted by digital change,” said Jeffrey Cole, director of the center. “Our research shows customers are far ahead of the banks in looking to the web and apps as their preferred banking methods. Download the Future of Money and Banking Report here.
The Center has published the ninth edition of World Internet Project report, the collaboration between the Center for the Digital Future and partner organizations in countries worldwide.
The 54-page study explores views and behavior about internet use and non-use, devices for internet access, years online, user proficiency, reasons for not going online, politics and the internet, freedom of expression online, media reliability, online security and personal privacy, and activities on the internet.
Download the World Internet Project Report here.
Center director Jeffrey Cole explores transformation of the media for the keynote address at the leadership meeting of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
View the video here.