YouSaid · the spoken record

Julia Alexander

lines on the record: 98
first: 2022-04-05
most recent: 2022-04-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Absolutely. We saw exponential growth in demand the second it hit Disney. The demand for was pretty average when it came out in theaters. It was decent, what you'd expect to see from a Disney animation movie. You expect to see a little bit more from Pixar. The minute it hit Disney+, it said number two globally behind only Spider-Man No Way Home for eight, nine days. And then the song, we don't talk about Bruno, became more of a meme. It became more of a fascination with people. It became an absolute stellar thing. And it continued to take off. So Disney's argument is that this can happen for every movie. And theatrical defenders will say, but it's one example and there's not enough data to really show if this is the move in consumer behavior or if this is just a one-time deal. And I think where we get a lot of debates happening is you have a lot of analysts who point to theatrical attendance per capita.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's what I kind of don't understand though. I get to people, the theater is still fancy and people want to go to the theater. But if you just look at Encanto, which you mentioned already, but if you just look at Encanto, this thing is now an absolute sensation, right? That every song on the soundtrack is like going to number one. I literally hear the words time for dinner just like ringing through my head because we don't talk about Bruno like all day and night because my kid is constantly watching this movie. Every parent I know is surrounded and inundated by this movie that would not have been the hit it was if it had languished in the theaters. This is because of streaming. And you said at the beginning you can measure affinity in different ways at Parrot. Do you see that bump? Do you see, okay, this went to streaming and now the social media phenomenon behind Encanto has made it a different kind of hit.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tickets, whatever it might be. I think the bigger issue with all of that is that he forgets the creatives. And at Disney, even if you're moving into this moment of we're a streaming company, you tell the street over and over and over again, it's fine that we're losing money in theaters because we're a streaming company and that's where our focus is. You have to communicate better with the actual team members and the creatives who are building this product who then you're saying we're going to build an entire franchise around. And that is where Bob Eiger, people point to and say he had this, the term they use a lot as emotional intelligence, he had this emotional intelligence to work with creatives and to have these conversations something like moving turning red to Disney+ under Eiger would have taken months and it would have been discussions with almost everyone which makes almost everyone feel included. It's another benefit. And under JPEG who's much more operational, streamlines it, takes three weeks, talks to the Pixar team and goes, this makes sense for us. We're going to move it. It just”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what I will add to this is the same move that Disney is making is the exact same move that Netflix is experimenting with, where Netflix, Netflix decided two, three years ago that they were going to produce six animated kids films a year, which was more than Disney animation at the time. And they said, we think there is room for franchise growth and franchise building in the kids space on streaming. And Netflix decided to take that opportunity and try it. Netflix hasn't seen too much success with it. Their biggest kids movie came from Sony and that's the Mitchells versus the Machines. And they acquired that from Sony in their partnership with the company. But Disney is now going, we have empirical data showing that actually we can build franchises and it's going to save us a ton of money on marketing. It's going to save us a ton of money on printing or it can actually just go directly here and we can collect credit card data and we can watch how our users are doing this and it actually provides us more information about how we then market theme park passes, crews.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when we look at what's happening with Pixar, it is the most understandable, justifiable business move for the company right now. The issue, which again speaks to this overarching miscommunication issue that I think Bob Chapek currently has and is currently figuring out is what this communicates to people inside the company and outside the company, which is Pixar Academy award-winning division that Bob Eiger spent many, many, many months rebuilding a relationship with Steve Jobs to acquire in 2006 is now being seen as a direct-to-video bargain bin studio. And that is upsetting to people at Pixar. That is upsetting to fans of Pixar, and that is very questionable to people who kind of study the industry and are saying, if Pixar movies can't go to theaters, what does that say for any other type of movie that people are trying to make in the kids' entertainment space?”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you go to theaters and you're there for 30 to 45 days? Then you pull it off and go directly to Disney, or do you go directly to Disney? And so the thing that he points to over and over again is in Kanto, where he says in Kanto did, you know, 94 million, I think, in theaters, just under 100 million. And then it went to Disney+, and it skyrocketed. It was like their most watched movie, the hit number one on the iTunes charts, whatever it might be. And he goes, look, there is an audience for kids and for adults on Disney+ if we move our movies here. So with Pixar and especially the three Pixar films that this happened to, which was Seoul in December 2020, Luca in June of 2021, and then most recently turning red last month, I believe a month and a half ago, none of those movies are based on pre-existing IP. None of those movies are necessarily, I have to go to a theater to see this. And all of those movies are more likely to have find a bigger audience on Disney+ during the pandemic.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Average revenue for user is about $6.68 in the US. It's up about 15% year over year. And Chern, which is how many customers they're losing, is relatively low at about 3.7%. And the average industry average is about 5%. The only company with lower churn than Disney Plus's Netflix. With that said, when we look at Pixar and the question of our families going to theater still, Is family entertainment underperforming, which it was as of a few months ago? Disney goes, we have these movies that we know will engage kids that we're pretty sure families will sign up for the service if they haven't already. And we could possibly get some new fans out of it. If we move it to Disney+, we can track the engagement. We can see if we can build franchisees out of this. For Disney and Bob Chpeck has said this on calls many, many times on earnings calls where he refers to a lot of it as experimentation, where they're trying to figure out what makes sense in the market.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The long question was always Are theaters necessary for franchise making? And franchise making very big deal to Disney, arguably the biggest deal to the biggest company is can we make a franchise out of this because we operate a flywheel”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The end of the day, every decoder episode is about or charts. This is like a real theme of our show. Like we are now just into the org chart of Disney and the trade-offs that that contains. Let's apply that to Pixar. The idea that Pixar is going to become a direct-to-video animation business, it's a meme. I don't know if it's a totally fair meme because the Pixar movies are still all very good. But the last three movies have skipped theatrical release. They go straight to Disney+. That causes some tension because the theater is still seen as, you know, the most auspicious place to release a movie. The problem is that people aren't going to movie theaters. How does that play out?”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From them because Bob Chap and Bob Iger as well said we want to be able to focus on streaming. We want to be able to focus on Disney+ and we want to be able to have people in charge who can say no I'm taking this. It's going here. This is our future.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Disney company, Peter Rice and John Langraff, who oversees FX, they really like that control. They like being able to say, I'm going to green light this, and it's specifically going to go to FX or it's going to go to ABC, and I'm going to be in control of everything from the budget to the production to whatever it might be. And instead, Disney is saying you get to create the show and you can greenlight it, which is what Bob Chapeck gave them the ability to do, but Kareem Daniel is going to decide where it goes. He's going to decide if this is a Hulu show, if it's an FX show, if it's a Disney Plus show. And I think what that gets into within the entertainment industry is a lot of bruised ego and a lot of trying to figure out what your role is within your own team, within your own vertical, and then within the greater company itself. And this was something that did not exist at Disney before. This was something that every person who oversaw their own division had complete P&L control, which was everything from creative to budget. And that is basically stripped.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I also don't understand why they, but from what I understand, or from what the issue that comes with it is that if you have one person in charge of making a decision for the platform, you don't have to run into all this red tape about who is going to greenlight what for what different network. So the big issue that came out was at the time when Kevin Mayer, who oversaw a bunch of the acquisitions at Disney then left and he went to TikTok for a little bit. Now he has his own company under Blackstone. He was overseeing Disney+. And if he wanted to take a show and he would go, I'm green lighting it. It's going to Disney+, I'm in control of it. But then you'd have different executives like Peter Rice, who's a very, very senior executive at Disney oversees their TV division. And Peter Rice would say, well, I'm going to greenlight it and I want it for ABC or I want it for whatever it might be by taking away that power, by stripping and saying this person is going to decide where the show goes. You just have to make the show. That takes away a lot of control that a lot of executives like, specifically at the”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he basically told them you can't have your content team and your distribution team on the same team. It just doesn't work. You're going to run into too many issues. It's going to be too many delays. Instead, you have to kind of funnel it up and split it off.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, that's it. When we look at the way Disney kind of wants to bring itself into this tech equation and the way that arguably Netflix started off as a tech company and now feels very much like a media entertainment company and this is a debate that every CEO Kate's like, you know, what are you? Are you a tech company? Are you a media company? And they'll just say, hopefully we're a profitable company. But if we look at the Disney move, it's much more difficult for that company because it has been operating very similarly for decades where there's this idea of who is in control of the budget, who's in control of green lighting, who's in control of all these different issues that are now kind of being funneled up to one person who was never in any of these processes, but who is Bob Chap's right-hand man. This is a lesson that actually was going to be implemented under Bob Eiger when Bob Eiger spoke to Robert Kinsel, who is the, I believe the still chief business officer over at YouTube. He used to be at Netflix for many, many years.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't know that time solves the Republican Party going to war with your company on culture war issues in an election year. So let's bracket that. Politics in America is now about the culture war entirely. There's no solving it for any CEO, and he's just got to deal with it. And that might limit his market, but it probably won't because they're Disney and they're going to keep making MCU movies. So I think it's safe to bracket it. Let's talk about what you described as becoming a tech company. I hear that, and I think it's great for these companies to describe themselves as tech companies, but what they are really describing is distribution via app unsmart TV platforms. They're not talking about tech in any other sense, right? They're not going to put out mobile phones, right? They're talking about, we have an app and that's going to be become our distribution platform, and that will change the business. Is there something I'm missing there, or is that really it?”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tech platform or the idea of tech being more integrated with its actual core identity. But until then, he's still the head of a creative company known for some of the best creative teams in the world. And unless you can connect those together the way Eiger did towards the end of his career where he really started to get into the streaming space and figure out what the next move was, it's always going to be a tough battle internally and then externally. And that's when you have questions from shareholders and the board come into play about is this the right move? Is this the right guy? And I think he needs time to prove himself. And I think he needs time to get out of all of these situations that he's found himself in. But it is a concern for people who really support Disney because they're so used to Eiger. And Iger is a tough CEO to best, no matter who took over.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fiduciary duty, which is promising the street and his shareholders like, we're going to get to 230, 260 million subscribers by 2024, which is a daunting promise. It's a daunting projection. And at the same time, I'm going to carry the brand that is Disney that stands up for the right reasons, that stands up in political and social issues and humanitarian issues, that engages with artists and creatives and really understands how to talk to artists and creatives. Because talking to distributors and your executive team, very different from talking to someone who's poured their heart into a role or into directing or into writing a film. And that is something he didn't have too much experience with. He didn't come up through the studio on the creative side. He came up on the distribution side. And so I think to your point about Tim Cook, it may make Chpeck a good CEO in five years when the Disney is really in the middle of this move to becoming a big”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was the first moment that people realized this is not an Eiger, and that's going to become an issue when Disney is fighting for top talent for its franchises, for its new franchises, for what it's trying to do, especially at one of the most revolutionary, both in a positive but also in a negative way within the theatrical landscape within the studio landscape that Disney really built itself on, this idea of where do movies exist and how do we compensate talent and how do we think about the power of a movie in a theater versus what it looks like if we send it directly to Disney+, which is something that's happening with Pixar a lot where a lot of their movies are being sent to Disney+, and that leads to jokes about Pixar being the next direct-to-video brand for Disney, which is a studio that costs them $7 billion and really pulled Disney animation out of the...”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And no, and I also think Chepek would argue that he's not a creative visionary in the way Bob Eiger was, which is fine in a tech world where your major concern is the product and this kind of consumer experience in a very intimate way if we think of how devices in our lives exist, which I know you do. You think about quite often. But JPEC is this guy who is tasked with moving Disney as a creative company into a tech-oriented role while remaining very, very in line with creatives because it's the creative power that makes Disney what it is. The issue really if we look at Scarlett Johansen and the lawsuit that came up when she sued Disney for how she felt she was treated with Black Widow and it moving to Disney+ during the pandemic.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like this pattern of the visionary CEO who leaves and then hands it over to the best operator of his crew instead of another visionary is fairly common. I would actually make the direct comparison to Apple, like you just made it, right? Steve Jobs is a visionary. He hands over the company to Tim Cook, who's an operator. Tim Cook is massively successful as a CEO if you measure the business performance of Apple, obviously, but no one's running around saying Tim Cook is a product visionary. I think he's been good at carrying the cultural legacy and the moral position of Apple as well. I don't think there's any question there, but no one thinks that Tim Cook invented the AirPods, right? Like it's just not the role we ascribe to him. Do you think Chepek is a creative visionary the way that Eiger was? Because that was where Eiger's credibility came from, is that the creatives all believed in it.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now he's being tasked with carrying the company very publicly in a way that generates support from the shareholders, from the consumers and from his employees. And that's easier said than done, especially for someone who's so new to the role.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which all leads to this point is that Bob Chap is in a really difficult position of trying to make Disney a legacy company of yesterday into a legacy company of tomorrow. And that means becoming more and more like a tech company rather than a traditional media and entertainment company. And so he runs it the way that arguably some tech companies might where he breaks up the content production and the distribution and he goes in and he says this is how it's going to work. We're focusing on streaming. We're focusing on the metaverse. We're focusing on how to get into these different positions. But all of these issues happen at like the same time. And so it seems like Bob Chap is losing control of the kingdom versus Bob Eyer had control over it. But what I think gets lost in that is that Bob Chapek is just over two years into his 10 years as CEO. His first job was pulling the company out of the pandemic and focusing on how to just survive it.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Change. That's one. Two, you have Bob Chapak really arguing to some extent with the leaders of the different studios and the different divisions at his company because he takes away something very boring called P&L, which basically means they are no longer in control of their budgets. Person in control of their budgets is a guy named Kareem Daniel, who's his right hand man. He's been his right hand man since Kareem Daniel interned for him as an MBA student many, many, many years ago. And he goes, you're in charge of all of these kind of creative fields and you're going to be in charge of the budget, which does not jive well for Disney, a company where each division was given control of their budget.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when we think about that, the fact that there's all these things happening, there are three big issues. One is how Bob Shapek seemingly communicates with his staff and with the greater public. So when we think about the don't say gay bill, Bob Chapak from the get-go does not really communicate with people at Disney, many of whom belong to the LGBTQ community, many who are allies of the community, many who just very much support it. He does not communicate that he's not going to take a public stance, that Disney is not going to take a public stance. In previous years, Eiger would have taken a stance, and Disney also probably would have taken a public stance. And study says our content is good enough to show that we support the LGBTQ community, except that it's not because in China and in other countries, they get rid of any scenes that have LGBTQ moments. This is an ongoing issue within the Disney company. It's an ongoing issue within the studios at Disney who are trying to kind of fight this.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Regardless and in a very big way. Then you have ChPEC, who fundamentally is so different from Bob Eiger. Bob Eiger had this amazing emotional intelligence. He was able to really connect with talent. He believed in having debates with a lot of his executives and people in his C-suite. wanted to have this kind of constant conversation about how to do things. Bob Chaprounds himself with handpicked people, which is not uncommon, but who are relatively new to working with talent, who are new to representing Disney at a very, very public level, and who most importantly are new to understanding how to view Disney and how to carry Disney as a brand, not just as a company, but as a brand who really resonates with consumers in a way that very few companies do. You can compare it to Apple, I think, where there's this genuine adoration for not just the product, but for the company itself.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So there are a multitude of issues within the succession that has happened between Bob Eiger and Bob Chapek. And I think a really good way to think of it is Jack Welch and Jeff Emelt at GE. When Jack stepped down, he stayed around for next year. And then Imelt messed up. Well, he'll say he messed up around the early earnings. And he projected a $5 billion revenue, I believe, and he came in at like $3.2 billion. And so then Jack goes on publicly to say, you know, like, I wouldn't have done it this way. And he's very invested in this company. He led for 20 years. And that puts Jeff and Milton in a really interesting position where he's like, I don't want to go up against the guy who led this company who's beloved, but also it's my turn. I want to do what I'm going to do at this company. And that's very much where Eiger and Chape are, where Eiger is still, I believe Disney's largest single shareholder with 500,000 shares, about $71 million these days, which is a huge deal. So he's still in the company of.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We should amend the copyright terms of the United States, which is what some Republican politicians are now arguing. All that seems crazy. But at the heart of it, you had how Eiger would have done it and you had how Chapek is doing it. And that seems to have led to a rift between the two”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's now the guy's out of the picture. It doesn't seem like they like each other anymore. And kind of the flashpoint was this bill in Florida that don't say gay bill, which limits how educators are allowed to discuss sexuality and family structures in schools in extremely ambiguous ways, ways that probably overstep because of the ambiguity of the language in the bill. Iger, it seems pretty obvious, would have spoken up against the bill. Disney is a huge force in Florida. Chapek did not do this. His employees walked out because he did not speak up loudly. He apologized to employees. Now Disney is going to lobby against this bill. The Republican government of Florida says they're going to punish Disney in all kinds of ways. It seems”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back. Let's jump into Disney. Juliet, before the break, you brought up Marvel, obviously the Disney acquisition of Marvel under former CEO Bob Eiger was a huge success story. We're now in, what is it, phase 45 of Marvel movies, cinematic universe? I actually think it would be better for Disney if this phase was a failure. I'm going to put that out there. Like the previous three phases that ended with Avengers Endgame, huge success. Like, it would be good for that company if they didn't just have this thing to milk, if they had to pivot. And I think that kind of brings us into... The current state of Disney, there was a Bob, Bob Iger. There's a new Bob, the CEO, Bob Shape. You and I have discussed that many Bobs of the industry when you were at the Verge on the Vergecast many times. But Chepek was Bob Eiger's handpick successor.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is a place for people to come and be introduced to something that they don't even necessarily know that they want to watch, that they might be interested in. And once they do, now you can open them up to a whole new world of content that is cheaper to make animation and anime is a big one and kind of really build up space there where no one else wants to. To your point, that message is lost when everybody is trying to make the next Marvel, the next DC, and it's such a limited amount of companies who can do that from a rights perspective. And also the interest in that is going to target the same group of people over and over again. You have to expand beyond them.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think with a lot of issues in the industry, it's a communication issue. And I don't just mean as in between a boss and someone else via email, there's this idea of what can work and what will work versus what may work. And because they are promising two to three times the growth on these streaming services that are not profitable, but they're telling the street, you know, this is our future. So we have to be profitable. Their thing is we got to go big. And so we're going to do the big adaptation of the big IP and we're going to be in this place for $100 million, $120 million, and we're going to own that. And instead of it, it's like, you can do what Netflix did really well in 2014, 2015, which was taking a lot of chances on content no one else kind of wanted to make and building its audience there because there were huge audiences who were vastly underserved. The way that I kind of tell clients to think of their platforms is not necessarily an entertainment service, it's a vertical of discovery.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that messages resonate? I realize this is like your job, so you're going to tell me it's resonating, but again, I think this is the challenge of the whole industry. The numbers are telling people where the money is. And yet the market doesn't seem to be moving in that direction as fast as you would expect.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where you could just Pivot towards focusing on them for a little bit, and you're going to bring in your subscribers. You're going to reduce your churn. Then by that metric, you're then going to be able to increase your subscription fee because you have low churn, right? You can take that opportunity.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and then a big portion of my job is looking at various usage in household and demographics. So if I look at a certain audience for a certain platform, if I'm looking at HBO Max, my recommendation is going to say you have no shows for teenage girls. Teenage girls love consuming content. They love making content about the content they're watching. It's a huge market and it's a cheap market relatively speaking because it's a lot of reality, it's a lot of romance, it's a lot of, to an extent, action adventure, but not really. And so when we look at the data points, there is this huge crossover with underserved audiences, which tends to be like young women of color too, who aren't served as well as men tend to be. And so whenever I talk to certain companies, a lot of the recommendations I bring up is you want to make another Star Wars because you think Star Wars is the way to make a billion dollars, but Star Wars exists. Like people who want Star Wars are going to go to Disney+, and they're going to get it. What doesn't exist is a huge, there's a huge market with a hole in it.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's kind of where you're focused. It sounds like the equation here is you need some new stuff that generates a lot of hype. It seems like what you all measure is social media activity is a proxy for affection. You need that stuff to bring people in, convert people into subscribers, and then you need a huge catalog to retain them so they don't stop paying you.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That Warner has that NBC has that's a paramount has and so that's the situation that we see but on the flip side Paramount Plus and Peacock which are from Paramount and NBC Universal they don't have the big titles really that are bringing people in that people are saying oh well I'll sign up for this you know half of Peacock stuff is available on Hulu and people are like well Hulu has titles I actually want to watch so I'm going to sign up for it and watch my NBC shows there so this is this moment we're in where you're trying to find that balance but for the new services they really need something exciting to bring those first customers in in the first place”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's the Apple equation to a certain extent, or Apple TV is batting above its average with originals, where you think of how few shows they actually have compared to everyone else. And the demand for it is pretty high and they're successful. They have, you know, Ted Lasso wins a bunch of Emmys. They have Coda, which just won Best Picture. Apple TV Plus has these what we call high acquisition titles, which is customers will come sign up for them. What they don't have, which is just as important, is the catalog demand. They don't have any market share when it comes to actual catalog, which is when people are done with CODA, they want to watch Seinfeld. They want to watch New Girl, whatever it might be. They don't have that. And so I think that goes into the question with Apple to an extent with Disney+, which also has a really small catalog market share-wise compared to its competitors. There's this question of how much do you want to be in this game? Because if you want to be in this game, you have to have the 10,000 to 20,000 title back catalog.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So basically, you're a streaming company, the Verge streaming company.com. That's our new service. And I've got one thing, one huge exclusive series to launch with, but I know it's going to go away. Stop paying me once that season is over, once that second season is over. And you're saying, okay, but to launch new series, you have to make sure people love them so they stay”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In this type of series. And so we use that and go to the companies and basically say if you have their adoration, if you have this concept of love, which is hard to quantify, but is extremely important to the conversation indirect-to-consumer relationships, then you're going to be okay. You're going to pull out with continued customer acquisition, and you're going to see lower churn rates and higher retention.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And monetize it. And it's more than just consumption. It's a lot of who are making TikTok edits, who's on Twitter rallying people, who is figuring out ways to upload episodes of shows for people who don't want to subscribe, but they want to be able to engage”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think we have to examine what has shifted with the measurement system. So if we look at what worked 2030 years ago, what worked under the kind of the Nielsen method, it was this idea of what worked for advertisers. So it was entirely based on consumption patterns. And you could look at a very fixed schedule at 8 p.m., 9 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever it might be, and Nielsen can say 12 million people tuned in to watch Law and Order. And this is great for advertisers. It's great for NBC because they get to charge higher rates. But that relationship between customers changes once it's direct to consumer. Now what you're trying to figure out is the affinity, the adoration that certain customers have for certain shows, for certain characters, for certain franchises. So that way you can convince them to pay you 10 to $15 a month, if not more in the next coming years. And so I think when we look at what we're trying to figure out, the subject of demand is how does demand in an attention economy, which is a term everyone uses, but really how do you take that?”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the things that I think is really interesting about streaming in both a positive and negative way is that there's more data about what people are watching, who those people are, what granular elements of any show appeal to them. And then the flip side is it doesn't seem like anybody knows how to measure anything and all the measurements are incompatible and not comparable directly. How do you make sense of that?”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, I can't talk about my clients, but across the board, we have certain clients like Disney. We work with Warner Media, we work with Amazon, we work with a bunch of different companies. Again, mostly focusing on their direct consumer efforts, but some trying to focus still on linear and some looking at other questions like what programs to license or acquire or what type of series should they be making for underserved audiences. So we pull a lot of that data and then help them in that spectrum.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The majority of my day is split between two things. So the mornings I tend to do a lot of research projects. So it's pouring over different data that we're pulling via SQL and looking at trends and kind of trying to figure out what is happening in the industry and trying to figure out what our clients can use from a strategic standpoint to better their companies and their divisions, which tend to focus on streaming. And then the latter part of my day in the afternoon is spent with a lot of clients across the entertainment and media landscape and helping them try to make sense of all of this right now.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Analytics. Here we go. Julia Alexander, you once covered streaming here at the Verge. You are now the senior strategy analyst at Parrot Analytics. You also co-host Downstream, which is a podcast about the business of streaming. Welcome to Decoder.”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Check is changing the Disney work chart. I also wanted to spend some time on Warner Media, which is about to get spun out of AT&T and merged into discovery. Why did AT&T even buy Warner Media? And why did Discovery want it now? What's going to happen to HPO Max and the newly launched CNN Plus? Are we just building up a more expensive version of the cable bundle? Julie and I have been talking about these companies for years, so this was a pretty fun and loose conversation. There is a lot going on inside this world. I do have some quick disclosures before we start. NBC Universal, which runs Peacock, is a minority investor in Vox Media. Vox Media as a whole has shows on basically all these streaming platforms. And the Verge itself is working on a show from Netflix. That said, I don't have any insight information as to what is going on inside the stream companies at large. I just like making the disclosures when it's appropriate. Okay, let's get into it. Julia Alexander, Senior Strategist at”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How we distribute media has a huge influence on the media itself. What gets made and who gets to make it. So Julie and I talked about what kinds of movies and shows are getting made now that the streamers are in their ascendancy. And of course, there's Disney and Warner Media, two legacy entertainment giants in the middle of huge transformations. Disney has a new CEO and Bob Chapak, who is reorganizing the company around streaming. In the process, he's irritated big stars like Scarlett Johansson and unsettled Disney's own major studios like Pixar by sending its movies directly to Disney+ instead of theaters. On the flip side though, Encanto became a sensation only after it left theaters and hit the Disney Plus app. So I wanted to ask Julia how that shift at Disney was going and how Chapex restructure was playing out after the story tenure of his predecessor Bob Eiger. Dakota is a podcast about orc charts after all and”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Light Patel, editor in chief of the Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking to Julia Alexander. Julia used to be a reporter at the Verge who covered streaming TV. She is now the senior strategy analyst at Parrot Analytics, a company that helps streaming companies do better at streaming. She also hosts a podcast called Downstream, which is about the business of streaming. So Julia was the perfect guest to come on and talk about the state of the streaming industry. We're a couple years into Hollywood's big shift to streaming entertainment, and it's clear that it's reoriented the industry. Apple just won an Oscar from Best Picture for a film called Coda it bought out of Sundance. Amazon now owns MGM. Netflix, which has long be dominant, is investing in games and hinting at advertising to grow its revenue base. One idea that comes up on Decoder over and over again is that”
2022-04-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT