Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stream Wars, our thought leader series where we learn from industry experts about the latest trends and challenges from across the convergent TV space. 0:16 Hosted by Michael Beach. Today, I'm joined by Julie Alexander. She's currently the director of strategy at Parrot Analytics. Julie is a prolific writer and is a must-read for me. 0:27 In our talk, we cover a variety of topics, including the success of Disney+ W1, the upside of ad-supported streaming, and the economics of content production and unscripted programming. 0:37 Please enjoy my conversation with Julie Alexander. Julie, welcome to Screen Wars. Thank you so much for having me. How are you doing? I'm great. How about yourself? Can't complain. Can't complain. Excellent. 0:49 You are one of my absolute follows on Twitter. Uh, someday you got to tell me how, uh, to be such a prolific poster, and I've been trying to avoid your feed since Sunday because I haven't watched Westworld yet. 1:01 [laughs] Uh, but I have to ask, how much time do you spend watching streaming? It's a lot. It's, it's funny because when I used to work as a reporter, I actually spent much more because I just had to for work purposes. 1:15 Like it was, I was trying to keep up with not just what was happening on the business side, but also trying to keep up with what they were actually putting out so I could give some kind of informative opinion when I was writing. 1:27 Now, I watch a little bit less, but it's still, you know, a couple hours a night. And then throughout the day, I have CNN or CNBC or something else on streaming from like, uh, YouTube TV or Fubo TV. 1:41 I have both, depending [laughs] on which one, uh, I need in that, in that moment. So it's... The TV is kind of on constantly in my, in my house. 1:50 Yeah, we had, uh, Brandon Katz on last year, and it was like going through his feed to get ready for it. I mean, uh, you know, all things Star Wars, all things Marvel, and I was kind of amazed. 2:00 And then kind of going through your feed, it's like all those things plus Westworld, Succession. Uh, I mean, you're up on everything, so. I mean, I think the, the gym helps. 2:10 Like going, having a place where I have to be, uh, you know... 2:14 I, I always end on cardio and running for like forty-five minutes, and instead of watching CNN or something, I'll just throw on an episode of something I wanted to watch and I just didn't have time to. 2:22 So I think that carving out that little [laughs] forty-five minutes throughout the day actually helps me stay on top. 2:27 And then my friends are all, you know, huge, huge entertainment, media nerds who tend to work in entertainment and media. So it's kind of just constantly on and, and being talked about. Yeah. 2:39 Well, you know, I'd love to get like some backstory on, um, Parrot Analytics' current kind of day job today, and then kind of how you ended up there. I know you've had, uh, you know, several stops along the way. Yeah. 2:50 So I'm currently the director of strategy at Parrot Analytics. I will have been here, it'll be a year actually in a week or so, week and a half. Um, it's... 2:59 So what my job is, is I specifically work with the, our, our clients, uh, whose I won't get into, but I help them kind of figure out or help them contemplate their strategic roadmap as they think about everything from content acquisition and content licensing to distribution, to partnering with other, um, potential brands and, and third-party partners. 3:19 And kind of just thinking about how they want to grow and, um, retain their user base, both in the US, but also especially globally within EMEA, within APAC, um, within LATAM. 3:31 Um, and Parrot Analytics specifically takes this theory of, which I really love, which is this idea that we used to think of entertainment and media in silos. 3:42 We used to think of it in terms of this was television and this was film and this was gaming and this was user-generated content and this was books or publishing, whatever it might be. 3:50 And now, the way I like to think of it is those are all little gateways into a larger supernova of online content, right? 3:58 And you know, it's, it's, it's great we're recording this on the fifteen-year anniversary of the iPhone, and I've been thinking a lot about the iPhone and kind of what that did irrevocably for content and entertainment and how we, you know, why and how we consume content the way we do and, and our relationship to it. 4:15 And so all of that is a long way of saying that we exist within this attention economy, where the idea of, of the value of a show is no longer just how many viewers did it get, you know, within the eight o'clock to nine o'clock prime time spot so that the advertisers are happy. 4:30 The question is, what is the significance of someone's relationship to one or two shows on your platform that is gonna, you know, be the main reason that they spend fifteen dollars a month or that they'll spend seventeen dollars a month if you asked for it in order to have access to those shows, you know, or, or the films? 4:45 Or, or how do they view certain talent and that's why they want to be able to sign up for something? 4:49 And the economics of the attention economy and the economics of an inflated level of supply with a much more focused, um, uh, commandeering sense of demand within the audiences globally is the question that we try to help our clients figure out, is how do you break through all of this noise? 5:09 And it's only getting noisier. And not just within traditional linear entertainment that is film and television, but within games. Like how do you both compete with games but work with games? 5:18 How do you both compete with TikTok but work with TikTok and, and user-generated content? 5:23 And where are these opportunities in white spaces in an entertainment and content world that is so much more intimate and in- interconnected than ever before and, and much more massive? 5:34 Um, so that's kind of what Parrot does and what I do. 5:37 And to answer your question very briefly about how I came here, I spent a decade working in media, um, as a writer and as a, as a kind of content strategist for Vox Media, Vice Media, Ziff Davis, a couple of other ones. 5:50 But I started off with the Toronto Sun where I grew up back in Toronto, Canada. Um- And I really, really loved it, and then at some point I became really obsessed with Disney. 6:00 And, and not in the sense that I feel maybe a lot of other people become obsessed with Disney, which is the content, which is great, um, or the parks or whatever it might be. 6:08 I really became obsessed with this idea that they were under-reported as a monolithic giant. 6:15 I f- I felt that it was this company that was strategically doing a lot across every foundational base to kind of reach consumer attention, you know, what I was speaking about just a few minutes ago, on all these different mediums all acro- all across the world. 6:29 So I started writing about it on a, at a, at a Disney-focused business newsletter, um, called Musings on Mouse, and I was writing about this kind of weekly, th- th- these, just these questions I had about Disney that I would get from talking to, you know, sources or friends who worked in strategy, who worked in research, who worked in biz dev, who worked in content programming. 6:47 [lips smack] And about a year into that, maybe, maybe a little bit under a year, I started getting emails from different people at different companies who now work, w- who are now working with companies that are c- are clients at Parrot. 6:58 Uh, and they would say things like, "You know, companies will pay you to do this." 7:01 Like, "This is, like, the questions you're asking, the data you're looking into, the q- y- the answers you're trying to figure out is what we pay people to do." 7:08 And so I started thinking, like, as much as I really loved media, and that was a big part of my life, and that was a big part of my identity, I really wanted to get into the other side of it and move towards the biz dev and the strategy side, and really try to figure out the answer to those questions without having to report on it, um, and be given access to data that I wasn't gonna get as a r- well, as a reporter. 7:27 At least at the level of reporting I was doing. Um, I'm sure a great reporter like Lucas Shaw might be able to get that data, but I was not getting that data. 7:33 And so I've been here for a year kind of trying to figure out the answers to those same questions. Yeah, that's great. 7:41 And what, uh, I love, I mean, uh, you know, kind of our day job is on the, the advertising front, where we try to help marketers kind of figure out the same question of, um, you know, how do all these sources play together? 7:55 Where... Like, what, what kind of data is a, is Parrot pulling in to... Uh, I'm always amazed by just the quality of, 8:03 y- you know, insight and anal- and visualization that's there, but where, where is all this coming from? So we take in 2 billion, about 2 billion data points all the time, constantly, from a number of various sources. 8:14 And then what we do is we rank the weighting of those sources to ensure that the most, um, I don't wanna say important, but the most maybe, uh, integral metric to a specific question is weighted higher, so that way you're getting the most accurate answer. 8:30 Um, so that's everything from, uh, piracy services like Popcorn Time, which have, you know, millions and millions and millions of users. 8:36 Um, and the reason that we look at that specifically is because I think in the US it's so easy to be US-focused, and be like, "Whatever's happening here is, you know, that's the main answer." 8:46 And although American companies obviously do need to be thinking about that, and the US is a large market, a lot of these shows are not available internationally. 8:54 A lot of these movies that are being produced are not available internationally, or if they are, they're being rolled out slowly. 8:58 And so we work with a lot of clients who are in, you know, Europe, or in Asia, who we're based, our headquarters is New Zealand. Like, we have a very global focus on this, and so when we look at 9:09 some of the piracy stuff or some of the, you know, kind of, uh, u- user-shared film and television, we get really interesting data points about actual consumption patterns outside of the streaming services. 9:21 'Cause we don't get direct data from the streaming services, um, that, uh... And, like, you know, neither does Nielsen per se, but they kind of have access to something. 9:28 So everyone in the, in the, I call it, you know, kind of race to figure out the metrics of streaming, everyone has their own different data points. 9:35 But w- so we start there, then the next thing is, um, user-generated content about specific shows or movies, like whatever it might be, because the level of demand for that show is higher than, say, a, a, a like on a Facebook page or a tweet, right? 9:49 Where you might be saying something about the show or, or about a movie or about a, a talent, but you're not necessarily engaging with it. 9:56 So we rank the data points up from are you showing brief interest in it to how heavily are you engaging? And the way I like to best explain it is to take you through a typical user journey, right? 10:07 So let's say someone, let's say it's you, Michael, and s- you, someone sends you a link for a new TV show, and they're like, "You gotta check this out." First thing you're gonna do probably is watch the trailer. 10:18 You're gonna click on the link. You watch the trailer. That's a data point 'cause we collect from YouTube API. Then you may go into IMDb to see who's in it. 10:25 You know, you recognize someone, you wanna see who's in that cast. That's a data point that we look into. You might look at the Wikipedia page or you might go to the Facebook page. That's a data point. 10:32 And those are all on the lower side, 'cause although you're engaging, you're not necessarily consuming, nor are you actively showing interest in consumption. You're showing active interest in potential. 10:41 So then you go higher from there, and then you get into, well, okay, are you, uh, writing a series of tweets about why the show is really great? And we can judge sentiment based on, on social media posts as well. 10:51 Are you creating content on TikTok that is edits of these things? 10:55 Are you doing all these other really interactive, engaging, um, proof of consumption activities that really help people understand, like, and then really promote the show? 11:05 And then final, the, the most, the heaviest weighted thing is consumption. 11:08 So from piracy, from whatever, uh, sources it may be, people actively watching, people actively saying like, "I want to spend three hours doing this." 11:16 And so we kind of just judge by those, but it's 2 billion data points globally. Amazing. Well, yeah, kinda we're heading into earnings season. Um, 11:28 and I guess, you know, a really high-level question, what's your overall thesis right now for the streaming industry today, and kinda what do you see as the, the biggest challenges? 11:37 Uh, I know that's a really broad question, but... 11:41 I think the biggest challenge facing a lot of the major streaming plays, players right now is figuring out how to turn streaming from something that is additive into something... 11:50 and, and supplementary, into something that is formative. So I think if you look at companies like- Amazon, Netflix, Apple. Uh, Netflix at the highest of that level, then Amazon, Apple. 12:01 There is no supplementary in terms of content, like in terms of video content. There is no th- there's nothing you're supplementing. That is the formative product that you're offering. 12:11 Now, of course, you can argue that Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ are supplementing, you know, a larger Apple hardware business and a larger Apple ecosys- um, services ecosystem. 12:21 Amazon Prime Video obviously supplementing Amazon Prime. Uh, like so they're, they, they are supplementary products, but on the video side, they're not. 12:28 If we look at Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, these are additive, uh, or they still feel additive and supplementary to the overarching, to the larger business, which of course is broadcast, it's cable, it's theatrical, uh, it's, it's whatever it might be. 12:47 And I think where they're really gonna struggle with that is on the content programming, like the content, the, you know, the content allocation side, on the marketing side a little bit. 12:59 Um, those questions, on the budgeting side, those questions about we still have to support this very, very lucrative linear television business. 13:07 You know, for all that we talk about the death of pay TV, and it's cer- and pay TV is certainly declining quarter after quarter, year after year at a, at a, at a very steady level, but it is still a, a very lucrative business. 13:18 I mean, you look at Discovery, right? Discovery comes in, buys Warner Brothers, uh, or Warner Media rather, and cable is huge to Discovery, right? 13:26 Like that is, that is its whole business, and it's a very lucrative business for Discovery. 13:29 And so I think there's this question of how do you support that system while also s- while also investing heavily in streaming, and how do you not take from that system to pour strictly into streaming? 13:42 Because you still have to pay, you still have to reward, and you still have to support that system. So I think there's this misunderstanding that if you look at an overar- a huge conglomerate, 13:52 let's use, um, let's use Warner Brothers Discovery. If you look at a, at a company like that, I think there's a huge misconception that they can make all their money in linear and then just invest it into streaming. 14:02 And go like, "Cool," like, "We made money off these deals on TNT," or wh- or, or whatever it might be, either revenue on TNT, the revenue on TBS, the, the revenue that we made o- on the, all the Discovery side of things. 14:12 Let's just pour that into whatever HBO Max Discovery+ product ends up being. And you can't, because you still have to support that. You still have to make deals in that space. You're still fighting for sports rights. 14:21 You're still doing all the other things. Advertisers still wanna be there. 14:24 And as much as advertisers also wanna be on HBO Max, like there's a healthy audience on cable that they really, that they still obviously want to re- um, to reach. And so I think 14:34 the s- the, the promise to the street, if you take a company like Disney, the promise to the street is we're gonna grow our Disney+ subscribers, you know, by two, three, multiple times the multiples. 14:44 Uh, which is a wild growth to project, you know, by fiscal year 2024, which is a wild growth to project to the street. 14:51 And it's a way to say like, "We want you to know we're invested heavily into this," you know, quote unquote, "colloquial streaming war." 14:57 Uh, and we are in it to win it, but at the same time, if we look at where the vast majority of Disney's revenue comes from, and if we look at where the vast majority of Disney spend is on the content side, like it's not Disney+, right? 15:08 It's, it, that Disney+ is a, a part of it. It is a supplementary part of it. 15:13 And I think what is really gonna be affecting the s- the earnings, which, which is just a conversation, right, about the street's reaction to, um, um, financials more than anything else, is this question of how long do you think until that flips? 15:27 And that answer could be as, as simple as like seven, eight years. That answer could be like 15 years. 15:31 Like that ans- like we don't know that answer because we don't know necessarily when all these companies internally are saying, "Okay, this many pay TV subscribers are finally no longer, you know, we no longer count them. 15:41 They're not there anymore. Now we can switch our, our full priority to this service." I think that's something you won't see necessarily on the Netflix, Amazon, Apple side. 15:49 They can kind of operate as they are 'cause those products are the main products for the, for the video content side. And for Netflix, of course, it's their only product. 15:57 The other ones, which are the larger question as they cut into the share of demand each quarter, that is where you're gonna see, I think, a lot of questions. It's... 16:05 If I was an analyst on those calls, that's where my question would be focused. 16:08 It is how do you envision this product becoming not just a priority in terms of what you wanna grow, but when do you see it becoming a, a primary source of continued revenue and a conti- a continued source of profit, of profitability at the level that you're seeing with linear? 16:25 And until we know when that change happens, I mean, why would they stop supporting linear, right? 16:30 Like Disney just paid $75 million for the rights to F1, which was like 15 times what they spent in 2019, and the majority of those games, or those races rather, are gonna live on ESPN Linear, right? 16:40 Like they're gonna, like they're gonna be on Linear. That's not an ESPN+ play. It's not an ESPN standalone package for streaming play. 16:46 That is an ESPN Linear, we, we have a, a strong cable affiliate fee that we can charge. F1 wants to be there. We're, that's what we're focused on. So I think that's my, would be my main question heading into earnings. 16:59 Yeah, we look at, you know, advertising. We wrote about this a little bit last week, but when you look at the, you know, the delta between, uh, ad minutes per hour, right? 17:07 You know, 75% fewer ad minutes per hour, but then you look at the CPM they're charging, maybe they're getting 10 or 20% higher CPMs on streaming. That math doesn't work, right? 17:18 Because y- you, you know, you've gotta get at least the same revenue per hour on streaming as you do on linear for that kind of trade to work. 17:25 And then we look at it, you know, we see a ton of buyer behavior of like media planning and things like that- Mm-hmm... and they're still, you know, really undervaluing streaming video inventory. 17:36 You know, it's targetable and measurable. And so for us it's like interesting 'cause you just see, you're like, "This model won't work unless these people are willing to pay, you know, three or four times 17:47 Per unit what they pay on s- you know, for kind of this mass reach product they get on linear, um, it's just really fascinating to see. Well, and I think to your exact point, it, it's almost ironic, right? 17:58 Because what you're saying with the linear advertising is that you're gonna get a wider reach. 18:04 Like, you're, you're just gonna naturally have a wider reach, there are naturally more people watching across the board theoretically on broadcast and then cable than there are on individual streaming services within the US. 18:15 Theoretically, right? If you look at the 77 million versus the 80 mill- like, uh, if you kind of look at that. But to your point exactly, those aren't targetable ads. 18:24 What we get with streaming is very, very, very specific, um, uh, audience demographic profiles, you get very, very specific, um, 18:33 innate understanding of, of what audiences are consuming, how long they're consuming it, when they consume it, where, like, where they consume it, which is something that you don't necessarily get with the current system on linear. 18:43 But I do think... You know, and the other thing too is, like, the, the, uh, there's all these questions about the advertising play on Netflix and what does it mean. 18:50 I think a lot of people forget that the ARPU for Hulu is, like, one of the highest in the industry. Like, the ARPU is, like, 1288 or 1277 as of Q2 for Disney 2022. 19:00 Like, that's a wild ARPU, and that's largely advertising. That's advertising coming on a product that has half the subscriber base of, of Netflix, but about the same ARPU. I think it's, like, a $1.50 difference. 19:10 Um, and so Netflix, you know, brings advertising in. 19:12 If they see a bunch of advertisers flock to them, which I assume people will 'cause it's a great platform to be on, even with all of Netflix's troubles, I'm a very much a, a, I'm a Netflix bull. 19:21 I think even with all their troubles they'll come out of it. Um, you know, that's a great place for advertisers to be, and just in terms of, again, all that information plus the size of that audience. 19:30 You know, that size of the audience is, like, 75 million or 70, yeah, 75 million subscribers in the US in UCAN alone, and there's what? At, at last count 80 million pay TV households, maybe a little bit less than that. 19:40 Like, that's, that's a great place to be if you are an advertiser and you're thinking about that kind of one-to-one relationship of the reach, of the, of the growth potential, but you're not gonna get the direct targetability that you are gonna get on streaming. 19:52 And so I think as we see advertisers really kind of move over to the space, and we see it happening with things like Pluto TV, we're seeing it happen with Freebee, we see it happening with Xumo, I think as we see more of those play out on the major s- um, um, um, streaming services and as the advertisers really start to kind of move over, we'll start to see changes in, in how companies then approach their streaming services and how they go to make those, again, not just a priority, but, like, an actual, um, primary source of, uh, continued investment and, and revenue and profitability. 20:23 And I think until then, and that, that's gonna be sooner than the, than the other, you know, thing we were just talking about that 'cause it's happening now. 20:30 Um, and I think that will open up a lot of really interesting conversations and dialogue just about what the future of streaming looks like. 20:38 'Cause the future of streaming, if you asked, you know, people two, three years ago what the future of streaming looked like based on what we knew, it wasn't necessarily advertising. 20:45 I mean, a lot of people in this industry [chuckles] said it's gonna be ads. Um, I know, I, I know myself did, I know Alex Sherman, uh, at CNBC did, I know, I think Lucas definitely mentioned so. 20:54 I think Lucas Shaw over at Bloomberg brought up, like, advertising kind of seems inevitable. I could be wrong about that. 20:59 Um, you know, we, there, and analysts of course and industry people are like, "This is only gonna go the way of ads. It's the whole joke is that we're just recreating cable but in a much more fractured landscape. 21:08 We're just taking the power away from one company and giving it to another." But that was the whole... You know, the promise of streaming for us, right, was the a la carte option. 21:17 It was this way to get away from the cable bundle, and now we're kind of being pushed back into the cable bundle via consolidation that is out of our control via brand partnerships and, and third-party partnerships. 21:26 But also that was the goal of the companies, right? It wasn't just like, "Oh, well, we don't wanna be, um, on Netflix because we're losing money there." 21:34 It's like, "We don't wanna have to give all of our mo- uh, we don't have to give a portion of our money and our customer information to Comcast or to whoever else it might be, you know, to AT&T, like, whatever it might be. 21:43 We wanna be able to own that information." 21:44 If you are Disney, owning the information on all of those viewers when you run a parks business and you run a theatrical business and you are about to run a, like, metaverse business in some way is so, so important, and especially when you bring in advertising, you know, the relationship with those advertisers. 22:01 And so I think there's gonna be an interesting dialogue that comes up as advertising really pushes streaming into the next moment of, like, the, again, the quote unquote streaming wars. Good. 22:15 Well, uh, a couple Disney questions, uh, to go back, uh, to your musings on Mouse Days. I guess first, what is your kinda quick take on the Bob Chapek extension? Yeah. [laughs] It's, I feel like it's the question. Um, 22:33 so I mean, Chapek is, he, Chapek's a long-term parks guy, which actually, you know, is not necessarily the wrong person to have in the seat right now. He's a big data guy. 22:44 Big, big data guy, kind of, kinda like Zaslav over at Warner Brothers. Big, big believer in, like, we can use data to really make a lot of better decisions. 22:52 Um, and on the one hand he's probably right, and on the other hand, you know, the, the expression I always like to use is that data's a lighthouse. 22:59 It can show you the treacherous path to not go down, and it can also show you a bunch of really great opportune pathways that you didn't even know existed and you can go down and, and find the best way out. 23:08 But the lighthouse only really works if the boat, if, if the ship and the captain on that ship can guide that boat safely into the harbor so that people want to get on the boat again, so that they trust him or her. 23:18 Um, and that ship captain in this analogy is your Kevin Feige, your Casey Bloys, your John Landgraf. 23:24 It is your creative executives who have the creative ability to say, like, "I know what a good show is, I know what a good film is," and that's how we, you know, build our brand. 23:31 Like, we're content people first and foremost. Um, so I think Chapek has issues on that end. I think Chapek does not have the talent relationships that a lot of other CEOs might have, Zaslav has, for exa- for example. 23:44 Just kinda go back between those two. Um- And Hollywood is an industry almost more than any other industry that is entirely built on relationships, especially when you're dealing with creatives. 23:54 Um, and creatives are brilliant, brilliant, you know, stunning people, but they can also be a little neurotic. 24:02 And I say that as a creative, like I say that as someone who is a, who, who considers themself a creative and I w- you know, worked in w- I was a writer for nearly a decade. 24:10 And I think those talent, managing those relationships and, and knowing how to be a people person with different groups of people at, at a high level, um, is something that he should learn how to do. 24:20 But on the other side of it, the thing that really doesn't get brought up with Chapek, 'cause there's so much negative PR that he's had to navigate, is like he's been great for the company's business. 24:29 Like Disney is doing extremely well. 24:31 You would not know this looking at the stock price of Disney, but if we look at kind of what that company has g- done quarter after quarter since the pandemic hit, which is when he came in as a CEO, he's managed to navigate them through the pandemic. 24:44 When he, as, in terms of overseeing streaming, Disney+ is the second-largest streaming service in the world, like on a mainstream level. Uh, it's growing at an exponential rate. 24:52 If we look at what he's doing at the parks, parks business is back to booming. 24:55 If we look at what's happening with DMED across the board, which is Disney, uh, Media, um, and, and Distribution, which Kareem Daniels oversees. Like if we look at what's happening on the, um, 25:08 linear and broadcast side, it's going great. I think theatrical is another iffy question with Chapek about how he figures that out, and I think that's where he really needs to listen to his deputies. 25:19 But all this is a long, rambling way of saying that in terms of what a CEO should be doing for Disney, which is providing the best value to shareholders and to investors, he's great, right? 25:30 Like, he's, he's, he's doing his job and he, and he's doing it two years into it, and he's still fresh to it, a- and with this lo- with two large clouds hanging over his head. 25:39 One, the pandemic, the macroeconomic reality that we're in right now, the negative PR, like, uh, like the constant, constant, you know, bad luck headlines that kind of keep coming in. 25:50 And on the other hand, the other, the other cloud that hangs over him is Bob Iger, right? Like, I, like no matter who followed Bob Iger, it would've been extremely tough. 25:57 Whether it had been Bob Chapek or whether it had been, you know, Kevin Mayer, who oversaw Disney, was rumored to, to potentially take over for, um, Bob Iger. That's a tough act to follow. 26:06 That's the m- one of the most beloved CEOs in, in fi- in modern history. And we don't really like CEOs as a, as a group of humans. We tend to not trust them. Um, few exceptions, right? Steve Jobs, Bob Iger. 26:18 Like, there are some where you're just kinda like, "That, that's tough. That's a tough act to follow." It was a tough act for Tim Cook to follow when he kinda came into it. 26:25 And I bring those two up 'cause I think they're very similar. I think what you had with Iger and Jobs 26:31 are these creative, e- extremely charming, extremely innovative, extremely intelligent, um, visionaries who s- came into a company, or in terms of, in terms of Jobs' case, created a company, um, that really landed with this universal, 26:48 like, love from customers. Like, a love for a company and a love for its products and a love for its content that goes beyond what so many other companies can do. 26:57 And then who th- re- came in to replace them were operational wizards, right? They brought in operational people. 27:02 They brought in Tim Cook, who is genius in his own way and is, will go down as one of the best CEOs at Apple, if only because of what he's managed to do for that company in terms of profitability, um, and, and his understanding that he needed to pivot away from hardware at a point where he needed to pivot away. 27:17 And you go look at someone like Chapek, and Chapek's kind of pushing Disney into this forefront of whatever metaverse future it is, the streaming future, the, the online internet future, uh, all that, all that. 27:28 It's a really difficult job to do, and on the business side, he's handling it well. 27:33 I think he needs to figure out, he needs a team around him who can help him figure out how to do the public aspects of being a CEO, which are also equally important. 27:41 The talent relationships, the deputy relationships, like those are all also extremely important, and how to navigate controversies as they come up 'cause they will over and over and over again. 27:49 Um, but my, my thought on it really is Chapek hasn't done anything that severe that should warrant him not being in the position from a business perspective. And, uh, the last thing I'll say on this 28:04 is that they renewed his contract for three years, and I doubt that they're gonna fire him a year into it. 28:08 But, you know, Peter Rice, who was the head of te- of, of, of TV programming for Disney, signed a contract and then like seven, eight months later was fired. 28:16 Like, the, the, people in Hollywood sign contracts all the time only to be ousted like a year later. So I wouldn't, you know, don't be too surprised if in, you know, a year and a half Chapek is, is out the door. 28:26 But again, I think people need to separate the very public aspect of stuff that is happening with Chapek, which is absolutely a concern, and, and Disney, and I hope the board is talking to him about it and I hope he's trying to figure that out. 28:36 I'm sure he is. And then the business side, which is his main job as a CEO, is to provide shareholder value, and he's, he's continued to do that quarter after quarter. 28:46 Yeah, and I feel like there's, love to get your take, but there's so much low-hanging fruit. I mean, in the last year, you know, my family watched, I wa- ton of Disney+. Uh, we went to the Hawaii resort. 28:56 I went to Disneyland, you know, a couple months ago, and they're all three, like, totally disconnected experiences, right? 29:03 Where, I mean, yeah, the, the central brand tied them together, but from a data and bundle perspective, they weren't really connected at all, and I think they're just in such a, an amazing position to tie these pieces together. 29:16 Yeah, and there's no question that that is what's gonna happen. I mean, w- when they launched Disney+, I mean, this was still Iger. 29:22 Uh, but when they launched Disney+, the whole idea of it was that, you know, you'd get a Disney+ thing and that bundle would help you get a discount on Disney Parks, or you'd use your Disney Parks thing, and then you could go on, onto Disney Wish, which is their new cruise liner, or you could use your theatrical to, like, get a discount on Disney+ if you bought on, an early ticket to Thor or something. 29:41 Like, all of that is going to happen, and especially as we get into the future, like within, where gaming becomes even more important to Disney than it already is. 29:47 You know, I think that's the biggest question with Disney is under Chapek, who's much more-... operational than I would argue Iger was. Um, and he's kind of much more, 29:59 you know, tech-focused, although I think Iger was toward the end of his tenure, and I think if Iger was in now, he would also be extremely tech-focused. 30:05 His, his investments outside of Disney are, are very tech-focused, so I don't, I don't doubt that he would be at the forefront of it as well. 30:11 But it's this question about, you know, do you go back to trying to own games and making games, right? That was the biggest failure under Iger, was, was video games. 30:18 It was like they couldn't figure out how to make, publish, and distribute video games in a way successfully, and so they, they stopped, right? 30:25 They licensed, they partnered with EA, they partnered with Epic, they partnered all these other different and really great games makers with Lego, who can say like, "We're gonna make the game and we will publish it and that's our end. 30:35 You just, you know, we'll pay for the rights to Kylo Ren or we'll pay for the rights to Captain America," or whatever it might be. But the end goal for Disney is always to have everything user connected. 30:43 It is this idea of like you will live in this world where there's almost like a Disney currency and, and that Disney currency becomes part of your da- almost weekly currency or your daily currency or monthly currency. 30:53 And that data that gets shared even more in an interconnected way helps them make even better, you know, um, business de- development decisions. 31:02 And, and not necessarily programming decisions, but distribution decisions and, and all of that that helps Disney, you know, scale again at a, a, a, in, in its next kind of, of iteration of the company. 31:13 But I think there are a lot of things that have to happen first. 31:18 I, the, the, the term I use a lot, um, I, I have a, a, a different podcast that I co-host, and, and the term I use a lot when we talk about why don't these companies do certain things yet, is that I think a lot of them are still very much in triage mode. 31:30 They're still very much in like does the streaming service work if you're HBO Max? Like d- uh, does it, is it actually functional? Cool. Once we figure that out, we can get to the next question. 31:39 I think if you're Disney, you know, there's triage mode across theatrical. There's, there's triage mode across the, the personnel. There's, there's triage mode with streaming. 31:47 You know, how do, w- how do we ensure that this is like the best quality that we can make this, this product and that it makes people want to in- you know, what's our, what's our counter-programming strategy? 31:56 What's our, our distribution strategy? 31:58 Like all of those things are much more important than, okay, like, or not, I won't say much more important, I take that back, but are just as important as the interconnectivity of all the different, of all the different Disney products. 32:09 And so they will get there, and it will happen. Like th- you'll see things roll out and then they'll start interconnecting it, and that's always been the goal. 32:17 Um, you know, Disney+ was to own that relationship with customers. 32:20 It was to own and make revenue, uh, off their own content rather than like g- making revenue off of selling their content or licensing their content to others. 32:28 Um, and, and it, and it's to connect all of their different verticals in a way that is set, that is centered on data, right? On, on user information. 32:37 So I think we'll see that happen in the next year, if not sooner, but I, I still think that company is very much in triage mode, like every other company i- is right now. 32:49 All right, last Disney question, and, uh, I think I, I hit the home run and got my, uh, my nine-year-old daughter is obsessed with Star Wars, so no spoilers. Nice. 32:57 Uh, so we haven't watched the finale yet while she's been at camp, but Obi-Wan a win, uh, for St- for, uh, Disney? That's a good question. No spoilers. Um, is Obi-Wan a win for Disney? 33:09 I mean, in terms of like engagement, yes. Like straight up, yeah. Like they, there's a lot of people who tuned into Obi-Wan. There is, it was mostly positive sentiment across the board. 33:21 Um, it, it, you know, brought back beloved characters. 33:24 It kind of gave, I think, fans of the original prequels, uh, the ability to kind of reconnect with these characters that they didn't think they would maybe ever see again in live action, and they was able, and they were able to do it from the comfort of their home week after week. 33:36 So in terms of that, win. The larger overarching question about Obi-Wan belongs to this umbrella of questions about what is Star Wars at this point? And I think my con- criticism of Star Wars has always been 33:53 it is the largest sandbox in the entertainment sphere. It, it, there's so much you can do with Star Wars, and for some reason, 34:02 under the current guidance of Lucasfilm's creative, creative teams, they are tethered to the Skywalkers and they are tethered to Tatooine, and they are tethered to this like conservative approach to the franchise. 34:17 And I think what Star Wars really needs, which unfortunately on Disney+ it won't have a chance to do because it's such a foundational source of why people subscribe to that streaming service, is what they're doing on the film side, which is take a few years and like really figure out what is the next generation of Star Wars beyond these characters that, and, and, and these, and these very specific, specific planets that we're trying to reiterate generation after generation after generation as still having the same kind of hold that they once did. 34:45 And you know, when I was growing up, I was, I remember being four or five and, and, uh, you know, in the '90s and my dad showed me, uh, Episode IV. 34:54 Like we watched New Hope and then we watched Empire and then we watched, um, uh, oh my God, why am I forgetting? Episode VI. But Episode VI, um, Return of the Jedi. 35:04 I remember watching those and being like, "Oh, these are cool." Like I, I liked them as a kid, but I didn't, wasn't in love with them, and then Episode I, II, III came out. 35:11 I was the right age for it, and I was like, "Oh, this is my Star Wars." Like this is the Star Wars that I love. And then The Clone Wars, the animated series, was really what made me fall in love with Star Wars. 35:19 And then you have the new generation who kind of come in and they're like, "Rey's my character, Finn's my character, Poe and Kylo," and, and that's great, but all of it continuously ties back to the Skywalkers. 35:28 And so you're kind of like, "Okay, well I'm gonna watch the older movies," but I think for a lot of kids today, those older movies do not hold up for them that, the way the new ones do. 35:35 They, they're just used to a very high caliber level of like visual effects and, and what's happening, and, and it's hard I think for younger kids to, to sometimes sit through those movies. 35:44 Not e- not all the time, but sometimes. And I think for, with Star Wars, you know, what is successful for Star Wars, what is... 35:51 I, I have a list of criteria for a successful franchise development- That I came up with, uh, uh, for, for a few of our clients. 35:58 And the thing about Star Wars is how do you move it into the next generation without necessarily having to tie it back constantly to the first generation, and how do you do this within different mediums and within different genres, so that way you create different entry points for people to come into and then explore within it themselves. 36:12 So I think for Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan, I enjoyed Obi-Wan, but, like, my question was really, what is the goal of this show? 'Cause i- is the goal of the show to expand the Star Wars user base? 36:27 It's not necessarily gonna do that. It's not gonna... You really are p- you're gonna attract fans who are very much into the f- the f- the prequels. Is this show gonna lead to a massive jump in subscribers? 36:36 Probably not, because people who are coming in to watch Disney+ for Star Wars already have Disney+. Is this show gonna retain customers? Probably. Like, it's probably a great retention play. 36:45 Like, oh, I, you know, I w- I was gonna cancel, but now I wanna watch Obi-Wan and, and Anakin kind of fight again or whatever it might be. 36:52 Um, and so I think strategically the question about Star Wars is, like, what is its primary goal on Disney+ at this point, and then creatively, what is its primary goal for this new generation? 37:02 The, the generation now that came up, that actually came up after, uh, Episode VII, VIII, IX. 37:07 Like, this generation now, like, how do you make Star Wars appeal to them in a way that doesn't tie back to Luke and Leia and Han, um, and in a way that takes advantage of all the different types of mediums and genres and technological capabilities? 37:19 And I think that's where Obi-Wan really failed for me, and I think that is the ultimate question I have about Star Wars. And so, you know, for Disney, it's a win in terms of, like, what it, it was engaged with. 37:32 People, like, they... I'm sure it retained subscribers. 37:35 I'm sure there's, they saw a little, little bump in subscribers for it, people who may have canceled or people who finally signed up for it, um, whatever it might be. 37:43 But, you know, is it a win for what the, for, for their strategy, you know, for the next t- decade? 37:50 I don't know what else it did for, for S- for Lucasfilm and for Disney+ other than give them something to put on Disney+ for, for four or five weeks that could compete with, you know, Netflix and HBO Max and the others. 38:01 So I don't know. I think for me it won for the moment, but it did not win the race. All right, uh, shifting gears, we got one more content question. Uh, and I saw 38:15 that, uh, Parrot put out a kind of ranking of reality and kind of unscripted shows. Mm-hmm. And we were talking earlier about discovery, and, and something I've been thinking a lot about is that the intersection of 38:28 unscripted shows and/or unscripted reality shows really punch above their weight when you kind of factor in the share of viewership versus the overall cost to produce. Um, is that kinda the right way to look at it? Yeah. 38:41 I mean, so I think unscripted is... Well, here's a great example for unscripted and what the power of unscripted can do for a lot of these, these services. 38:51 So unscripted, uh, as you know, Michael, I know, um, very cheap to produce compared to live action drama, live action comedy, uh, that are scripted. Unscripted is much, much cheaper. 39:01 The total adjustable market for unscripted tends to be much larger, just because you can do 10,000 different things within unscripted. 39:09 You can have a fishing show, you can have a house building show, you can have a cooking competition show, a singing show. You can have, you know, dating reality shows. 39:18 It, it's just a huge market that, with what you can do in that space. 39:22 But what's even better about unscripted, for, in my opinion, is that if we look at what Netflix is doing with Squid Game, it is an easy way to capitalize on a, on a potential franchise and expand it past its original audience without necessarily, um, harming the first part, because it's so different. 39:42 So Netflix puts out Squid Game, one of, you know, one of their biggest shows of all time, if not their biggest show of all time, I think still. Uh, it's a huge success for them critically. 39:51 It's, like, opened up the doors for people to watch South Korean content. Like, it's a massive win. Netflix now has this opportunity to create a franchise. 39:57 In order to create a franchise, you cannot have that much time in between installments. Like, you gotta kind of keep people's attention. The demand is... The attention is very short. 40:05 Demand is even smaller when we think about the over, the, the oversaturation of supply. Demand is even smaller, so you have to, you have to keep on them. 40:12 We know that they're in, that there's, that they've renewed, um, Squid Game for season two, but that's not gonna land till next year earliest, if not 2024, right? 40:21 That's a long time for people to go and find something else to get obsessed over. So by the time Squid Game comes back, they're like, "Yeah, I'm gonna watch it, but I don't know if I'm gonna necessarily be into it." 40:28 So Netflix goes, "Okay, what if we do a reality show that is, you know, yes, like, quintessentially ironic because of the whole purpose, the whole concept of the original show's message, but we'll do a reality show where they can win $4.3 million, which is one of the largest prize pools in reality show history, and they're gonna reenact the, the, the, the games they are, they had to do, the challenges they had to do on the show." 40:50 It's an easy win. That's an easy... 40:52 People will want to tune into it, and people who weren't into Squid Game but may, but like the idea of this type of competition reality show are gonna tune into it, and then they might go on to the original Squid Game. 41:01 So that's one aspect of unscripted, where unscripted really acts as a core way to build upon the audiences you have in your other genres and keep them engaged as you build out the franchise, and they take less time to film, less time to edit. 41:13 They take less time to produce, and they're cheaper, so it's, it's a really great revenue play. On the other side of it, though, to your point about discovery, 41:23 it, uh, th- when we think about all these companies, or not all these companies, but if we think about the top three or four trying to build four quadrant services where you've got, um, male, female, above 25, um, below 25, unscripted appeals to almost all four of those demographics. 41:37 It's, like, different unscripted programming. 41:39 But in order to really ensure that you kind of have enough su- supplementary content on top of the prestige dramas and the, and the, the big comedies that you're gonna do, and the, whatever else might be, you know, the sci-fi and the fantasy stuff that's costing you $120 million a season, the unscripted stuff is what is gonna get, keep them, is what's gonna get them to stay. 41:58 They're gonna come in, they're gonna watch "House of the Dragon," they're gonna come in, they're gonna watch, uh, "The Dropout," whatever it might be. They're gonna come in and they're gonna watch, uh, uh, Obi-Wan. 42:08 Those things are finished within the span of four weeks or the span of eight weeks, or they're finished within the span of a weekend if you're on Netflix, or if you're on Amazon, it's a binge drop. 42:17 What is then keeping them there? What is the incentive to get them to open the app every single day otherwise? It's not necessarily gonna be another big premium show. 42:23 It might be, but what is gonna get them to open up are two things. One is library programming, which is Friends, it's Seinfeld, it's The Office. It is... You know, that's why they have extremely low decay rate. 42:32 Decay rate just refers to as the, the, uh, the shortening or the lessening of demand in between a show's season. 42:40 So what, you know, you end up losing viewers or you end up losing demand as a show is off-season, that just makes sense. What is the decay rate? 42:47 Sitcoms tend to have much lower decay rate because they, people come back to. Think of New Girl, people come back to all the time. The other thing is unscripted programming. 42:54 It is reality, it is competition, and people will come back to that and they watch it over and over and over again, or they start it, or they, or they're, they're, they're involved in it. 43:01 There's worlds like The Real Housewives and they're gonna do all eight or nine different seas- series. They're gonna do all the seasons. 43:08 It's a great way to retain your customer's interest and engage with them for a fraction of the cost that you're gonna do on the premium drama and scripted comedy side. And so that's why we're seeing a lot more of it. 43:18 If, if it wasn't working, pe- the companies wouldn't do it. 43:22 But it con- continuously works, and it will continue to work going forward because they're, it, the total addressable market for unscripted, I would argue, is much larger globally than the total avail- uh, addressable market for, like, scripted series genre by genre. 43:40 Yeah. I feel like, uh, you know, remember back to the, you know, first time I saw Survivor, and it was like, kinda dating myself here, but it was, uh, 43:50 so different, and then I looked up, like, a year later and it seemed like every show on broadcast TV was reality, 43:57 uh, 'cause they figured out, like, the low cost and feel like it's almost happening in streaming now to, to a certain extent. I mean, do you see a, a limit t- to that or is everyone gonna go, that's like the, 44:09 the shortest hit for the least amount of content spend and we're gonna almost see like an overcorrection that way? That's a great question. 44:16 Uh, I think if you had asked me this question a year and a half ago, I would've had a different answer. Advertising changes everything, right? If we think about why pr- I, I had someone ask me this question. 44:27 They said, "Why haven't we gotten, like, a Law & Order on Netflix?" 44:31 It's like, why isn't there a show that's running for like 14 seasons that creates three other Law & Order spinoffs that runs for like 14 seasons, like whatever it might be. 44:38 And I said, "Well, if you think about the economics of linear television, what did a show have to do?" 44:43 A show had to bring in viewers, and they had to bring in enough viewers that they had a decent rating that the advertisers liked, and then the advertisers went, "We'll be in the 8:00 spot. We'll be in the 9:00 spot. 44:52 We wanna be on this show specifically. We really like it." So then you get shows that can run, you know, five, six, seven seasons, then they get syndicated and there's additional revenue in at that point. 45:01 It's like paying for itself. Uh, and so you have these shows that run forever because it's like the advertising and the syndication model allow the economics of those types of shows to really flourish. 45:12 Now, not all of them, of course. We all remember pilot season or if people are too young to remember, pilot [chuckles] season was a thing where networks ordered f- 40 shows and they ax like 35 of them. 45:22 Uh, you know, this idea of like we're gonna put out an episode was w- and that was like an insanely bad system. It just never made any sense. But 45:30 the shows that could thrive when they came out could run for quite a few seasons, and think about what the CW did, right? 45:36 On the CW you could have shows that ran for eight seasons even if the viewership was not necessarily that high because they had some advertising and they could sell to international markets, and like that paid for it and they were just happy to keep it going 'cause there was demand for it, so they just, they just kept doing it. 45:49 Those economic models never made sense for Netflix because for Netflix, the question is efficiency, not like advertising and not therefore, like not necessarily just viewership. 46:00 The question is, okay, this show brought in a million viewers. Great. How many of those customers, 30 days later, canceled their streaming, th- the- canceled their Netflix account? 46:11 How many of those customers instead w- watched a different, this is called a referral value, watched another Netflix original? Okay, what about those customers who watched a licensed, uh, original that, that Netflix has? 46:22 How many of those customers watched 50% of a show, 40% of a show, or 80% of a show? And then how many of those customers are within a certain demographic that Netflix considers, you know, high risk or high reward? 46:33 All of those equal an efficiency point, and the efficiency point is really what generates Netflix's idea of, okay, this is very valuable to us, or this is something that we don't necessarily wanna continue investing in. 46:44 And because we don't have advertisers saying, "Actually, I'm specifically trying to target, um, young men or, or, or you know, like older men over the age of 50," 46:54 for Netflix there's no reason to say, "Okay, well, let's do another season 'cause, you know, this advertiser wants to be here and they're committed to putting their ads on it," or whatever it might be, uh, and we can just see how it goes and we can see if we can generate it. 47:04 Now, as advertising comes in and as Netflix can increase its ARPU without, um, price increases, as Netflix can start running ads before shows, which is what I assume was gonna happen, they'll just do pre-roll 'cause I can't see them splicing their shows up, especially their originals. 47:19 Um, but as they start running these pre-roll, now there's additional revenue opportunity to say, why don't we let a show run for three or four seasons? Why don't we just see, like there's somewhat of an audience here. 47:30 For, we talked to advertisers, they're into it. 47:32 We think there's really great sentiment, and although it's not hitting the same efficiency point as a new show might, we wanna see if we can build up our library because we're losing all of our long-running shows as, as Paramount, as NBC Universal, as Disney, as, um, Warner, as Warner Brothers Discovery starts pulling them back off our platform to put on their platforms. 47:51 Like if you ever look at like Nielsen numbers sometimes for what are the most watched shows on Netflix, you know, and of course Nielsen is skewed because a show with 300 episodes is naturally probably gonna have a higher minutes watched than a show with 10 episodes. 48:03 It does not actually translate to the value of those shows to the platform. But you know, it's always like Grey's Anatomy and NCIS, and these are shows that people come back to. 48:11 They, they go, I c- I come back to Grey's Anatomy like once a year and it's like, I'm just gonna re-watch Grey's Anatomy. 48:16 And so- Uh, th- th- and, and part of that reason is 'cause it's like 15 seasons, I can put it on, it's like my new sleep show. 48:22 It's like, it's gonna take me a year and a half to complete or whatever it might be, uh, and then, uh, I, I can move on to something else, but I want, I really wanna have one of those long-running shows. 48:28 And Netflix doesn't have any, 'cause for the longest time, Netflix's efficiency metric never made sense for a lot of these shows to run eight, nine seasons. 48:35 Now, with advertising, the idea of series that couldn't exist on Netflix or, or a streaming service without ads like Netflix, versus a type of series that can possibly thrive, I think means we'll start to see a lot of different shows that we thought didn't make sense on these streaming services really start to potentially make sense. 48:54 And of course, that theory could be wrong. 48:57 Uh, it could be that they try to do their own crime procedural in the Netflix way, and people aren't interested 'cause they've got Law & Order on Peacock and Hulu, and they're happy with that. 49:05 But I think there's more room to experiment without this, like, really stagnant fear of our efficiency metric for this title is plummeting, and therefore economically does not make sense for us to keep it going. 49:20 Interesting. Well, uh, I could talk to you for hours here, but I'm gonna, uh, be cognizant of the time here. One quick question to wrap up. 49:30 Looking ahead one year from now, what is something that to you will be different and is fairly obvious, um, that most people are missing? That's a good question. I think, 49:49 hmm, it's fairly, I don't, I don't think it's fairly obvious, or, or I won't say, I don't know if it's ma- thing that people are, are necessarily missing, but the consolidation will continue at a rapid pace. 50:01 And I know that feels funny to say now because, um, the economy is, is not great, but a bad economy makes a really great investment for smart buyers with cash. 50:12 It's, it's actually a, a prime time to buy if you have the ability to do so. And the thing that a lot of these entertainment companies need in order to scale is ownership of other libraries. It's ownership of other IP. 50:25 It's ownership of competitors that they just don't necessarily think they can compete with otherwise. 50:31 That, you know, a, a merger of equals or, or an acquisition can help them compete in global markets as well as the US market. And so, like a company like, uh, you know, there's, there's a few companies. 50:44 I don't really wanna put them out there, um, in part 'cause I don't know if any of them are clients, and so I don't want to, to get in trouble. But there are a few, there are a few companies who are ripe 50:56 f- to see potential mergers and acquisitions happen, um, and not in a bad way. 51:00 I think there's a really negative connotation with M&A that happens 'cause it feels, you know, like big whale eating small fish, or it can feel like that. And I, I think 51:11 I am of two minds, which is, on the one hand, consolidation creating power players in w- a market is not great. Um, it's, it's, it's inherently not great. Uh, it's why we have antitrust laws. 51:27 But on the other hand, I think the streaming space has almost been monopolized by Netflix for so long that in order to create a stronger competitive market requires a little bit more consolidation amongst the, the, the larger players. 51:43 The niche players are kind of playing out the way that they're gonna play out, but I think if we can have some stronger competition at the top, then you really get into this idea of, of a, of a competitive market work with competitive products and competitive pricing that will make the, again, colloquial, quote unquote, "streaming wars" much more interesting. 52:02 You know, when Netflix really started to falter in demand in subscribers, there was this analyst who said, "The streaming wars are over," and I said, "What an odd thing to say. 52:11 That's just proof that the market is, is doing what the market does. The streaming wars have just begun." The, if, if Netflix is being, is bitten into- Yeah... that's exactly what is happening. 52:19 And so I think we'll continue to see more consolidation. 52:22 I think there are three or four companies that are ripe for it in the next year, year and a half, especially as the economic turmoil continues, and especially as their earnings may not be as favorable, and therefore their valuation will, will, will drop a little bit more. 52:36 Um, and I think that will be exciting to see happen and, and, you know, terrifying all at once. Consolidation is both exciting and terrifying all in, all in one breath. 52:43 But yeah, that would be my thing is, is I would be shocked if we didn't see much more big consolidation happening. Not Warner Brothers Discovery big, you know. 52:52 I don't think, I don't think there's many companies left to do it at that size, but notable consolidation that really changes the power economics of, of the streaming space. Excellent. 53:03 Well, this has been a, a fantastic conversation. I am, uh, grateful for your time. Thank you so much for having me. [upbeat music] Thank you for joining us on this episode of Screen Wars. 53:13 I hope you enjoyed the discussion. You can find out more about CrossScreen Media at crossscreenmedia.com. Please don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, State of the Screens. 53:23 You can find us on social media @crossscreenmedia. Join us next time for more insights and analysis straight from the experts.
