“Netflix reportedly planning to start releasing episodes weekly”: https://bit.ly/3Rzz2hf

This is how the music business got in trouble, by ignoring its customers in search of an ever-growing bottom line.

This all comes down to customers, right? Isn’t that why Netflix is pivoting across the board?

Maybe you’re not paying attention to streaming, but it’s a very dark path these companies are going down. Producing less content for more money as they add ads and come to resemble the TV networks of yore, while charging more. Never mind that the old TV networks were, and still are, FREE!

I mean you want to serve ads and charge me too? Make me feel like a second class citizen?

It’s one thing if you’re Spotify, incentivizing freeloaders to up to full carriage, full payment. And it works. You see the free tier is hobbled. No one who actually wants to listen to music enjoys it. And no one who watches TV likes the ads, even though they’re sometimes superior to the dreck the networks purvey.

So I used to be a member of an elite club at Netflix, that’s how it felt, no matter how many subscribers the service had. It was all about me. They were making highbrow content, more and better than HBO. And their algorithm was based on my habits. I paid for the privilege, but that’s fine, the same way you pay for Louis Vuitton or Tiffany or Rolex or even Apple!

Come on, Apple’s products are premium priced, but millions of people have them. Still, owners feel good about them, it’s a badge of honor.

So now the tail is wagging the dog. Investors are running these companies.

Let’s start with Warner Music. Which Time Warner blew out for $2.6 billion in 2004. Right now the record company is worth $14.05 billion, and the asset is still intact! With that catalog of the greatest hits of the rock era, it’s going to pay dividends forever! And students of the game know that recorded music revenues are only going to go up, because there are so many avenues of exploitation, never mind oldies having value they no longer did in a sales model, you get paid when people stream old songs today!

No one dislikes streaming, other than delusional artists who don’t understand if no one is listening they do not get paid, and the enemy is not Spotify itself, which pays two-thirds of revenue to rights holders and still has trouble making a profit.

Then again, someone is always left behind in the transition from old to new. Vent windows? History in the era of universal a/c in cars.

So you get all the music for ten bucks a month. The deal of the century.

But in TV…

There’s an astronomical cable bill.

There is hope there though, because of wide-band 5G, or whatever comes after it, since wide-band 5G has such a small range. Still, T-Mobile is now selling home routers.

And then there’s the cable package, where you overpay for what you don’t want. So people drop the TV portion. But that leaves them with a huge broadband bill. But now they have a wireless alternative.

HBO was an alternative to network. And Netflix was an alternative to HBO. More content, on demand.

Now?

David Zaslav, the financial hero of the ignorant, is reducing content on HBO Max.

And Netflix has ads.

Why do you expect people to pay for this?

THEY’RE NOT!

That’s the big story in streaming, churn. People signing up for a series and then signing off. I cashiered my Apple TV+ subscription. It used to be free, but then I paid for a month and watched nothing. So I hear about an Apple TV+ show, just yesterday in fact, with good RottenTomatoes ratings, but I’m not signing back up until there are multiple shows, because Apple is a rip-off. The lowest priced with the least product. I’m off it. And it’s not about money, it’s an INSULT! I’d sign up to watch an entire show right away, but if they think I’m going to subscribe for months to watch one show they’ve got another think coming!

HBO Max is supported by its cable channel. All its numbers are obfuscatory. Very few are signing up for HBO Max directly, they have the service because they’re paying for HBO via their cable system, which is like believing in CDs. So you’ve got award-winning TV which appeals to those who don’t even know how to stream, that’s a future?

But the worst offense is you can’t get all the product for one low price.

Yup, quote me a number. I’m in. Just give all of it to me. Like with music streaming services. But TV is Balkanized, and getting worse. And who is winning?

Certainly not the creators who are giving up their residuals. Streaming TV is based on buyouts.

The streaming companies are under the misimpression that we need their product. Which is patently untrue. We can miss anything these days, because there’s more product in the pipeline, overwhelming diversions. And the dirty little secret is TikTok is better than all the streaming services, it evidences more creativity, more honesty, AND IT’S FREE!

But the oldsters pooh-pooh TikTok. They’ve never experienced it. Go down the rabbit hole, it’s addictive, it’s fulfilling, and much better than those imitation network shows produced by Netflix. Didn’t network already teach us that being all things to all people is death? And HBO illustrated that elite can have a very broad audience.

Which is what blew up Netflix, “House of Cards,” one of the best TV shows ever created. I’ve not only been a fan of Netflix since then, I’ve trumpeted the service, but no more, I’m done.

I mean I’ll watch for a while, but I’m not going to rave about Netflix itself. Because Netflix is beholden to Wall Street, not me. It’s not the renegade, it’s the establishment!

Just think about the no binge model. You go to the movies and have to come back next week to finish the film, or eight weeks in succession.

No, you see the movie all at once!

And series are the new movies, to the point where other than blockbusters like “Top Gun: Maverick” most people don’t even bother to go to the theatre anymore. To see overpriced lame pictures?

All the action has been on TV. It’s been a creator’s medium. Driven by talent instead of suits.

But now that has changed, the purse-strings have been tightened, the bottom line is key, and you’ve got programmers no different from Fred Silverman trying to divine what will appeal to the most people…JUST LIKE NETWORK TV!

One of the absolute most fulfilling things I do in my life is binge television. Just finished “Salamander,” twenty two episodes.

As for “Ted Lasso”… I didn’t even bother to watch the second season, I couldn’t do it one episode a week and when it was all over so was the buzz so what difference does it make? And I don’t care what you say, it’s a good show, but it’s not “House of Cards,” never mind “The Godfather.”

The path to glory is always paved with premium product. We learned this in the heyday of the music business, and in the seventies heyday of movies. These endeavors drive the culture. They draw attention, and grow as a result. When you put the bottom line first… Isn’t that how Warner Bros. Records grew in the first place? You wanted to be on the label with not only Neil Young, but Ry Cooder, you believed the execs cared about you. I used to believe that Reed Hastings cared about me, BUT NO MORE!

It’s one thing if you’ve got an absolute monopoly, but when people feel ripped-off, they’re just waiting for a way around it, maybe paying nothing at all. This was the story of Napster, and BitTorrent.

Spotify killed piracy, getting rid of the binge model is incentivizing BitTorrent!

And killing conversation.

There’s this illusion that we stand around the water cooler and discuss shows the night after when…WE DON’T EVEN WANT TO GO TO WORK TO BEGIN WITH!

I’ve missed almost every recent HBO show, even “Succession,” because I can’t wait for the week to week drip and then I end up too far behind to catch up and it’s just a TV show anyway.

And I’m the bleeding edge.

I remember all the hogwash in the music business two decades ago. They’d do these surveys asking kids what music was worth, and they’d quote these high prices and steal anyway.

Entertainment is run by the gut, not by the spreadsheet. You can’t make revenues regular. This is what’s killing Detroit, selling overloaded SUVs and being annihilated by Tesla with electrics. Detroit felt it was giving people what they wanted, maybe, but they were unconcerned with what people were going to want, the changes!

Talk to car buyers, all they can talk about is electric. Saying they don’t plan to buy another gasoline car. Forget those who buy used, focus on the middle class and up, who can afford new automobiles. If you think otherwise, you’re delusional. There’s no future in being stuck in the past, change happens.

Just like the older generations will be replaced by the new. Young kids don’t have televisions, never mind cable subscriptions. And they borrow their parents’ streaming logins. They don’t need Netflix, they don’t need ANY streaming service, which is why you have to make it more enticing to them, you’ve got to give them a reason to pay attention. Which is always left field programming, like “Squid Game.” They’ll sign up for that, but not twelve months for twelve episodes, no way, it’s a bad business proposition.

In the digital world, in the internet world, you give the people what they want or you die.

It’s kind of like the new Apple Watch Ultra…SIXTY HOURS OF BATTERY LIFE!

Yes, Apple keeps talking about sleep-tracking, but how can you do this if you need to charge the damn watch. But with sixty hours…

It makes the Apple Watch usable. I’m thinking of caving, I don’t even care that it’s eight hundred bucks, it’s what I WANT!

That’s what it all comes down to, does your customer base WANT your product.

Don’t delude yourself into thinking people need your product, people need food and shelter, not much more, they can ultimately do without all else, except maybe sex.

You must make the customer paramount.

And the people saying they like week by week drips are the same people who love CDs and don’t trust Spotify. In other words, LUDDITES!

Give me all the options.

Smartphones deliver more and more customization. Netflix wants to take away rights I already have. Show me where that works in today’s world, I can’t think of a simple example.

TikTok has already disrupted Facebook, even Instagram, which everybody thought was impossible. Facebook focused on the bottom line and missed the trends and the only people left were the late adopters, the oldsters.

Don’t think visual entertainment cannot be disrupted.

Today you innovate or you die, you serve the people or you go extinct.

We can do without anything, we can do without YOU Netflix!

Jeff Hanna has been in every iteration of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, from “Mr. Bojangles” to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” to “Fishin’ in the Dark” to their just released album “Dirt Does Dylan.” We discuss all of these eras!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jeff-hanna/id1316200737?i=1000578810804

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/978388ed-2006-4111-88d2-4f3f02cc2202/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-jeff-hanna

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/jeff-hanna-206541115

You attack when you’re winning, and right now the tide has turned in favor of the Democrats.

The biggest winner last night? Social media scribe Taylor Lorenz, who Tucker Carlson called out as one of Joe Biden’s foremost advisors, even though there’s no evidence he’s aware of who she is: https://bit.ly/3TEJGon This is what you want, crossover news. The key is to be prominent in your field and unafraid to take a stand to the point you’re on the radar of those not in your sphere and they call you out. And forget all the B.S. entertainment press, it’s all politics, 24/7 in America today. That’s where you make your bones. The Kardashians? Making all that money? Everybody knows the odds of making that kind of cash in America today are impossibly long. So these two-dimensional “entertainers” are ignored by the tastemakers, the newsmakers, those who truly control our country. I’m not saying the young hoi polloi don’t pay attention, but they’re just in the throes of growing up, they don’t know how the world works yet. And as important as money is, the way to win is through IDEAS!

That’s how Donald Trump triumphed. It wasn’t untold spending, it was spreading a message that people agreed with, that resonated with them. And channeling their anger. Why be fair to Hillary and the Democrats when you feel like you’re off their radar, and have been abandoned financially?

Enough of this upper middle class Trump supporter B.S. They may have enough money to travel to D.C., but it’s the rank and file, those who work with their hands, who may not work at all, who supported him, as the Donald said, he loves the poorly educated!

And confronted with Trump’s ascension, what did the intelligentsia, the left wing media do? Studied the problem. Took no action. It was a college seminar taught and peopled by the out of touch, yes the coastal elites. Who really want nothing to do with THOSE PEOPLE! And believe me, THOSE PEOPLE KNOW IT!

And then along comes Joe Biden. Who went to the University of Delaware, which is known for…I CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING!

That was supposedly Joe’s ace in the hole, his ability to relate to the working man. Something leading Democrats used to specialize in until they all became billionaires and couldn’t stop saying they knew better than the rest of us. I’m pissed! Just because I’m not rich I don’t deserve a seat at the table?

Of course rich fat cats out for themselves have ruled the Republican Party forever, but now they’ve lost control of it. The tail wags the dog. People love Obamacare. They think the rich should be taxed more, as well as the corporations. And they want abortion rights.

Not everybody, of course, but the MAJORITY does. And the majority has been disillusioned for years, believing nobody is standing up for their rights. So what did they do? THEY STAYED HOME! Why bother to vote when it doesn’t make a difference.

And then came Kansas.

That was a wake-up call. Turns out Americans are pissed, and the media had no idea. But the individuals who showed up at the voting booth in the Sunflower State are sick and tired of a rigged game where their rights are trampled.

Yes, the Republicans pushed it too far. They lost touch with the public at large. People don’t only want abortion rights, they want gun control too. Meanwhile, the Republicans keep trampling on their desires and… Yes, it keeps getting worse, to the point, once again, that you don’t vote.

And what do the Democrats do? They buy the right wing canard that Biden, the entire party, is beholden to far left extremists. Yes, they attack their own! What kind of bizarre world do we live in where the supposed party of the people attacks their number one spokesperson to the youth? I’m talking about AOC, young people can relate to her. Graduating from college, working in a bar. As for all the cries that she’s too outspoken, these are from the same people who say the Millennials are entitled and Gen-Z is even worse! They won’t even come into the office, goddammit! And they don’t want to work eighty hours a week, they want to be treated like human beings, and you’re pissing on them? You need to embrace them! They’re making new people every day. The youth are our future. And there are more youthful political leaders on the right than the left. There’s not much of a Democratic bench. And the boomers who control the Democratic Party like it this way, which is a recipe for death!

So for years, the right has been bullying the left. And what has been the response of the left? TO COWER! They’re afraid of pissing the right off, they might get hit harder. I mean didn’t anybody on the left go to public school? YOU STAND UP TO BULLIES!

Which is exactly what Joe Biden did last night.

I used to respond to the hatred in my inbox. Stuff you wouldn’t let your wife read, never mind your mother. And when I hit back, they always cried! Why’d you do that man, why’d you hurt me? You didn’t have to do that. I mean I’m here struggling…

Yeah, so why did you send such heinous e-mail?

People love to hide behind anonymity, but you can only build your reputation if you own your actions, with your real name.

Which is what Democrats have been afraid to do. They’ll say almost nothing worthwhile that can be attributed to them. Schumer? He keeps saying his hands are tied. This guy would have been pulled from the game in Little League. Let him carry the water, be the ball boy, but this guy can’t PLAY!

And then Joe Biden played last night. And what did his minions say and do? ALMOST NOTHING! Check not only the news, but social media. The Republicans are out in force, the Democrats…are silent.

I mean this is what we’ve been looking for for decades. Enough with the Obama love, its akin to the Reagan adulation, I mean what did each actually do? Yes, we give Obama healthcare, and Reagan…Communism was gonna fall anyway. Meanwhile, Joe Biden pulls out a legislative win, albeit late and not as big as it should have been. And then he eliminates college debt. The right can take big actions, throw the long ball, but not the left? Bottom line, almost all the recipients are poor, many people of color. After all, if they’d had the money THEY WOULDNT HAVE ANY DEBT! The right is up in arms, but the compassionate left, which needs to be emboldened, is all for it. Climbing the societal ladder is too difficult, people need help. As for the selfish… Is this how far we’ve come, we’ve got to worry about the selfish, that’s a respectable constituency, in a world where Jackson, Mississippi has no running water?

So Biden lays it out there and what does the right do? SQUIRM, say it’s unfair! How dare you piss on them! As if they haven’t been pissing on the rest of us for years. It’s not like these elected officials and commentators had anything positive to say, proposals for legislation, a future roadmap… Biden was right, they all want to go back to a past that didn’t exist in the first place!

As for all the bloviators on the right… Let them rant and rave, it’s just preaching to an echo chamber that will never ever vote Democratic anyway. And there are more Democrats than Republicans which is why the Republicans have been on a scorched-earth campaign to eliminate voting rights, because in a fair election, THEY’RE AFRAID THEY’LL LOSE!

That’s another thing that’s pissed off the majority. Making it harder to vote and making their vote not count. They’re angry. But have felt powerless!

And then, for the first time in eons, the leader of the teetering free world, the Democratic President of the United States, stands up and speaks truth and gives people HOPE!

That’s what it’s all about folks. With hope you’re inspired. We’ve been waiting for Mr. Smith to come to Washington and last night he did. He called out the corruption, the falsehoods, the crap that we the people have been enduring for far too long!

DOUBLE DOWN! That’s my message to the Democrats. Push the button!

The other big social media story is the castration of CNN. Enough with the Zaslav love. Letting John Malone control the news is like letting a pedophile babysit. Somehow CNN and MSNBC are biased and Fox is not? And enough with this two-sideism. That’s like having the robber spouting his justification to the robbed. THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION!

This could be a turning point, if the Democratic Party would just follow their leader, and ramp up and take action. You can’t win a war without soldiers. How come the right knows this and the left does not?

As for the right’s blowback… DON’T YOU GET IT, MOST PEOPLE DON’T EVEN SEE IT!

And when the right blows back you know you’ve won. Because the truth gets exposure in their camp. This is what happens when you make the news and the others do not. That’s the biggest problem in our country, the inability to reach and inform everybody. And the only person who can do so is the president. Trump understood this, and now Biden does too!

It all comes down to the ballot box. The media and the pollsters have been wrong time and again. Because their procedures don’t fit the modern paradigm. I’ve been getting endless texts asking me to weigh in with my political opinions. What do I do with them? I BLOCK THE NUMBERS! I ain’t got time for that crap, I ain’t got time for anything that doesn’t move the ball forward, and these polls do not.

And when you use a crisis to beg for money… Can’t you ask anything else of me, than to give money to a campaign for someone who is probably rich to begin with? It’s not about money, it’s about hearts and minds, that’s how Bernie Sanders did so well in the last two presidential election cycles. Turns out there is more money in small donors than big. People felt Bernie was standing up for THEM, meanwhile these poseurs texting and calling me for money are faceless twats trying to build a career while many of us are home struggling with few options other than a minimum wage job as a service person.

Oh, things are bad in America. Everybody believes the game is rigged, they’re just looking for an edge, or completely deflated. The right is just angry Joe Biden gave the majority of America hope.

Hell, you should see my inbox. Uninformed hate. A constant forwarding of articles supporting their right wing extremism when a simple Google will tell you these sites are biased without credibility.

And then there are those who resort to epithets.

I’ve learned to grow a thick skin, that’s what we all need to do. Joe Biden has shown us the way. You’ve got to wake up at some point, you’ve got to fight for your right to do more than party. And we’ve got them on the run anyway. This Mar-a-Lago search and rescue… The more that comes out, the worse Trump looks. You can tell this by the fact that the right has stopped talking about it!

We’re all sick and tired of the bullies. God, Lindsey Graham and the rest of the wankers who went from Trump-haters to Trump-supporters, they’re no different from the wimps in high school who pay fealty to the bully for protection. And when the bully finally falls, they’re ostracized. No one wants anything to do with those without a backbone, who are afraid to stand up for truth and justice for the benefit of us all.

Like I said, so far elected officials have left Biden hanging, out there alone. He needs support! As for that bogus poll saying his speech worked against him, yeah, and then there were the polls that said that Trump couldn’t win and then there’s that new theory that people tell pollsters what they want to hear, afraid of having an unpopular opinion.

Because if you take sides, like I have above, you’re thrust into the thick of it, you’re going to be attacked. But welcome to 2022. You’re attacked on social media, just grow a thicker skin. Which is why all that anti-bullying crap never works, it’s never about kumbaya, but standing up to the bullies, hitting them right in the face, it’s the only thing that works, sorry if you believe otherwise.

You’ve got to teach bullies a lesson. Otherwise they just get more intense and powerful and hit you ever harder.

And it’s always the same. it’s only the minority who support the bully.

This is war. Has been for years. It’s just that Joe Biden is saying so.

Don’t let the truth scare you, OWN IT!

Staying out of the fray never wins the war, nor does appeasement, just ask Neville Chamberlain.

If you don’t think democracy is teetering, you must be one of those people supporting authoritarianism. That’s what we want over here, right? Putin? Orban? Salman?

Better to fight now than later, it’s so much harder when you’ve lost not only ground, but the government. The right has been fighting for years, now it’s the left’s time. Give Biden credit, he stood up to the bullies, he acted as a leader, he said what we all felt, THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR!

Onward!

Mr. Island, who has a new autobiography, “The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond.”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chris-blackwell/id1316200737?i=1000578020336

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/e191c360-530d-4607-974d-7cdd475d2e49/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-chris-blackwell

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/chris-blackwell-206325994