Check the financial pages. Entertainment CEOs make as much as anybody ruling the Fortune 500, even though their companies are oftentimes worth less and generate less cash flow. There’s a self-importance factor in Hollywood…these gents, and they are mostly men, control and steer the culture! That’s a powerful position, and they believe they’re indispensable.

Except in music, in the old days anyway. Music got short shrift because it was uncontrollable and unpredictable. And dependent upon the artists. That’s one thing the Beatles and the classic rock revolution did, wrest control of the art from the suits and give it to the creators. You recorded what you wanted to, you controlled the cover art, the label just had the right to sell it and market it.

But something changed about thirty years ago, the suits and now they were wearing such, took control of the business. And there isn’t a suit alive as credible as an artist when it comes to creativity. The artist has the idea, the suit wants to mold it to his or her vision. Credit Tommy Mottola. He brilliantly squeezed out Walter Yetnikoff and made it about the highly compensated, the finely dressed, exec. Mottola looked at Charles Koppelman’s paradigm and then injected it with steroids, after all, Sony, along with Warner Brothers, had the best catalogs, the best artists in the business.

And speaking of Warner Brothers, Prince’s main complaint with the company was it wouldn’t allow him to release as much product as he wanted when he wanted. There was the issue of whether the music qualified under the deal, whether the new music would compromise exploitation of the previous release, whether the new music would be up to a platinum standard.

Turns out Prince was right. On many levels. Career artists are no longer about hits. They’re about their catalog and their relationship with their fans, and the real money is made on the road.

The music survives, Prince survived every one of those suits at Warner Brothers until he fell to fentanyl.

There are two points here. One, who is more important, the artist or the suit, and two, the music business gets no respect, even though the profits from the Warner music labels built the Warner cable system, you see music scales, once it catches fire it takes almost nothing to continue to produce and reap the rewards, especially in the era of streaming, where there is no manufacturing and shipping.

So, for this exercise, the only thing that is truly important is the suits, how they wrested power from the artists and compensated themselves heavily and made like they were the artists. The worst example is Clive Davis, who gives the impression if it weren’t for him, the music business wouldn’t exist. But the truth is he had a very small purview, unlike Mottola or Mo.

So…

Everything’s going along swimmingly in Hollywood until the internet. And when the internet came along, what did the Tinseltown titans do? Deny it, said they were entitled to control and reap the rewards of their wares, ultimately driving recorded music to half of its revenue. They could have embraced the internet sooner, but they were afraid they’d lose their compensation in the process, and nothing is as sacred as an entertainment exec’s salary, bonuses and stock grants.

But over the past twenty years something has become clear… We can debate the extent to which Hollywood controls the culture, certainly less than it ever has in the era of social media and YouTube, but one thing is for sure…Hollywood execs are paupers compared to the Silicon Valley winners, and they don’t like it.

If you’re keeping up with the Joneses, and the Hollywood elite thought they were the Joneses, you don’t want to wake up one day and find out you’re far behind.

So…

Every company established a tech fund, an incubator, investment in tech was the way to riches.

But that’s like asking a musician to play in the NBA, that’s not in their skill set.

Furthermore, Universal Music famously sold the name “Uber” for a pittance.

But not everybody is stupid in Hollywood. One of the smartest is Ari Emanuel, along with his compatriot Patrick Whitesell. They didn’t care that CAA demanded respect. They formed their own talent agency which ultimately merged with William Morris and they ended up in charge.

But it wasn’t enough.

They saw the landscape changing. They saw the big paydays in Hollywood disappearing. So what did they do?

What the tech firms did, take on money to grow and cash in, big time. Yup, everybody at the now-named WME was waiting for the day when they’d become millionaires, billionaires, just like those they envied up north.

Now the question is, was it more about disruption or envy? Changing the business model before the bottom falls out or making those billions at the top.

It started with CAA, taking on investment. Remember thirty years ago, the breakthrough was that Michael Ovitz took CAA into business advising and commercial making. Once again, it was all about advice. But now it became about assets.

Yup, if you don’t own anything, what have you got?

Well, you used to have a bunch of agents taking 10% and an occasional win in packaging. Good money, but there was less money and no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The agencies decided to go for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

And the funny thing about this was their base was rejected, the talent they represented became secondary, because it didn’t generate enough cash, it didn’t scale. So, the talent was thrown under the bus, or maybe made to sit in the back of the bus, too bad, they had no choice.

Then the writers fired their agents. Their point was clear. Whose side were the agencies on? Were they sellers or buyers? There was an inherent conflict.

But these agencies now owned assets, they convinced themselves that they were sexy, and certainly history is littered with rich outsiders wanting to get in on the entertainment game.

But, as they did twenty years ago, the entertainment execs turned out to be bad seers, poor students of the game. The startup world faded and almost dried-up. You couldn’t compete with the behemoths. Facebook and Google and Amazon…they either bought you or killed you, affecting your upside.

And the bloom was off the rose for tech investors. They were wary of burning their bucks.

But a VCs whole business is based on taking risks. So they continued to do so, someone else had to pay.

Until this year.

Lyft and Uber go public and sink. WeWork turns out to be a fabrication, there’s very little there there. And Peloton has a small customer base, they’re charging too much for the business to truly scale.

And investors realized all this. The game changed.

Endeavor waited too long to get in the game. Hubris. After all, they were desirable, they controlled the content, didn’t they always say that content was king?

Of course not, distribution is king, which is why the cable companies mint money and 5G is going to generate beaucoup bucks. The L.A. execs misplayed their hand, they were out of their depth, they talked disruption, but truly it was about money.

Yup, Clayton Christensen said that the best companies disrupted themselves. Endeavor did this. But, when you disrupt, you have to write off your old bread and butter, your old customers, go from small to mass. And the UFC is mass, but Endeavor still wanted to control the old talent, they wanted it both ways, they wanted to get rich on the backs of their old bread and butter and not pay them. That’s a recipe for disaster.

And it’s not only Endeavor, it’s CAA and UTA too. They’ve taken on these investments, and the investors want their money back.

This is not Warren Buffett, who kicks the tires and buys in for the long term, this is new money, that wants to put in a little to make a lot. And it wants to make that lot in only a few years.

So where does this leave us?

The financial press says Endeavor is hobbled forever. They’re writing the entity’s death warrant, they say if the company ever goes public, the number will be much lower. Also, they say most people have no idea what Endeavor is, what it does. The WSJ just wrote that. Which is a kick in the face to these He-Men of Hollywood. Aren’t they kings?

Turns out they’re not.

Turns out they’re amateurs playing in a sophisticated world who are used to bullying people into submission, their greatest asset is their title, they declare you must play by their rules or you’ll be excommunicated. They create the art, they’re the ones who are talented, the talent itself is just grist for the mill, it can be replaced.

But we don’t have a new Prince.

And we never got a new Beatles, never mind Bob Dylan.

The agents loss sight of their business.

And one thing is for sure, Wall Street knows its business. The Street has learned that oftentimes there’s no there there, that there’s no way to make money, and now investors are shunning those who want to go public at high valuations to reap their rewards, pay back their investors and get rich themselves.

Now these investors, these private equity companies, these VCs…this is their business, very few of their investments pan out, they just need a few to go nuclear, so they can afford the loss, not that they’re happy about it, but they won’t starve, whereas Endeavor hurt not only itself, but the whole entertainment business, now those with cash will think twice not only about investing in talent agencies, but other entities in Hollywood.

And this is kind of funny, because for decades, Hollywood screwed outside investors. They let them come to the set, they let them meet stars and they let them lose their money. There was always another mark.

But movies are no longer king. And everyone’s seen this film. They know it can all be smoke and mirrors, they want to investigate. And when Endeavor decided to go public, those with the cash thought they were being ripped-off, overcharged for very few assets, so they said no.

Saying no to Hollywood?

Welcome to the new world. One in which Billy Joel no longer even makes records, where he writes his own ticket, he said goodbye to Hollywood long ago.

And now so has Wall Street.

How do you lose a Presidency?

Very slowly, then all at once.

This is not a new story. Trump has been flirting with disaster from before his inauguration. Sure, his base loves him, but as the Donald so famously said, if he shot a person on Fifth Avenue, they wouldn’t convict him. Blind devotion.

But that’s not the entire country.

And that’s not the United States Congress.

Now if you’re a student of the game, you know that public figures do their best to never go on the record, to never commit. Even Elizabeth Warren in the last debate…they wanted to know if her health plan would raise taxes…she avoided the question. Once you own something, you’re subject to the slings and arrows. And this works in both directions. Sure, you’re afraid of your constituency, but also you’re afraid of your record.

Despite a President who verges on being a king, who has eviscerated the concept of checks and balances in government, conventional wisdom is you can’t piss off the public. Not only the Republicans believe this, but the Democrats too. The Republicans are afraid they’re going to be “primaried.” This is the downside of gerrymandering. It’s clear a Republican is going to be elected, it’s just a matter of which one, and if you move to the center, if you’re reasonable, there’s a good chance someone further right of you will challenge you and emerge victorious. So you don’t say anything that will piss off your base…until you have to go on record.

I’m not talking about going on TV. TV has lost all credibility. Trump has been the greatest thing to happen to print, now app, journalism by the usual suspects. In other words, the NYT and the WaPo have triumphed, have increased their footprint, if they thought like techies as opposed to the old wavers they are, they’d forget about profits and think about mindshare, hell, you cannot turn on cable news without a talking head, left and right, quoting what writers in these papers said. I’d like to say the same thing about the “Wall Street Journal,” but at best it breaks business stories, it killed on Theranos, it’s done good work on WeWork, but when it comes to politics…Murdoch has turned the WSJ into a general interest paper, and as a result it doesn’t go as deep as it used to, now that it’s covering more. So, in politics, the NYT and the WaPo set the agenda. They write the news and the right reacts. The left thinks if it’s in the paper it’s enough, but it isn’t. The right reads the articles and immediately begins a blitzkrieg of opposition, the left just assumes everybody knows the story and believes what the paper says is the truth, whereas the right has demonized the WaPo and especially the NYT to the point where people on the right believe these outlets are biased and unreadable. And I won’t say either is perfect, but their opinion pages print both sides, which you’ll rarely see in the WSJ. And sure, I could complain about the NYT all day long, it is servicing its customer base, which appears elitist and backwards technologically, but when it comes to hard news, the NYT is the best worldwide. As for the U.S., Bezos’s investment has allowed the WaPo to increase spending and the paper has recovered, it was the WaPo that broke this whistleblower story.

So, it’s just been a sporting contest. For nearly three years now. Facts are arguable, if they’re even relevant, and Trump has stonewalled, provided almost nothing. Hell, Bill Barr declared that the Mueller Report showed no collusion, which was patently untrue, but he stole the Democrats’ thunder and owned the narrative. It had little to do with Mueller’s piss-poor performance live, the Democrats didn’t know how to play their hand. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

That’s right, right wing spin on MSNBC is it was all Russiagate all the time, and the outlet’s clamoring turned out to be baseless. Bill Maher asked last week whether this hurt the Democrats, guests agreed with him, left wing guests, there’s little worse than a self-hating leftie.

But this whistleblower thing is something different. It ain’t a blowjob and it ain’t even a break-in, it truly comes down to national security and the sanctity of our elections. Are you really going to go against these things?

There are two wars, maybe three.

The first war is one of public opinion, which insiders oftentimes read wrong, they really don’t know how the people think.

The second war is the media. Believe me, elected officials pay attention. They’re all over cable news commenting and Trump himself is addicted. No one wants to look bad on cable news.

Then there’s the public record. Do you want to regret your vote that is registered, carved in stone for all time?

This happens all the time. Like with “Obamacare.” Forget the legal reasoning, Chief Justice Roberts didn’t want to own the destruction of a national health care plan that benefited so many people, that’s why his opinion was so convoluted. He knew history would crucify him. His conscience got to him, just as it did with Maguire, he could not take one for the team anymore, he had to say no.

So for now, the Republicans don’t have to go on record. They can bloviate in the press. They can even vote against an investigation in the House. But when it comes to a vote on whether Trump has to go…

They don’t want to vote, they’re never gonna vote, because history will show they were on the wrong side, they’ll be a laughingstock. Despite appearances, most Congresspeople are not stupid, they just act that way. And at the end of the day, they really only care about one person, themselves, they’re worried about not only survival, but legacy, and they also know politics has a way of squeezing out even the most loyal people, you’ve got to look out for yourself.

Since the House is dominated by Democrats, there’s an impeachment process in that chamber, and then it’s kicked to the Senate.

Only chances are it will never get that far.

This is not Michael Cohen, this is Bill Barr, other White House insiders, the whistleblower said there were ten people involved. So if they testify, if the Republicans go for this, it’s going to be a national scandal. They’re going to have to say they agreed to classify material that didn’t qualify for classification to save the President, that’s why they were all talking about it, that’s why the whistleblower heard about it. That’s right, being external, hearing it secondhand, was even worse for the Administration, because it implicates so many people. Are they all gonna lie under oath? Maguire didn’t. Just like the Mafia, when the government gets its hooks in you, it’s every person for themselves. Save yourself, forget everybody else. Which means…Trump is without protection.

And the information that comes out is gonna look so bad. Bad behavior and then a cover-up. The cover-up alone is grounds for impeachment.

So at some point in the process, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Senators are gonna tell Trump he has to go. These people have no loyalty to Trump, only the right wing cause. Hell, some even ran against Trump and excoriated him! They want to keep their base and their office, but they figure this story will work for their constituencies, they’re gonna tell Trump to resign for the good of the country and the good of the Republican Party.

Oh, I can hear the resignation speech now… Trump bemoaning the attacks, saying he was the victim of a witch hunt, maintaining his innocence, but he’ll say HE’LL take one for the team.

All this hogwash about him never leaving…just look at his business deals. The banks foreclosed on his properties, he didn’t always win. He’s a big baby who will cave, and it will happen very quickly.

But it will be Congress who will push him. This same Congress doesn’t want to be burdened by, doesn’t want to be tarred by, Trump. They want the Republican Party to survive! A whole cadre of Republican intellectuals and leaders are Never Trumpers. They want to reclaim the Party from the far right. They want reasonability. They want a chance as the country evolves away from work with your hands and the dominance of Christian whites. That’s right, the future comes every day.

So, once the House holds public hearings, bad stuff is gonna come out. We saw this during Watergate. John Dean saved himself, lost his law license but said there was a cancer on the Presidency. Patrick Gray admitted he’d burned incriminating documents. Forget your agenda, if you just testify honestly damning things come out.

So yes, the whistleblower gave the inept Democrats, the fearful Democrats, another bite at the apple, and this time they’re going for a solid chunk. The news has always been bad about Trump, this is just the cherry on top. And despite what Trump says, it appears to be a lock tight case. Forget the spin, the spin has no chance against the facts, and the facts here are bad.

So at some point in the process, long before any vote in the Senate, Trump will be told by Republican Congresspeople he has to go, just like they did with Nixon.

And just like with Nixon, just like with this whistleblower complaint, it’s going to happen very quickly. I’m not saying that Trump is gonna be gone tomorrow, I’m just saying the tide is going to turn, when it does, very fast for the Republican Congresspeople, they’re going to be very supportive until one day…they aren’t.

So the system survives.

Isn’t that what it’s all about?

The King of the Great American Songbook, Michael Feinstein is a player, a singer and an archivist, he’s born to and dedicated to the music. A legend with numerous albums and TV shows, you should listen to this even if only modern music floats your boat, hear how an outcast followed the music to success, how a true original was accepted by Ira Gershwin and the public at large. From the piano bar to the Hollywood Bowl, it’s a mighty long way down not only rock and roll, but all music, to the TOP!

This was one of my favorite podcasts to do, I hadn’t realized how similar Michael Feinstein and I are. I’ve known Michael for five years, whenever I encounter him he’s testifying about some find, some music discovered in the archives that he will pore over and digest. Like film preservationists, Michael is single-handedly keeping the old music alive. Hell, he found the original “Over The Rainbow” and performed it with the Pasadena Pops! Michael challenges authority and has a sense of humor about himself. He’s really a rock and roll artist, just playing different music, and I didn’t know that until we did this podcast. We start off with conducting, but then we move into Michael’s history and you’ll see the parallel to other popular artists, people who couldn’t find their way in the conventional world, who were square pegs in a round hole and then when they were true to themselves their careers blossomed. It’s quite a story.

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The Democrats have to get ahead of the story.

If you were listening to the news today, and who wasn’t, you heard about two things, Trump’s impeachment and how this action will negatively impact the Democrats in 2020.

Now let’s wait to see what the whistleblower has to say, what the transcript and ultimately the tape say, but if we’re gonna grant a green light on impeachment after that, we’ve got to get on the same page. I’m speaking about Democrats here, the Republicans learned this lesson decades ago. In 2016 the Republican candidates were all against Trump, until he won the nomination, then they solidly got behind him. The Democrats? All they can talk about is losing, they’re so busy arguing amongst themselves that they can’t see the bigger picture.

Number one, timing. You never know what the future will bring, forgoing impeachment and waiting for 2020… A Democratic candidate could commit a faux pas, Trump could have a great victory, almost anything is possible, which is why you play the game instead of waiting to run out the clock. Only the aggressor wins in the end, no matter how good your defense is, you’ve got to put points on the board.

Number two, perspective, as in the Democrats have to agree on a story and continue to sell it. They must say impeachment is less about Trump than the Presidency, how they’re defining the rules for administrations to come. That when someone tries to break the rules, an umpire must come in and cry foul! That’s what they’re doing here, in the name of justice, this is not Democrat versus Republican, this is about America versus fascism. Sure, use a softer word than fascism, but that’s the point, we’re doing this to preserve our American government and our American way of life. This message should be sold over and over again, it should trump Trump. If you make it about Trump, it’s immediately partisan, if you make it about ethics, behavior, laws…that’s hard to argue.

And the Democrats should all be saying how impeachment is gonna HELP their chances in 2020. That the public has been waiting for action in D.C. and now they’re getting it. That the Republicans have thwarted movement for years and now the Democrats have to take singular action.

As for the election, Democrats have to say this is what people want, the aforementioned action, Representatives voting their conscience as opposed to triangulating and playing the insider game. After all, if you commit a crime in public the police don’t refrain from arresting you because it might hurt their image, especially if you’re a nobody. In this flattened, social media world, people feel equal to elected officials. Elected officials should be held to the same standard normal people employ.

The Democrats should say victory in 2020 is a foregone conclusion, that no matter who they nominate in 2020, they’ll emerge victorious. You play like a winner or else you end up a loser.

You can define yourself to victory. Look at the Rolling Stones, the self-professed “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” Is that true? Who knows? But certainly after their contemporaries broke up and died, it was a self-defining prophecy, you had to see the Stones, they were the WORLD’S GREATEST! Michael Jackson tried to do the same thing, calling himself the “King of Pop.” Although no one ever liked the word “pop.” It never truly resonated with the audience, never mind MJ’s questionable behavior.

What do they say on “American Idol,” “fake it till you make it?” Everybody in America employs this aphorism, but not Democrats, they’re never qualified enough, the odds are stacked against them, who in hell could vote for these losers? You want people of strength. Kinda like Hillary back in 2016, she called some of Trump’s base “deplorables.” The REPUBLICANS latched on to this and bullied her into apologizing, demonstrating weakness, Hillary should have doubled-down on her statement, showed her cojones, that would have made people believe in her, as for those who didn’t, they never would.

This was the problem with Obama, he was looking for kumbaya. There’s no kumbaya in America today, and the Republicans know this. They stole the Supreme Court pick, they gerrymandered, and when they lose, they pass laws hobbling the winner before he or she takes office. The Republicans fight dirty, the Democrats don’t fight at all, they just whine.

So Pelosi and her pals, the entire DNC, the left wing bloviators, from now on they must say that Trump’s impeachment is the best thing that ever happened to this country. That the government was built on checks and balances, that no branch of the government should be stronger than another, that to refuse to obey the law Trump is breaking the system. The Democrats should say they’re leading, that this is what the country wants! Of course the Republicans will squirm, just ignore them, it’s your spin against theirs, and there are more Democrats than Republicans.

I don’t know about you, but my parents always told me to stand up to bullies, that unless you did they’d know you were afraid and never stop badgering you.

Unfortunately, today’s left wing parents believe their kids should be immune from negativity and can’t stop complaining to the authorities that their children are being bullied, even in private schools! People have to learn to fight for themselves, otherwise their entire lives will be compromised. Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, this is why the Republicans dominate the conversation, they keep calling out the insane identity politics of the left. Meanwhile, the left is busy fighting amongst itself, arguing about transgender rights, all kinds of things that are important but irrelevant if you don’t have power in government. First you get the power, then you institute change.

This is not hard. Hell, you even come up with a slogan like “Death Tax” to define the impeachment. Yup, Frank Luntz pwns the Democrats on a regular basis, by utilizing words to spin meaning and belief. The Democrats did a good job calling their abortion position “Pro Choice,” can’t they call impeachment “Pro Government,” or the “People’s Position,” or some cute phrase that will become common language, uttered all the time until those who hear it are spun in the right direction?

The Republicans have laid out the playbook, it’s in plain sight. You fight a long war, like with the Federalist Society. You keep hammering and hammering until you get the other side questioning its beliefs.

I know the Democrats can do it.

They’ve got to start NOW!