Time for a Quick Drink?
If we were at drinks right now, this is what I'd be talking to you about
Hi Everyone,
I’m feeling a lot of things right now. I bet you are too. WWIII, AI, crises foreign and domestic
.Today, I’m going to switch up the format a little bit - I was feeling like I wanted to cover more of the current landscape, what’s consuming my thoughts, and how we’re evolving in real time.
In this Newsletter:
The Merger: Why Trump was never going to let Warner Brothers go to Netflix
Experience Economy: Disney’s new CEO, and tracking investments in the experiences sector
Is Hollywood Done? (I click on this headline every time, no matter who’s writing it, so I figured, I’d join in)
One Quick Drink:
I’m thankful for remote work and the family life it allows, but I miss the “end of work” drink in NYC. We’d head to Dear Irving or Pete’s Tavern (L’Express when we were really burning the midnight oil) and be a little more human, talk about our lives, the people, the news, art, and it would all inevitably come around to creative conversations and dream projects. Sometimes one drink became two, and you’d end up at Marie’s Crisis with Broadway hopefuls or drowning sorrows with comedians at Off the Wagon.
And since I can’t get a newsletter out at a decent hour anyway, let this version of my newsletter feel like the chat we’d have grabbing that after work cocktail.
First up: The Paramount / Warner Brothers Merger
Netflix withdrew their Warner Brother’s bid. Y’all, Carri Twigg was calling this one so hard. No matter what the outlets were saying about how Ted and Trump were working together on this - there was no way Trump was letting WB/Discovery go to Netflix over Paramount. Netflix has an overall deal with the Obamas. Sarandos and his wife are big democratic donors and fundraisers, in comparison to the newly Ellison controlled Paramount. Once the Paramount/WB Discovery merger goes through, Carri estimates this brings a massive percentage of Americans’ daily entertainment diet under the Ellisons, and makes them the most prominent American media family: Tiktok/Paramount/CBS/HBO/CNN/Nickelodeon/MTV/Food Network and it goes on and on and on. She talks with Brad Jenkins about it here:
The Experience Economy
Other Media News - Disney’s new CEO is the head of experiences. Literally his former title is: “Chairman of Experiences.” Not the head of entertainment, or media or programming, but the guy who oversaw theme parks, cruises, and hotels. I know this is relatively old news, and we wrote about this in Mikhael Tara Garver’s beautiful newsletter takeover, but I am still thinking about this ALL. THE. TIME. We launched our experiences company Culture House Immersive, and I truly believe that live, immersive, narrative experiences is where the most exciting stories and storytellers are headed. What’s more: investors and markets are feeling the pendulum swing from tech to “shared joy, collective nostalgia, and real human connection.” See Mark Cuban’s latest investment, Steve Cohen’s Entertainment Park, and PE firm Silver Lake’s focus on Live Rights and Sports here.
AI’s Acceleration into an Unrecognizable World:
On the other end of the AI spectrum, my dad, Dennis McCarthy, called the first family meeting of his life… and it was about: how AI is taking over everything, and how we should think about our lives differently
