Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with
Speaker 1: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 1: Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety Today. My
Speaker 1: guests are Mark Hobick and Carolyn Finger of Illuminate. Illuminate
Speaker 1: is a data and insights company that focuses on audience
Speaker 1: measurement for the entertainment industry. It's a corporate sibling of Variety,
Speaker 1: under the umbrella of our parent company PMC. Of Late,
Speaker 1: Illuminate has gone hard on the business of measuring streaming
Speaker 1: TV viewership. That's a lot harder than it sounds. Illuminate
Speaker 1: executives crunch numbers all day, every day, but they also
Speaker 1: stop every so often to produce long term reports to
Speaker 1: give real insights into what's going on and how things
Speaker 1: are changing in this very dynamic marketplace. The twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four year end Film and TV Report was issued late
Speaker 1: last month. It's linked in the show notes to this
Speaker 1: episode and the Variety dot com story for this episode,
Speaker 1: and as advertised, it is packed with insights. Mark is
Speaker 1: executive vice president and head of Film and TV for Illuminate.
Speaker 1: Carolyn is Senior VP of Consumer Success and Products for Illuminate.
Speaker 1: The three of us have known one another for a
Speaker 1: long time through many different jobs. I think that comes
Speaker 1: through in this conversation. There is a lot of laughs
Speaker 1: and a lot of shorthand from people who know and
Speaker 1: respect each other a great deal. That conversation is coming
Speaker 1: right up after this break, and we're back with a
Speaker 1: conversation about the year in streaming TV with Illuminates. Markobick
Speaker 1: and Carolyn Finger. Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: This is fun because I've known you both for so
Speaker 1: long and I know you both to be absolute aces
Speaker 1: at what you do, so, dear listeners, you could not
Speaker 1: get a better overview of what the streaming landscape has
Speaker 1: wrought in twenty twenty four than these two. So thank
Speaker 1: you for coming all the way up from the seventh FLOORA.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having us. Yes, that was a full
Speaker 2: disclosure that had to happen at each.
Speaker 3: Other, Yes, one hundred percent. No, I've learned a lot
Speaker 3: from both of you over the years. I would like
Speaker 3: to start just by throwing it out to both of you.
Speaker 3: What you know. You crunch the numbers all day long.
Speaker 3: I know hourly you're looking at data, and you're refining
Speaker 3: and really getting great insights and great information as you
Speaker 3: took that step back and looked at the kind of
Speaker 3: the long the long term of the year, As you
Speaker 3: took that step back and looked at the landscape of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, what top line what stood out to
Speaker 3: you as surprising? What didn't you know by doing this
Speaker 3: report from your day to day, hour by hour efforts.
Speaker 2: For me, I think one of my kind of top
Speaker 2: level takeaways is really when we look at the content output,
Speaker 2: and we're looking at it on the TV side, streaming
Speaker 2: and linear together, when we look at that, while we
Speaker 2: saw a lessening of the decline year over year, we
Speaker 2: still saw a seven percent drop and that really was
Speaker 2: effect from the reverberations we're feeling from the strikes.
Speaker 1: And you're talking about total volume, total content.
Speaker 2: Of series premiers. Yeah, thank you. And you know, in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three we saw a seventeen percent drop, So
Speaker 2: a seven percent drop is an improvement in that we're
Speaker 2: declining less quickly in terms of the number of series
Speaker 2: premieers we're seeing, but very significant. One of the really
Speaker 2: fascinating parts to the report is that while we see
Speaker 2: a seven percent drop in the overall number of series released.
Speaker 2: When we look at episode orders, the episode orders declined significantly,
Speaker 2: so well we see this moderation of decline on the
Speaker 2: series side. The episodes, we saw almost a twenty percent
Speaker 2: drop year over year from prior year, and that trend
Speaker 2: has continued now two years in a row. Was seventeen
Speaker 2: percent in twenty twenty three and then almost twenty percent
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four. And that is the media companies
Speaker 2: are really being more stingy with when they're doing series
Speaker 2: or ordering series, just taking fewer episodes, and of course
Speaker 2: that impacts our entire entertainment ecosystem for writers, producers, directors,
Speaker 2: actors who really rely on those episodic orders.
Speaker 4: I would say, yes, I agree, and also I guess
Speaker 4: in the biggest picture to me, all of the sign
Speaker 4: posts are looking towards kind of risk mitigation for the studios.
Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is, you know, we
Speaker 4: have these terrible strikes, so we have this huge reduction
Speaker 4: in production, and.
Speaker 3: That was the reasons for the seventeen for a large
Speaker 3: part of the reason for seventeen percent in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: Is that accurate, Yes, But then the strikes are over,
Speaker 4: you know, happiness reigns again in the land. But no,
Speaker 4: not really because then we're having these, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: this contraction on corporate level where there there's kind of
Speaker 4: fear about I think number one, there's a fear around
Speaker 4: TikTok and what are they you know, can they invest
Speaker 4: in all these shows? Who's the audience for shows? So
Speaker 4: it's all kind of spelled out. They're trying to find
Speaker 4: different ways to produce fewer things, have more things that
Speaker 4: are part of a franchise or existing on peace, safer things,
Speaker 4: safer things, you know, the limited series which we can
Speaker 4: talk about. You know, all of these things are kind
Speaker 4: of spelling a net loss I think.
Speaker 2: In the entertainment ecosystem. Yeah, and I like your answer
Speaker 2: kind of change mine, you know, but I think, you know,
Speaker 2: risk mitigation, and through this study we really see what's
Speaker 2: working and what's not working in terms of the risk
Speaker 2: of mitigation strategies. But yeah, I agree with what you
Speaker 2: said one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: We did see in the report that the volume of
Speaker 3: limited series has has definitely come down because people are
Speaker 3: I think, because people are focused on those renewable resources,
Speaker 3: and also people are spending money on sports as opposed
Speaker 3: to spending you know, ten million dollars an episode on
Speaker 3: a six episode series like gee, who could have seen
Speaker 3: that that wasn't exactly sustainable, But so it seems like
Speaker 3: a good idea at the time, exactly.
Speaker 1: But is there is there any discernible, any any quantification
Speaker 1: of like fewer series overall and an emphasis on shows
Speaker 1: that they hope to renew, you know, a limited series
Speaker 1: is limited until until it works and then yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But is there any quantifiable that that you know, focusing
Speaker 1: on fewer shows has better results because you know, you
Speaker 1: can market more heavily to one show really really promoted
Speaker 1: to be you know, really promoted to an audience as
Speaker 1: like this isn't just a one off, but you know
Speaker 1: you're going to want to watch Noah Wiley or you
Speaker 1: know other people in these settings.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't think we are evidence has seen that.
Speaker 2: The thing I would say is that we do know
Speaker 2: that P and A really matters, you know, promotion advertising
Speaker 2: when we look at film, and this is a theme
Speaker 2: I think throughout content that we're seeing is that you know,
Speaker 2: to what you're getting at that if we have fewer titles,
Speaker 2: are we able to kind of promote those more and
Speaker 2: really get through the clutter and audiences can find that
Speaker 2: the recommendation just govery is a huge issue for the streamers,
Speaker 2: it's a huge issue for everybody because we have so
Speaker 2: many choices of content.
Speaker 4: Because of the emphasis on completion rates in streaming. It's
Speaker 4: it's just it's different. Things don't have the same kind
Speaker 4: of breathing room that they once had with linear where
Speaker 4: they were dropping one episode weak and you could kind
Speaker 4: of see week to week. If you are in a
Speaker 4: scenario where like Netflix, where everything is dropped all at once,
Speaker 4: and maybe there is that initial m and a push,
Speaker 4: but if it doesn't get that audience initially, then it's
Speaker 4: much harder, I think, to get Yeah, so you know
Speaker 4: it gives in, it takes.
Speaker 3: That's a that's an interesting question. So if not naming
Speaker 3: names or anything, but a six episode limited series drops
Speaker 3: and if people do you see that, like if people
Speaker 3: don't go to it, you know fairly soon to episode
Speaker 3: one or two, like they're never going to go check
Speaker 3: out They're certainly never going to go check out the
Speaker 3: rest of it. But like it is it a time
Speaker 3: sensitive thing, is what I'm saying. Like once at premieres,
Speaker 3: they if you don't go to it, it's really hard
Speaker 3: to get people to it a month or two later.
Speaker 2: We see in streaming definitely the sampling and that those
Speaker 2: first twelve weeks is really critical. And the other thing
Speaker 2: that we know from the streamers and our discussions with
Speaker 2: our partners is that that ninety percent completion rate is
Speaker 2: very very important in order to get a second or
Speaker 2: third season, order to get those multiple season orders. So
Speaker 2: you know, we can see that in the data and
Speaker 2: in the importance of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's also important, you know, speaking of strikes,
Speaker 4: you know, with the arrangements to get more residuals for streaming,
Speaker 4: that time frame is kind of baked into that as
Speaker 4: well as you know, the number of subscribers who are watching.
Speaker 1: Does it follow? Do you think that as the streamer
Speaker 1: is starting to realize that that, you know, maybe they're
Speaker 1: not going to do a twenty two episode procedural, but
Speaker 1: like Max with the Pit I believe is like fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen episodes. Do you think that when we're talking
Speaker 1: next year about about the twenty twenty five repart you
Speaker 1: think episode council will start to inch up?
Speaker 2: I hope.
Speaker 4: So we did get I mean we you know, Channing.
Speaker 2: Dungey actually made this announcement actually at Variety and in Tech.
Speaker 2: I remember when she talked about the John Wells series
Speaker 2: that they're bringing back, and they were very happy to
Speaker 2: announce they were looking at twenty two to twenty three
Speaker 2: episode orders. So I think there is that awareness of
Speaker 2: this is an underserved type of content that we're just
Speaker 2: not producing at the same volume that we are. So,
Speaker 2: you know, our latest sort of feedback we've gotten from
Speaker 2: the streamers when we've sat down with them has been
Speaker 2: their focus is really looking at content with a global footprint,
Speaker 2: not US centric content, and time will tell whether that
Speaker 2: translates into more episodes or not. But I don't know
Speaker 2: if they're seeing that quite yet at the streamers that
Speaker 2: they need to be producing more episodes, because as the
Speaker 2: data is showing us, they've in fact and cutting back
Speaker 2: now for two consecutive years in terms of episode of orders.
Speaker 3: And then let's talk a little bit more about comedy,
Speaker 3: because I did notice it very very noticeable in the report,
Speaker 3: all those nice color codings, very noticeable that CBS is basically,
Speaker 3: I mean CBS is basically the only the really only
Speaker 3: big brand broadcast or streaming that has a real big
Speaker 3: comedy business. Netflix of course has a lot of comedies,
Speaker 3: but in terms of elementary yeah, oh for sure, it's.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, oh absolutely, but I mean really, but just in
Speaker 1: terms of in terms of volume, and you know, the
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom for decades has been, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: just have one comedy on an island. You've got to
Speaker 1: have a you've got to have an environment. And CBS
Speaker 1: still seems to be kind of the last that still
Speaker 1: has that has that environment, although you know each network
Speaker 1: does have a few, but CBS seems to be Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think comedy is really seen as very specific culturally,
Speaker 2: and in a world where we're looking at global distribution
Speaker 2: for so many of these titles, it's just a harder sell.
Speaker 3: And interesting like Netflix has had a it's been a
Speaker 3: buzzy hit. I haven't actually looked at the numbers, but
Speaker 3: buzzy hit with National Treasure Ted Danson A Man on
Speaker 3: the Inside, and that's a remake of a I can't
Speaker 3: it's a I believe from Eastern Europe there was a
Speaker 3: form of French. I think you're a French series or
Speaker 3: remake and I wonder if that you know that, especially
Speaker 3: as you know kind of it his play in the
Speaker 3: Awards game. I wonder if that could be a model,
Speaker 3: you know, see if streamers will see, like maybe take
Speaker 3: the elements, the bones of comedies that are working in
Speaker 3: other places and try to adapt them for us and
Speaker 3: vice versa. I mean, that's not a new phenomenon, but
Speaker 3: I wonder if there will be you'll see more of that,
Speaker 3: because my goodness, we do need laughs.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: What I think may have helped fill in the gap
Speaker 4: with comedy is maybe unscripted, even though we've also seen
Speaker 4: unscripted yeah, declients, but yeah, I think things like Love
Speaker 4: Is Blind or The Real Housewives, you know, I think
Speaker 4: people laugh at yeah, a lot of those things as well.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you laugh with, but sometimes.
Speaker 4: You laugh at for sure.
Speaker 2: And unscripted, I think is a really interesting thing for
Speaker 2: us to talk about because we've seen where this you know,
Speaker 2: during the strikes, unscripted was one of those things that
Speaker 2: was protected. Yeah, but when we look at the actual data,
Speaker 2: we had declines in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four for unscripted year over year, we're looking at eight
Speaker 2: percent drop and unscripted across broadcast, cable and streaming, And
Speaker 2: I think what's going on there. My personal take is
Speaker 2: that we have It's not that we've exhausted ideas, but
Speaker 2: unscripted reality program in particular is so concept driven, and
Speaker 2: you have got to have that innovation of concepts. And
Speaker 2: if you look at the top show the unscripted shows,
Speaker 2: you've got Love is Blind, Love Island, a lot of
Speaker 2: shows around Connection is So Angry. Oh stopped me in
Speaker 2: my tracks. If you wanted the talkings to you, I'm.
Speaker 3: Sorry, don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more insights from luminates Markobick
Speaker 1: and Carolyn Finger right after this break, and we're back
Speaker 1: with the rest of our conversation about the year that
Speaker 1: was in twenty twenty four with illuminates Markobick and Carolyn Finger.
Speaker 4: It's hard to understand why unscripted is declined, but one
Speaker 4: of the things, you know, speaking what you're saying Mark
Speaker 4: about it's so format driven, all of those kinds of
Speaker 4: just little snippets of schadenfreude like you can get on
Speaker 4: short form content. Oh true, you know. I think maybe
Speaker 4: some specific influence have kind of filled in.
Speaker 2: I think social media is part of that fix of
Speaker 2: seeing real people misbehaving or what have you, and that
Speaker 2: is something that you can get on TikTok and for
Speaker 2: now and Instagram in various places.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, no, it's it's really interesting another you know,
Speaker 1: in the continuing with the down trend here animation also,
Speaker 1: I saw you know, big decline, and you would have
Speaker 1: thought that that would have been.
Speaker 3: A little more strike resilient from that impact.
Speaker 4: But well, for the I think sag aren't the many
Speaker 4: of those actors in stories, so I'm assuming that's why
Speaker 4: they weren't able to do that. But also it does
Speaker 4: seem as though from a production standpoint, there's so much
Speaker 4: competition for access to animation studios and the production timeline
Speaker 4: is so much longer that that could maybe have played
Speaker 4: a role as well.
Speaker 3: And then say, time we have seen animated features, they've
Speaker 3: had some real home runs. So maybe it's just kind
Speaker 3: of a world. You know, we've all known that, you know,
Speaker 3: Fox for whatever reason kind of has that magic magic
Speaker 3: wand on the adult animation, and virtually everybody else that
Speaker 3: has tried it, virtually everybody else has really has really struggled.
Speaker 3: So it really does seem like it's a you know,
Speaker 3: a feature, a feature animation for family audiences and and
Speaker 3: you know, it just doesn't translate to two series anymore.
Speaker 3: I wanted one thing that really also in the report
Speaker 3: stands out. You do beautiful job of kind of laying
Speaker 3: it out Star Wars fatigue people. I mean, it's very
Speaker 3: it's very clear, and that's you know, that's got to
Speaker 3: be a concern for Disney because that lucasfilm that has
Speaker 3: been a real, real pillar of their strategy there. Now
Speaker 3: as soon as we say that, they could have a
Speaker 3: show that comes out, you know, comes out next month
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, we're not talking about it.
Speaker 3: But both on the feature side, that's been very well
Speaker 3: documented and on. But the viewership declining for season twos
Speaker 3: and things is really significant.
Speaker 2: I think the franchise fatigue is really interesting. That's one
Speaker 2: of my favorite parts of the report as well. You know,
Speaker 2: when we look at some of the biggest franchises in streaming,
Speaker 2: franchises are incredibly important to the streamers in particular because
Speaker 2: this issue of really having a universe that people can
Speaker 2: access relatively quickly. But if we look at Lord of
Speaker 2: the Rings, the Rings of Power season one, which was
Speaker 2: released in twenty twenty two, the twenty twenty four second
Speaker 2: season did not perform nearly as well. Similarly, for Marvel,
Speaker 2: we know that Agatha all Along, which I personally really enjoyed,
Speaker 2: and Echo performed under twenty twenty three releases, Low Key
Speaker 2: Season two and Secret Invasion.
Speaker 4: And it really.
Speaker 2: Speaks to the importance of franchise management for these media companies,
Speaker 2: and if they are spread too thin, if they're doing
Speaker 2: too many things that are not really focused on these franchises,
Speaker 2: you can get to a place where you're just not
Speaker 2: going to get the same result. And it's unfortunate something
Speaker 2: like The Rings of Power again really enjoyed it. Fifty
Speaker 2: eight million dollars per episode. They've spent almost a billion
Speaker 2: dollars off the two seasons that have been released thus far.
Speaker 4: Beautifully shot.
Speaker 2: I know you have some thoughts about.
Speaker 4: For me, it was you know, I'm a nerd. I
Speaker 4: you know, I love my Hobbits. It just somehow it
Speaker 4: was too densely plotted for me or something, which is
Speaker 4: that's saying a lot after reading the two towels.
Speaker 3: Yes, one of the starkest pages in their report is
Speaker 3: the share of original viewing chart. I mean, it makes
Speaker 3: it Crystal Claire. Not that there was much doubt, but
Speaker 3: you know, now we have the pie charts. If there's
Speaker 3: a pipe chart, it's official. There's Netflix and there's everyone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: For original streaming content to share, Netflix to share is
Speaker 3: sixty three point five percent. Literally the rest of the
Speaker 3: competition combined doesn't even come out for originals for originals,
Speaker 3: which you know, which is such a huge part of this,
Speaker 3: such a huge part of the marketplace.
Speaker 4: I think Netflix defines an audience differently than all of
Speaker 4: their competitors, except for maybe Prime, but you know, Prime
Speaker 4: is there to feed the Amazon machine and does that
Speaker 4: pretty effectively. You know, Netflix is looking I don't think
Speaker 4: they're looking at like an audience. I think they're looking
Speaker 4: at kind of the world, and so they don't feel
Speaker 4: as though they have to have something that fits into
Speaker 4: a particular brand. I mean that's just my you know,
Speaker 4: kind of armchair thing. I feel like Apple TV they
Speaker 4: have a more boutique kind of a pro coach to
Speaker 4: TV and a more boutique audience. True, but bless them
Speaker 4: for it, you know, I would say, like, for me,
Speaker 4: the big surprise in some ways is Max. I don't
Speaker 4: want to pick on anybody, but I'm you know, I
Speaker 4: remember that a certain CEO was brought in from the
Speaker 4: cable world, and there had been a lot of success
Speaker 4: with a lot of unscripted franchises, and the brands have
Speaker 4: been a bit diluted, and HBO has always been speaking
Speaker 4: of boutiques. So there just isn't enough there to propel
Speaker 4: its audience share. But I think to me, in some
Speaker 4: ways they're the most vulnerable of all of these.
Speaker 2: My my takeaway is that when we look at the pie,
Speaker 2: what's really interesting. I think Netflix and Prime sort of
Speaker 2: we expect to see those in one and two, but
Speaker 2: that we see from an original content perspective, Paramount Plus
Speaker 2: is in third position, and Apple TV is in fourth position,
Speaker 2: followed by Who and then Disney Plus. It's really interesting
Speaker 2: because you think of Disney Plus and all of the
Speaker 2: content there, but just from an original title perspective, they
Speaker 2: just haven't released that many titles in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Prime is you know, Prime is second at
Speaker 1: eight point five percent, Like I just that's sixty three
Speaker 1: that's sixty three point five percent.
Speaker 4: Is very overwhelming.
Speaker 3: It is interesting, and you know, following along that in
Speaker 3: terms of other surprises, it was a surprise to me
Speaker 3: and I watched this stuff and cover this stuff every day.
Speaker 3: It was a surprise to.
Speaker 1: Me that Fool Me Once was Netflix's top title based
Speaker 1: on the Harlan Coben book. And I know he has
Speaker 1: a massive and I believe, you know, maybe not worldwide,
Speaker 1: but it has international fans, and I got to believe
Speaker 1: that that fandom, yeah, helped helped drive and he's a
Speaker 1: very well established author with a real a really specific
Speaker 1: brand of storytelling. But you would not I would not
Speaker 1: have cited that as the number one did that? But
Speaker 1: I know that you've crunched the numbers on a week
Speaker 1: you know, daily and weekly basis. But did that in
Speaker 1: that year end sense? Did that really? Did that stand
Speaker 1: out to you as kind of a surprise that that
Speaker 1: would at year end that was the big show. Now,
Speaker 1: as I understand, Squid Game may have knocked it off
Speaker 1: its perch now that now that it's been out for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for tea English language also.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we're only doing ro only measuring English language
Speaker 2: in this particular study. So you know, Fool Me Once
Speaker 2: they also had the benefit of premier in January first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, it had the whole year. And what's
Speaker 2: interesting is when we look at that top ten list, yes,
Speaker 2: seven of those titles are Netflix. But when we look
Speaker 2: at the other three with them that top ten land
Speaker 2: Man on Paramount Pair plus Taylor Sheridan, Yes, you love this.
Speaker 4: I can't believe it's out in the world.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but even among the Taylor Sheridan shows, it
Speaker 3: wasn't among the most talked about, which is interesting because
Speaker 3: the interest that that chart, there's a gap between like
Speaker 3: the cool factor and buzz factor. And of course we
Speaker 3: are in a bubble, we are in the creative community bus.
Speaker 1: But I didn't hear so many people talking about it,
Speaker 1: but obviously America and Canada. Yeah, there's kind of.
Speaker 4: Like the People's Choice Awards. You know, it doesn't line
Speaker 4: up usually with the oscars, but it does tell you
Speaker 4: about what the broader audience is responding to.
Speaker 2: And keep in mind that Landman didn't not all episodes
Speaker 2: had been released by the time we got to the
Speaker 2: end of the year, So we're doing that without all
Speaker 2: episodes being available, which is a tremendous accomplishment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is, Taylor sharedon got to give to him.
Speaker 4: He is tapping into some fortant. I mean, he just
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, John Ham like has great cast
Speaker 4: and has enough like there's a great balance of absurdity
Speaker 4: and yet truth. Somehow that's what's.
Speaker 2: Any Tulsa King is number five in the list.
Speaker 3: So with that's off, Yeah, let's close out our discussion
Speaker 3: here with the subject of a topic that is kind
Speaker 3: of appropriate to the world that we're living in right now.
Speaker 1: Horror. Yes, but there's a lot of interesting data in
Speaker 1: there about how it's a clear box office driver and
Speaker 1: it is also, you know, very efficient box office because budgets,
Speaker 1: you know, versus like a blockbuster movie or even a
Speaker 1: big animated feature like they can you know, they can
Speaker 1: really do horror on a beer budget and get champagne
Speaker 1: box office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Well, horror is one of those genres
Speaker 2: that has a built in fan base that is very
Speaker 2: committed to showing up and seeing those titles in theaters,
Speaker 2: and they're also reliably profitable, and that's a heady combination. Now,
Speaker 2: when we look at the budget for a film, we're
Speaker 2: typically looking for box office to be two point five
Speaker 2: times the budget for it to really be considered a success,
Speaker 2: and then anything above that can lead to a runaway hit.
Speaker 2: When we look at the top ten highest grossing horror
Speaker 2: films from twenty twenty four in their budgets. What's interesting
Speaker 2: is that we see things like the Substance. The production
Speaker 2: budget on that was seventeen million dollars and a bit
Speaker 2: more than that, the box office was over seventy seven million,
Speaker 2: So just a tremendous success. And we see that again
Speaker 2: and again. Alien Romulus also highly profitable, A quiet Place
Speaker 2: Day One very profitable. So it's just the gift that
Speaker 2: keeps on giving these two and the Substance.
Speaker 3: Nobody on the planet, on the surface, even with Demimore,
Speaker 3: nobody on the planet would have said, yep, that's going
Speaker 3: to get five Oscar nominations. That also was really was
Speaker 3: really telling. But great work is great work is rewarded. Actually,
Speaker 3: I really want to close with a question that tacks
Speaker 3: back to the way things work. I'm still I still
Speaker 3: have a harder time wrapping my head around millions or
Speaker 3: billions of minutes viewed versus old fashioned ratings and share
Speaker 3: what do you think in terms of from your experience
Speaker 3: as researchers, the focus on minutes versus ratings, which were
Speaker 3: you know, translated by demographic and everything they were.
Speaker 1: I think it was just what I grew up with.
Speaker 1: But what is do you think is tracking the minutes viewed?
Speaker 1: Is that a better measure? Is that a more accurate
Speaker 1: yardstick or is it just a different form of you know,
Speaker 1: it's just a different form of ratings.
Speaker 2: I am very passionate about this, you know. So I
Speaker 2: think minutes watched is a really it's a really inaccurate
Speaker 2: way of measuring success because it rewards longer form content.
Speaker 2: So comedies, which traditionally are shorter, are always at a
Speaker 2: disadvantage in that world. If we're just talking about television
Speaker 2: the real way, and this is the streamer are coalescing
Speaker 2: around this as well. A more accurate measurement of success
Speaker 2: is views, and that is simply taking the total minutes
Speaker 2: watch and dividing that by the runtime. And that's something
Speaker 2: that we actually provide through our SPM product, But our
Speaker 2: rankings are still measured based off of minutes watch. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I hear you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's kind of like, you know, the news used
Speaker 4: to be packaged in a very specific way, and you
Speaker 4: only kind of saw the news that was presented to you,
Speaker 4: and now it's like we see, you know, the ticker
Speaker 4: tape of everything in real time. And I think that's
Speaker 4: kind of what minutes is where you can see everyone
Speaker 4: who's tuned in for one minute and you know, decided
Speaker 4: to click on something else.
Speaker 1: What's the holy grail that you as researchers that you
Speaker 1: can't get your hands on, but you'd love to In
Speaker 1: terms of data, data about shows, data about viewing, viewership, engagement.
Speaker 4: It's first party data, it's party data. It's what we
Speaker 4: all want.
Speaker 1: Listen up, streamers, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Listen up. And you know I will say, you know,
Speaker 4: there is a light at the end of.
Speaker 2: The tunnel because I'm not at liberty to kind of
Speaker 2: talk about those companies, but we are in active talks
Speaker 2: with certain streamers to actually share first party data. And
Speaker 2: that is if you had asked me two years ago
Speaker 2: when we were first building SBM, if this were a possibility,
Speaker 2: I would have told you they're never going to share.
Speaker 2: But I do believe that a day in the future
Speaker 2: we will have first party data and that will change everything.
Speaker 2: Will really have transparency there, and that'll be good.
Speaker 4: For the industry. And I would say, on top of that,
Speaker 4: accurate demographic data based on kind of all devices, because
Speaker 4: we don't really have a great line of sight on
Speaker 4: who's watching everything and how they're watching it, and that's
Speaker 4: the secret to getting the young.
Speaker 1: I would like to throw in there that I'm always
Speaker 1: I've always enjoyed looking at regional data. You know, what
Speaker 1: is the.
Speaker 3: Southwest watching versus what is the Northwest? And that that
Speaker 3: just seems to be more and more elusive, elusive, or
Speaker 3: it just won't you know, they won't, they won't divulge it,
Speaker 3: and that.
Speaker 4: It is now like Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, Let's narrow it down a little bit.
Speaker 3: But yeah, well, this has been a fun, fun conversation
Speaker 3: with two people who know their stuff right and left
Speaker 3: and upside down and backwards. Thank you so much. I
Speaker 3: really appreciate it. I really appreciate all your work and
Speaker 3: the you know, ability to bring some sense of what's
Speaker 3: you know, what's actually going on out there. We don't
Speaker 3: have to just take their word for it. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for legend.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us
Speaker 1: a review at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love
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