Sunny Side of the Doc | 19-22 June 2023

Documentary Business

Peter Hamilton Consultants, Inc

Digital Video

Is Peacock the “New Quibi?” Wall Streeters say “Stop! Put a bullet in it!”

Influential Wall Street analysts Lightshed Partners report that NBCUniversal has spent $2.5 Billion on its Peacock streaming service. And what has it got? Peacock subscribers are stuck at around 14 million. There were zero subscriber gains for the recent quarter. Peacock lags far behind its competitors Netflix (221 million subscribers), Disney+ (138 Mn), HBO Max (77 …

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Need To Know for ’22 #1. Apple Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap. Tech giants extend dominance over legacy media players

Apple briefly became the first $3 trillion company. Its valuation is roughly equal to the gross domestic product of Britain or India. And it is equivalent to about six JPMorgan Chases, the biggest American bank, or 30 General Electrics. This milestone constrasts dramatically with today’s valuations of legacy media companies like Disney, ViacomCBS and Discovery, …

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Disney+ Subscriber Slowdown: Watch leading analyst say why Disney’s streaming strategy is a fail

The buzz of the week centred on The Walt Disney Company‘s announcement that Disney+ had added only 2 million subscribers in 3Q 21. Lightshed Ventures Partner Rich Greenfield shared with Bloomberg‘s Emily Chang his useful analysis of why Disney’s streaming strategy is failing. The message: Disney owns all the programming and other resources to accelerate …

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Netflix 2023 What You Need To Know Now


The Most Watched U.S. Streamers: Netflix dominates Disney+, Apple TV+ and more. PBS viewing is resilient

Netflix‘s commanding lead on the flock of streamers is captured in a new set of U.S. data just released by GfK MRI-Simmons and shared by Byron Media‘s John Morse. Interviews were conducted over a 12 month period and respondents were asked which streaming services they watched during the last seven days. The most active commissioners …

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Netflix’s 41% of Time Spent dominates viewing of commissioned & acquired programs

What is Netflix’s share of U.S. viewing? Last month I reported on Comscore’s June 2021 findings that Netflix (26% market share) and YouTube (21%) dominate viewership on connected TV’s. The key Comscore measure is ‘Time Spent’. Here’s the chart: Misleading However, the data is misleading if you are a producer, distributor or programmer whose job …

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News Roundup: Climate Change Documentaries Breaking Through?

The COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference opens in Glasgow on October 31, bringing urgency to the race to save our planet. Documentary commissioners, producers and distributors have responded with lots of new orders. Does global warming have the urgent audience appeal of programs that address hot button issues like true crime, gender, and social …

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Netflix 2023 What You Need To Know Now


Trillion-dollar Death Stars are Existential Threats to Legacy Media Players. 2021 Media Universe Map by Evan Shapiro

 “When you look at the entertainment war for attention and you realise that there are seven trillion-dollar Death Stars – Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Tencent and Alibaba – all with unlimited resources and diversified revenue models, you understand why scale is the most important thing,” says Evan Shapiro, producer, media commentator and creator of …

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Crime Pays: Documentary sub-genres that are most In Demand by viewers. Research findings from Parrot Analytics (chart)

My News Roundup for July — a content partnership with Sunny Side of the Doc – leads with a catchy chart from Parrot Analytics. Parrot quantified consumer demand for six genres, from Crime to Sports, comparing 2019-20 with 2020-21. Parrot scoops up consumers’ ‘demand expressions’ from across the online universe, and weights them, for example …

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