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Hello! Last week my parents were in town for my bday. I was over the moon to be living in the moment with them. Great times were had all around. One thing I’ve been thinking about is how all content investments are classified at-source, from Apple ordering TV shows, to the Dunkirk 360 experience, to Eminem’s song for Venom - these initiatives tend to be housed within a marketing budget. They can be monetized themselves or they can be purely artistic experiments. In any event, it creates a wedge between the distributor and original content creator making it unwieldy for the latter to see net profits (they exist!), and it gives the distributor leverage to play éminence grise over even more creatives as they decide what else to fund from their marketing and advertising spends. I think this is the fundamental notion that turns the tides from what can be dubbed a creation versus a production. This goes back to the art world when thinking of auction sales and acquisitions versus commissions. I find it interesting to think that certain content investments are built for the purpose of something entirely different from the content business itself. For instance, Apple, Amazon, Walmart, and maybe Costco are building content offerings to create customer loyalty and retention for their other lines of business. I don’t know if their content bets can be considered indirect investments, or maybe they’re just written off acts of patronage. I need to formulate a stronger opinion on this subject. I believe that my current train of thought is a double-edged sword. It’s great because it allows creative people to be creative, but unfortunately this comes at the expense of other creatives who bear the costs of these initiatives in their income statement. That’s all for now. See you next week.
Tech
Artomatix, an AI firm for 3D art and content creation, raised $3.1m. IT
Kepler, a telecoms network for space, raised $16m. BK
Facebook rolls out 3D photos that use AI to simulate depth. TC
Facebook launched Portal (yeah, no thanks). NYT
Zig, a news curation app, raised from media strategics. THR
Epic Games buys Kamu, an anti-cheat software. TC
Lumenari, which provides LED to LCDs, raised $3m. Finsmes
SoundCloud Pro launches new monetization tools. SC
Magic Leap launches Mica, a human-centered AI. Twtr
Ntwrk is a new shoppable streaming platform. BOF
Microsoft open sourced their patent portfolio. ZDNet
Kahoot, an education gaming co, raised $15m at a $300 val. TC
Nelly, which will make it seamless to build and deploy sites, raised $30m from heavies. VB
Instagram uses AI to detect bullying in photos. CNBC
Robosense, Chinese lidar co, raised $45m. CMN
Finger, a Chinese edtech co for music, raised $14m. CMN
TxTenna allows people to send crypto over a mesh. Mesh
Amazon scraps AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women (wtf). Reuters
Pitch, a new presentation tool like Powerpoint, raised $19m in a Series A. TC
Google + to be shut down. NYT
Facebook is planning on a human-machine interface. BI
Magic is a new decentralized ISP network. Futurism
Highlights from the new Google hardware (Pixel) announcements. Verge
Accion Systems, which creates new satellite thrusters, raised $3m. TC
Civalue, an ad marketplace, raised $6m. Cision
NHTSA to consider more AV cars on the roads. Reuters
Micros plans to invest $100m in AI cos. Reuters
Huawei unveils its AI chips to combat Qualcomm and Nvidia. CNBC
Media
Walmart has made a $250m investment in interactive company Eko (!). Variety NYT
Apple acquired Asaii, a music analytics startup. Axios
Apple plans to give away video content to device owners for free. CNBC
NewTV is going to be called Quibi (eww). Deadline
Amazon and Walmart now want your vital signs. DB
Recap of NBCU's Lift Lab demo day (!). BW
Preview of Disney Accelerator's pitch day. Variety
WarnerMedia to launch its streaming service in Q4'19. Deadline
How Netflix expanded into 190 countries in 7 years. HBR
Sports betting in NJ brought in $184m in wagers in Sept. SA
Costco was considering an OTT service for their premium members (anotha one!). Info
The Athletic licensed a show from The Player's Tribune (watch this space). Digiday
One Championship, a sports organize for martial arts fights, raised a $166m Series D. Variety
The new Fox / Disney management regime. SA
Forbes to partner with Civil on blockchain initiative. Axios
Netflix apparently accounts for 15% of the world's downstream traffic. SV
CAA Sports is set to do $5b worth of deals this year. Forbes
New York Mag to make Intelligencer its own vertical. WWD
Complex expands partnership with MSG's RSNs. Wrap
Sirius acquired PayTollo to streamline in-car payments. Sirius
Scientific Games acquired Don Best, a real-time sports betting platform. MI
Skybound set a TV financing venture with Sony. Variety
Meredith is developing 10 original shows for IGTV Digiday
EagleTree Capital acquired VFX firm FuseFX. THR
Taylor Swift's political IG post resulted in 65k new voter registrations in 24 hours (woah). BF
Sony is working on a PS4 successor, thinking about live video and VR. Polygon
Entertainment
UTA and MRC/Valence partnered on a TV studio called Civic Center. Deadline
Netflix orders Soderbergh's Panama Papers movie. Deadline
Endeavor invests in Simon Maxwell's int'l TV drama prod co. Deadline
Telepool enters into a slate deal with horror genre producer Defiant. THR
Annapurna drops Fox News / Roger Ailes movie days before start and also J Lo's Hustlers (yeesh). THR
Larry has come in to "save" Annapurna after it burned 100s of millions. Variety
TFI opens up its $1m ATT grant (heads up, distribution is attached). TFI
Topic buys sci-fi novella Unauthorized Bread. Variety
NatGeo considers Aretha for Genius season 3. Deadline
Smokehouse signs first look with Paramount TV. Deadline
Netflix bought a New Mexico studio facility. Bberg
Hulu ordered scripted series on the Wu Tang Clan. Wrap
Sugar23 signs an overall deal with Netflix (the guy is killing it). Deadline
SoulPancake and TasteMade partner on programming. Deadline
Isaac Lee acquired Redrum and launched Exile. Variety
Sterling K Brown inks deal with 20th Century Fox TV. Deadline
Stampede options Wattpad novel Under Glass. Deadline
Vox is working with YouTube on a new audience-integrated show. THR
Black Bear wins auction for sci-fi pitch Remission. Deadline
Aftershock and Legendary adapting a few Image Comics. THR
Pocketwatch has sold in shows to Hulu and Amazon. Variety
Snapchat's slate of shows. Wrap
HBO acquired OG that played at TFF. Deadline
Lionsgate to sell Netflix's Bojack internationally. Variety
Kevin Hart inks first look with Nickelodeon. Variety
Coogler to do Black Panther 2 sequel. THR
50 Cent signs deal with Starz (maybe massive idk?). Variety
Tribeca's Through Her Lens 2018 participants. Deadline
Futurism plans to expand its production and distribution capabilities. Deadline
Kloss and Siriano have joined the new Project Runway. Muse
Working Title, Eon, and Heyday launch UK film school. Deadline
Collaborative
Google is accepting apps to its AI Residency program. GAI
Inside the Pentagon's push to be able to program soldiers (holy smokes). Atlantic
How Vimeo will be able to stream holograms (nice Or/Casey). Vimeo
CNBC's 100 startups to watch. CNBC
50 "genius" cos of 2018. Time
Jeff Hawkins explains his brain research. NYT
MTA launched a tech lab to provide it with transportation solution (ha!). Verge
Eminem's Venom song. YT
Movie data viz. Med
Aladdin teaser trailer. YT
David Lieb's path to creating Bump, helped create Google Photos. Twtr
The MTV alums that 'rule' digital media. Info
Jack's goodbye email to Sarah Friar. Twtr
Summary of Leapcon. Gizmodo
DuckDuckGo traffic metrics (woah). DDG
Glass trailer 2. YT
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway talk tech. Art19
Columbia's Sandbox is a new podcast dedicated to immersive storytelling. Med
Real-time human shadow removal from projector (woah). YT
Internet relay chat turned 30. ArsT
Info on Netflix salaries (crying). THR
Amplify's Q3'18 seed deal report. Med
An intro to geographic data viz. Med
Jennifer Seba on the Dolan family (unrelated) being better at spinoffs than sports. NYT
A font called Sans Forgetica can allegedly increase info retention (clever name). Inc
Space Planes of the future. Nanalyze
Survey about smart speakers being mainly used for music. Nielsen
Iger said he's not running in 2020 (a boy can still believe!). Hill
The Saudis hired a bunch of tech execs to be advisers to their $500b megacity called NEOM. BI
The Moore twins on how and why online brands are going to retail. Med
IPCC's serious climate change report. NYT
- Listen: Nassim Taleb and Naval talk. YT
- Read: Tony Hawk writes about skateboarding being in the Olympics. Med
- Watch: Oscar Boyson's video on future cities (oldie but goodie). YT
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