Thursday 20th May: Media megadeals, distribution and demand

May 20, 2021

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

Second only to programmatic advertising, understanding the motivations behind corporate media deals is a dark art. If Axios Chief Financial Correspondent Felix Salmon can't figure out if AT&T's Warner/Discovery merger is a good idea, what hope do us lesser mortals have?

Thank God for Stratechery's Ben Thomson is all I'm saying. He devotes 2,000+ words to unpacking the various issues with big businesses buying slightly smaller media companies and then having to sell them off really cheap. But he makes the crucial point with a single quote from the original Cable Guy and major Discovery shareholder John Malone.

“I think that the technology of connectivity and digital technologies are one focus, and creating content that people get addicted to is another focus."

In other words, stick to your knitting.

The good news is Spotify is making 'accessibility-oriented updates' to its app in both iOS and Android. The bad news is that one of those will allow for automatic podcast transcriptions. Spotify says it is one of the first major podcast apps to make this an automated feature. YES, FOR A REASON! Just ask Rachael how long it takes her to clean up our automated transcripts. This will not end well.

Ah thank you Google for the headlines that just keep on writing themselves. FloCs, Google’s proposed third-party cookies replacement, continue to be met with resistance. The Drum is reporting that within the past month, DuckDuckGo, GitHub and Mozilla Firefox have predictably all told Google to get to FLoC. Sorry, but it was an open goal.

This story is behind Insider's paywall so the chances are you won't be able to read it. But to be honest the headline probably tells you everything you need to know. Especially if I tell you the lead says, "local papers have reported sightings of the handsome billionaire out for lunch at Sydney's Rockpool restaurant and cruising around town in his Maserati." There just aren't enough tiny violins in the world. 🎻

This week's episode:

In this special episode, the Media Voices team take a look at which media companies and personalities have been the biggest winners and losers of the lockdown-era.

Thank you so much to everyone who's helped us reach our Ko-Fi goal - we're planning to invest in some mics and soundproofing. Our podcast and analysis is free but done in our spare time, so your support genuinely goes a long way towards keeping us going during the early Sunday morning recordings and late night newsletter sessions.