Bloom in Tech

Raffi Bagdasarian is founder and CEO of Paket Media, which is building a product designed to simplify what’s emerging as a significant headache for millions of streaming-video consumers, and for the streaming services they buy into.

The headache: dealing with managing multiple subscriptions from numerous media companies, especially as we shift away from traditional pay TV bundles. The complications of managing all those subscriptions are made worse because none of the big new services want to rely on a competitor such as Roku or Amazon to do it for them. Just look at what happened when HBO Max debuted without being part of either of those giant streaming platforms.

I talked with Raffi as part of this episode, and more generally discuss some of the challenges emerging as more of us turn to streaming video, especially subscription services, to get more and more of entertainment. The shift brings lots of benefits, but its own set of headaches. 

Peter Y. Levin is a partner in Griffin Gaming Partners, which invests in the game business, and chairman of Immortals, the big esports team with backers such as AEG, Meg Whitman and Michael Milken. Before all that, Levin was a founder of Nerdist, and former head of interactive for Lionsgate and Legendary, among much else. I talked with Peter about building the Metaverse, and how games such as Fortnite and Minecraft are helping us get there. We also talk opportunities in esports, mobile, marketing and educational content in games and much else. The real opportunity may be in building the Metaverse, which we're thinking about more and more as the pandemic forces us to spend more and more of our lives online in virtual environments. 

I talked with Dan Weinstein, the head of Studio71, the big online-video distributor, about "blocking and tackling" during the pandemic, new opportunities in streaming, why the OTT industry is loving what's on Studio71's shelf, and what's up with Quibi. We also talked about just-launched trivia board game "Half Truth," created by Jeopardy star Ken Jennings and Magic the Gathering creator Richard Garfield, and the challenges the company is finding launching a game meant for groups of grownups at a time when the pandemic has turned our social lives upside down. . 

I talked recently with comedian and long-time podcaster Duncan Trussell about his newest project, The Midnight Gospel, now available on Netflix. It's an extremely unlikely mashup of Trussell's deeply philosophical podcast conversations with some of the most interesting thinkers out there and the DayGlo animation of Pendleton Ward, creator of Adventure Time, in collaboration with animation house Titmouse. Together, they've wrought a fascinating piece of work. As part of our conversation, Duncan and I talked about such relevant cultural touchstones as John McPhee's Annals of the Former World, N.K, Jemisin's Hugo-winning science fiction, Nick Park's Oscar-winning Creature Comforts,  Ram Dass, Trudy Goodman, Roshi Joan Halifax, Anne Lamott, and, well, quite a few other things. The Midnight Gospel is a unique animated show, unlike anything else out there, and that's a good thing. Give a listen. 

Facebook is seeing a flood of celebrities interested in creating video game content for their fans during the coronavirus lockdown, Phil Ranta, the company's head of gaming creators, told me last week. Our conversation also got into the new tournaments capabilities at Facebook, the potential for virtual reality, and how former UFC/WWE fighter Ronda Rousey and Kingslayer are bringing new approaches to a sector ready for innovation in viewing experiences. Because of that opportunity and the huge interest in esports and live-streaming amid the pandemic, it's a great time to jump into the sector, he told me. 

This podcast is an excerpt from my conversation with Phil last week as part of Let's DEW Lunch, a new daily video webinar from tech-conference organizers Digital Entertainment World Expo. This week, I'll be doing a similar conversation with Dan Weinstein of Studio 71, the big online-video production and talent-management company. You can register for that at https://www.dewexpo.com.

Brent Weinstein is a partner and Chief Innovation Officer at one of Hollywood's biggest talent agencies, UTA. I interviewed Brent this week as part of the just-launched live-stream series Lets DEW Lunch, from the folks behind the Digital Entertainment World conference series. Brent has been closely involved in UTA's significant presence in technology and digital entertainment. Our conversation ranged widely, from esports to the new streaming services to celebrities launching their own social-media feeds to the long-term prospects for all those music live-streams, among much else. It's an extraordinary time in Hollywood, which already was undergoing wrenching changes even before the pandemic turned the business upside down. Check out our conversation, and if you get the chance, check out the Let's DEW Lunch conversations, which happen at mid-day (PST), and involve some high-profile executives from across the industry. 

As big parts of the economy get hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, social-media influencers and creators have an opportunity to do well, reaching audiences stuck with little to do. But it's not the time for hype and huckstering. We need strategies to inform, entertain and most of all comfort each other during this extraordinary time. In this episode, I suggest a few areas that are set to do well, and some approaches to creating content that can make a difference for everyone. I also would love to hear from you about what you're doing to entertain, inform and comfort yourself. What shows are you watching/streaming? What other media are you using? What else are you doing? Send me an audio comment through Anchor, or contact me on Twitter @DavidBloom or on LinkedIn /davidlbloom. I'd love to hear from you, especially now, when normal human connection is so fraught and complicated. Be careful out there. 

Influencer marketing is becoming a hot commodity these days, fueled in part by new data-privacy laws and Google's resulting decision to stop using cookies in its browser. That leaves social -media influencers and brand collaborations as a key way that companies can still extend their online presence while getting access to good audience data. That's just one of the  lessons from my recent conversations with former long-time Nike marketing executive Drieke Leenknegt and CreatorIQ CEO and founder Igor Vaks. 

Leenknegt and I did a fireside chat during the Influencer Marketing Conference and Expo in Los Angeles, and grabbed the separate conversation you'll hear on this episode. After 20 years with Nike in both marketing and operational roles in China, Europe and the United States, Leenknegt is now a Portland-based consultant helping brands do a better job telling their stories, both on their own and with influencers and other collaborators and creators. 

And Vaks'  Los Angeles-area company helps big brands such as Disney and Unilever run campaigns that may involve 30,000 influencers or more. He's seen influencer marketing  evolve from something that was paid for out of the experimental part of a company's budget to becoming a central part  of big, integrated marketing campaigns. 

Bob Pittman ran MTV and AOL when it was cool to run them, and has since done a lot of other big media jobs. These days, he runs iHeart Media, the nation's biggest radio group, and its biggest podcast group. At this week's Podcast Movement Evolutions conference in Los Angeles, Pittman sat down with Conal Byrne, his top podcasting executive, to talk about the business. I have a little bit of material from Pittman's talk, and my own observations from the show and elsewhere in a deal-filled week for what's become a burgeoning business. Call it my meta-podcast, the podcast about podcasting. 

Along the way this holiday weekend, I take a little detour to smell the roses, with my essay called The Stick and the Box, inspired by some conversations today that got me thinking about the ways dogs and kids have managed to find joy, and how the rest of us could benefit by spending more time finding our own gratitude. 

Check it out, and let me know what you think on Twitter (@Davidbloom), LinkedIn (/davidlbloom), and through Anchor.fm's audio comment function. I'd love to hear what you think about the essay, about the future of podcasting, or about your own plans on the frontiers of audio content creation. Is it a fad, or will podcasting's fan base stick around and grow? Let me know your thoughts.

By the way, if you want to hear Pittman's own podcast Math & Magic; Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, you can listen here.

Check out Supercast's approach to creating premium podcast options here. 

Bill Curtis' CurtCo Media can be reached here. 

Emi Norris' Paradiso, the Paris-based (with US operations) podcast production company, can be found here. 

And if you want to hear Debra Chen's just-launched podcast, The Great Fail, listen here.

Quibi used the Oscars and a Super Bowl ad to kick off what it promises will be a massive marketing blitz ahead of the April 6 launch of the mobile streaming-video service. But with the Olympics, elections, and oh so much streaming-video competition (not least from all the Disney-owned networks advertising Oscar night on corporate cousin ABC ), will it be enough to help Quibi break through to success? I take a look at what Quibi's last few weeks, and its prospects ahead.