Bloom in Tech

Ken Jennings made a name as the No. 2-winningest player on Jeopardy,  while Richard Garfield was the creator of Magic the Gathering, one of the most successful card games ever. Now they've teamed up for a new trivia game called Half Truth, designed to be a lot more accessible to an audience far beyond the usual trivia traffickers. I talked with Jennings and Garfield before their game's Kickstarter launch this week to talk about how you make a game for non-trivia players, the history of trivia, why use Kickstarter, and more. Give a listen. 

A flurry of deals and deal-related news this week, led by the Viacom-CBS merger's long-anticipated merger and Verizon's dumping of former social-media giant Tumblr got me thinking about what it all means for the tech-centric entertainment world we're entering. I also have lots to say about a deal that didn't happen, Facebook's acquisition of Houseparty., among other hijinks at the social-media giant. Can ViacomCBS survive even as a combined standalone unit? Is Tumblr really only worth $3 million? And could the fear of antitrust keep Facebook on some sort of straight and narrow path away from jerkdom? Give a listen, then share your thoughts through Anchor.fm's audio comment function, or send me a Tweet and LinkedIn message. 

Ninja (Tyler Blevins) has been the best-known star in the booming business of live-streaming online about games. Until the first week of August, he did that for Amazon-owned Twitch. Then he turned the business of live-streaming upside down when he announced he would jump to Microsoft's Mixer service, which has been in fourth place among game streaming services. The move has lots of implications, and I talk about them on this episode of Bloom in Tech. Give a listen. 

Netflix had a bad couple of weeks, for several reasons. In this episode of Bloom in Tech, I talk about the implications of Netflix's stumbles, and what it means for the looming streaming-video wars. And as all that was going on, I sat down onstage at the OTT_X Conference in Los Angeles to talk with Adam Lewinson, the Chief Content Officer for Tubi, the biggest of the ad-supported video-on-demand services out there. AVOD services  such as Tubi have a very different set of challenges and user expectations than do the subscription services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and CBS All Access. We talk about why, and where Tubi is headed. Give a listen. 

Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey have been running World of Wonder, their Hollywood-based TV production company, for nearly three decades. For the past 10 years, World of Wonder has produced RuPaul's Drag Race, featuring perhaps the best-known drag queen ever. The show's format has now been copied into local versions in several additional countries, just one of the ways Barbato and Bailey have diversified, survived and thrived in an era increasingly hostile to independents. In my conversation onstage with Barbato and Bailey at the recent VidCon in Anaheim, they talk about opening a retail store on Hollywood Boulevard, launching DragCon events in New York and Los Angeles, creating a social-media powerhouse, nurturing outsider creative talents, getting into long-form documentaries, and turning those docs into scripted programming. It is indeed a wondrous world for World of Wonder. Give a listen. 

Joey Graceffa has spent a decade as one of the most influential of online influencers, with more than 1.9 billion views of his YouTube videos by more than 9 million subscribers, along with a big footprint on Instagram and Twitter. I sat down with Joey at VidCon, the big influencer convention that just concluded  in Anaheim, to talk about his long-running YouTube Premium show, Escape the Night, his fixation on escape rooms, and his desire  to turn his trio of dystopian YA novels into a movie,  but without him as director. How refreshing. Give a listen. 

During the recent E3 game conference, I sat down onstage with Zach Wigal, the founder of Gamers Outreach, which provides games and video game equipment for kids stuck in hospitals facing long-term care for serious and life-threatening conditions. It was one of four panels I did as part of the E3 Esports Zone, run by Subnation, and a series of partners and sponsors. We were on the Content Stage and also had our conversations streamed live across the web. Just in case you missed all of that, here's my conversation with Zach about helping kids facing serious illness with the therapeutic escape of video games. They do good work. Maybe you can find a way to support them as well. In the meantime, many thanks to Subnation, E3, and their partners for the opportunity to take part  in this and several other great conversations. 

I've been gone for a little while, undergoing a huge move that's left me without virtually any of the traditional physical media that I've gathered over many years. That's all great. But as I and millions of others go full KonMari, are we giving up some crucial ways to signal to others around us the culture, books, music, film, TV that matter to us? This is a quick episode, just some thinking stimulated by days and days of getting rid of much of my physical belongings, and tipping into a headlong embrace of the digitally based life I already have been in and around years. Give it a listen, and let me know what  you think. You can leave an audio message through Anchor.fm's tools around this podcast. Please rate, review and share the episode if you like what you hear. And if you really like what you hear, you can become a supporter of it through Anchor.fm, throwing a few bucks in the kitty. 

At the recent E3 video game conference, I sat down with Victor Pool and Ruben den Boer, the Dutch duo behind the electronic dance music act Vicetone. They grew up in small Dutch towns, spent time in Amsterdam, New York and Los Angeles, but even as they started creating more EDM hits, they yearned for a  quieter place to live. The answer: two years ago, they moved to Nashville, found a house and set up a production studio. And it seems to be working out. 

When we talked, their single “Something Strange”  was doing something strange.: Six months after its November release, the single  finally hit No. 1 on Sirius-XM’s BPM channel, while their latest single,  ‘Waiting,” had just been released.  They were about to fly to Tokyo to start a six-country, three-week tour across Asia. 

The duo are big gamers, and took in all the new video games on display at E3. But they were at E3 because they were performing at the opening-night party sponsored by Subnation, which created  three days  of esports-related events in partnership with the E3 conference.  As part of all that, I moderated several panels at the E3 Esports Zone. When I get the chance, I’ll share some of those conversations here on Bloom in Tech in subsequent episodes. 

In this episode, Victor and Ruben talk about their love of video games, being a Dutch  dance-music duo in the country music capital, finding collaborators on Spotify, and maybe doing a  K-Pop crossover song, Give a listen.

Long-time pals Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas sat down together at the recent Produced By conference on the Warner Bros. studio lot to talk about, well, a lot.  They met when Douglas was still in college in Santa Barbara, and have worked together as actors, producers, directors and friends for half a century since. In this conversation, they talked about making the Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Taxi, Streets of San Francisco, The Kominsky Method, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Romancing the Stone and so much else. Along the way, they have some great advice for producers and would-be producers of film and TV, and some thoughts on the challenges and opportunities of the streaming-video era, and what Quibi means. It's funny, fond, occasionally Falstaff-ian and a downright entertaining conversation. Give a listen.