Dispatch 019 🦃
Happy Thanksgiving to those reading in the US. A slightly shorter/earlier dispatch today as I get ready myself to eat food and watch football from thousands of miles away. For those looking for other content, my friend Michael Mignano posted the latest episode of his Generative Now podcast featuring a conversation with... me. I've known Mike for a long time, and had the honor of serving on the board of his company Anchor, prior to its acquisition by Spotify.
After a few years as an exec at Spotify, Mike jumped over to my side of the table, becoming a general partner at Lightspeed. So this is a fun tables-turned conversation touching on investing, AI, investing in AI, the state of VC, the UK, the state of Apple – and many other topics.
You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
I Thank...
🦃 America’s Great Unifying Event: The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade – It really is sort of wild that the telecast draws more viewers than the Oscars and the World Series (even this year despite the presence of New York and Los Angeles raising the ratings). But especially surprising is that it outdraws the New Years Eve shows as it seemingly taps into the same communal, live event element. Then again, that's a holiday where many are out and about (versus at home in the morning/afternoon for Thanksgiving) and there are a few broadcasts to watch that night. Even more interesting is that the ratings, fairly steady since the 1980s, have been rising in the past few years. Perhaps it is streaming or maybe it's just the lack of other summoning type events given the rise of streaming. And, of course, just pure nostalgia and a lack of politics. [NYT]
🍗 NBC Ready to Pay Triple to Gobble Up Thanksgiving Parade Broadcast Rights – And thanks to those rising ratings, the rights fees are going up as well, as you might imagine. But what you might not imagine is that they're expected to jump from $20M/year to over $60M/year. But NBC has little choice but to pay to renew, lest they lose not only a key advertiser-drawing event – one they've aired for the past 70 years – but a key promotional event for their other content. The parade boosts the dog show that comes right after it, all the various sports programming, their own shows, etc. Seems like a good bet that we'll get some early promotion for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman specials which NBC just snatched away from CBS too. [WSJ 🔒]
I Think...
🏴☠️ Italian Authorities Shut Down €3bn-a-Year Pirate TV Ring – A few interesting elements of this. First and foremost, aside from, you know, the whole illegal activity thing, the operation actually seemed to run like a real company. It had subscribers who paid about €10-a-month for access to the content and that led to a roughly €3B-a-year revenue business. As the criminal prosecutor put it, "The rate of profit you get from these illegal activities with lower risk is equivalent to that of cocaine trafficking." But given how much of the content was focused on streaming service content (including sports), it also perhaps highlights a need – not unlike what Napster showcased back in the day – for an easier-to-access and use single hub for streaming content. Again, people were paying a subscription fee for this! This wasn't all about just getting everything for free. While it's obviously good that they shut this down, the content players shouldn't overlook the reasons why it rose... If they don't, a new one will just pop up again. [FT 🔒]
⚖️ Microsoft Faces Broad Antitrust Investigation From US FTC – It all comes back around. While Microsoft was seemingly getting off "easy" when compared to their tech brethren and antitrust scrutiny in recent years – despite becoming, once again, the most valuable company in the world during that time – in part, perhaps, because they've "been there, done that", that's now out the Windows as Lina Kahn is using what is perhaps her swan song in office to go after the OG tech monopolist. Interestingly, Microsoft's failings may have played a role in this as their many security issues are cited as calling out the various dependencies other companies have on their services and thus, market power. Of course, you have to wonder how much of this is just "checking a box" – with Microsoft under investigation, now the wrath of Khan has hit all of Big Tech™. But things are seemingly – though not for sure – about to change with regard to regulation. And then, of course, there's the myriad AI issues. But Microsoft has also been putting in the legwork with the new administration... [Bloomberg 🔒]
I Note...
🔨 Donald Trump Considers Tough Antitrust Advocate for Justice Department Unit – I linked to this above in the blurb about the Microsoft antitrust investigation, but it's worth calling out specifically that it's not a foregone conclusion that even with Lina Khan gone that the justice department will either cease investigations into American companies or start letting more mergers go through. In particular, Big Tech is likely to remain in the crosshairs in various ways given not only the stated stance of J.D. Vance but also the feelings of Elon Musk – so long as Tesla isn't caught up in the sweep, naturally. Gail Slater – who has worked under Vance, and actually for Roku, and, incidentally, is Irish – sounds like the nomination to watch here to signal the administration's intent. [FT 🔒]
🛝 Google Seeks to Undo Epic Games Antitrust Win Over App Store – Staying on the legal beat, Google would really, really like the court to throw out the ruling against them in the Epic/Play Store case citing, amongst other things, Apple's App Store and the victory that company won against Epic. Obviously, that's not going to happen, but I continue to believe this remains the more interesting case to watch instead of the broader Search antitrust case where the selling off of Chrome also obviously is not going to happen. [Bloomberg 🔒]
I Link...
- The DoJ (and several states) agrees with Fubo that Venu is potentially problematic with regard to competition due to channel bundling. At what point do the companies involved in the tie-up just drop it? [Awful Announcing]
- Google may or may not be using their antitrust trial to take the opportunity to see what the competition is doing with regard to AI and search. At the very least, they're highlighting this activity to the court to make a case... [Digiday]
- Seems like OpenAI is going to stick with 'o1' as the branding for their reasoning model – though I still prefer the codenames – given a trademark filing. [TechCrunch]
- You can now train Claude to write like yourself by uploading sample content. I actually may try to use this for email – all current such tools, such as those baked into Gmail are far too generic for my taste. [Verge]
- More shakeups at Samsung as the "chip crisis" continues... [FT 🔒]
- Roku is allowing its content to be more deeply integrated into Google TV – even though such devices compete with Roku's own. A good sign and step, but we still need Netflix! [Verge]
- Google's Gemini Imgen 3 (can we please, please do something about that branding?) now lets you create customize chess pieces using AI. Fun – and playable! I like the idea of drilling the tech down to specific uses. Sounds like chess is coming to Gemini itself soon too. [TechCrunch]
I Quote...
"The problem is that it all derailed in 1983 with 'Return of the Jedi'. It’s a long story. I was 15 years old, and my best friend and I wanted to take a cab and go to L.A. and talk to George Lucas — we were so angry! Still today, the Ewoks. It turned out to be a comedy for kids.
-- Dennis Villeneuve, explaining why he has no interest in directing a Star Wars movie, despite his sci-fi bonafides, to Matt Belloni on his podcast The Town (as relayed by THR). Hard to argue – as even George Lucas himself wouldn't. Still, more damning is what he goes on to note:
"Star Wars became crystallized in its own mythology, very dogmatic, it seemed like a recipe, no more surprises. So I’m not dreaming to do a Star Wars because it feels like code is very codified."
It increasingly feels like a full reboot is needed from the top on down. Someone like Villeneuve absolutely should want to direct a Star Wars – though the narrative's proximity to Dune may be problematic (of course, J.J. Abrams has navigated an even more awkward situation: directing both Star Wars and Star Trek films). Top talent not wanting to touch the franchise is problematic, to say the least. And those that do, getting ridiculed and stepped on... Yeah, a mess.
I Spy...
Naturally, I asked the GenChess tool from Google mentioned above to create a turkey themed chess set for Thanksgiving. What I didn't anticipate was Gemini then deciding the opponent should be Ham on Christmas. Clever girl.
(Team Turkey won.)