"I think they're late. I don't think they're too late."
Me, on Disney’s busy summer
We’re back with Evan Shapiro for season three of The Media Odyssey Podcast, going through what media got up to while we were away. August is supposed to be boring but thank god it wasn’t.
So here’s what we caught media doing this summer:
The World Cup went everywhere at once. Records on the telly, new ones on YouTube and TikTok, and a tournament that played out in clips, exactly as Scott Melvin called it on the pod in June. It also brought new traditions to football that I hope don’t make it to 2030 and beyond.
The platforms carrying all that noise had a rougher summer and Meta’s $18 billion cheque is where Evan and I split hardest. Disney spent the same weeks chasing those very teenagers, handing Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars to TikTok creators. Vertical got its own headline number, how close or far off is it? We weigh in.
The money moved under all of it. PwC has advertising passing consumer spending this year and while everyone now repeats the same line about ad tier ARPU, I hear otherwise from streamers which means brace yourselves for more price hikes. Netflix just took its UK ad tier up by a third, to £7.99.
Last but not least, Paramount spent the summer standing still, well kind of. They’re three weeks from the day the $7 million-a-day clock starts running.
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That’s it for today but before you go: