One of the hidden attractions of the NFL Sunday Ticket deal for YouTube and its parent Alphabet has to do with distribution, the ages-old determinant of size, stature and stamina in the pay TV business. I say “hidden” because a first-blush reckoning suggests there’s nothing particularly new here. We all…

Adam Schlesinger’s songs were there all along. I just wasn’t listening. I found Fountains of Wayne because of coronavirus, the invader that took away the band’s ringleader, Adam Schlesinger. He was 52. The awful news led, as awful news sometimes does, to fresh discovery. In this case, to the discovery of “The Summer Place,” a song Schlesinger and his band mates…

Wake up, editors. It’s time to firewall them thar’ cattle. Yesterday’s layoffs at Bustle — several editors of lifestyle and book coverage lost their jobs — has me thinking about the role of online publishers juxtaposed against the immutable reality of physical delivery. It is not a promising intersection. I suspect the strategy conception for Bustle and a thousand other…

I have seen the future of television. And it is music. It took decades, consumed billions of dollars and caused incalculable career wreckage, but television has managed to achieve its ultimate transformation: It has become music. That is to say, television has taken on the salient characteristics of a medium that consistently has been out in front of video in terms…

The disruption theme is probably overblown. In the end, it’s really just…television. Rare are the media industry epochs when so much Sturm und Drang converge as has been the case in the summer of 2019 in the streaming video arena, where the mighty powers of the media business have spent much of their time swapping around old TV shows like they were…

It’s no longer about the network. And it probably never was. — Gad: It was bound to happen. As the telecom goliath AT&T muscles its way into the television business, and as executive leadership changes as it does when new owners take over, somebody was certain to restate the “brand” bromide. …

The iconic video streaming service isn’t a threat to television. It is television. — Arguments that swirl about in the digital video business these days usually revolve around differing visions of Netflix. One is the more granular view of Netflix as one of many participants in an evolving digital video economy; a leader, to be sure, but one that faces intensifying competition from media…

How live sports can thrive in an on-demand video world — The Monday night shootout between the Rams and Chiefs last month was pounced on as a harbinger of the new NFL, the game that flagged a generational pivot to a high-flying, high-scoring, defense-free touchdown fest where passes whistle like warheads and where exhausted cornerbacks are strewn about the hash lines…

The Justice Department, hunting for a rationale it can use to block AT&T’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of the prolific TV-and-movie distributor Time Warner Inc., has worked to come up with inspired arguments it hopes will sway the U.S. District Court to agree the combination will harm consumers. …