Bloom in Tech

I sat down to talk with Adweek CEO Juliette Morris and Sr. Producer Al Mannarino about their new podcast network and what it means for the trade publication going forward, the state of podcasting and advertising, and more. And I have some thoughts about the future of Apple as it ventures in live sports streaming with Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV Plus, alongside a bunch of big new advertising partners. Will this change Apple's ...

There's been a whole lot of talk about That Slap, but I'm more interested in what happens to the Oscar broadcast now that the Motion Picture Academy has embraced streaming enough to hand out awards for Best Picture, Animated Feature, Documentary Feature and other major categories for projects that were mostly or solely online. How long will Oscar remain a broadcast event, rather than one that is mostly streamed online? And what mor...

Netflix alone has 10 films with at least one Oscar nomination, part of a phalanx of top contenders for the movie business's most glamorous awards. Which streaming-first or streaming-mostly projects are lining up for a big night in Sunday's Oscars? Will Netflix flex The Power of the Dog? Has Apple TV Plus cracked the CODA for success? Can Disney Plus exclusive Encanto enchant Oscar voters as much as viewers? Bloom in Tech looks at t...

South African-born writer-director Neill Blomkamp has been using tech in smart ways to create thoughtful, groundbreaking movies ever since his first feature, District 9, a smart sci-fi take on apartheid, arrived in 2009, and grabbed an Oscar nomination for its visual effects. Since then, he's directed two more science-fiction features, with far bigger budgets: Elysium, with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, and Chappie. Blomkamp's ...

Logan Paul and Floyd Mayweather had a boxing exhibition this week, and yes, someone punched Logan Paul in the face. Also, both participants made a huge amount of money. They won't be the last to try this either, as influencers lace up the gloves for a similar chance to build their fan base, generate new sponsors and make business deals far beyond whatever thing first made them Online Famous. 

I talked with Robert Ellin, the CE...

What's likely to change in business, entertainment, media and tech in the years after the Covid-19 pandemic finally eases? What's NOT likely to change? I talked with Mike Bechtel, managing director and the chief futurist at Deloitte and a professor at the University of Notre Dame business school, about what comes next, how technology and expectations are changing, and much, much else. Bechtel led Deloitte's work with the World Econ...

I talked with Javon Frazier about his work creating games, board games, subscription boxes, toys and more for fans while at Marvel for nearly a decade, and then at online-video company Studio71, before launching his own company, Maestro Media, over the past year. A self-described "black nerd" as a kid in South Los Angeles, he grew up reading comic books voraciously before picking up an MBA at NYU Stern School of Business, where he ...

Tastemade creates video about "food, travel, home and design" for social-media sites from YouTube to TikTok, skinny bundles such as Hulu Plus Live, ad-supported services such as Tubi, and more. Co-founder and CEO Larry Fitzgibbon has been there from the start, and tells what its like to create video for every new distribution platform as it comes along, for wildly different audiences across most of the planet; why 2020 was a "water...

The big streaming-video services were more important than ever in 2020 as the pandemic sent viewership and subscription levels soaring even as several big new services launched, and struggled to get their feet under them. So how did they do, and where are they headed in 2021? I go through my end-of-year grades for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, and Peacock, and look at some of the major trends likel...

WarnerMedia stunned Hollywood this past week when it announced that its entire 17-film slate will debut on streaming service HBO Max the same day the films arrive in theaters, blowing up decades of lucrative "windowing" in the movie business. Those day-and-date releases include some hotly anticipated projects, like the latest version of sci-fi classic Dune, another Matrix sequel, Wonder Woman 1984 (technically announced earlier, an...

We've finally come to the end, more or less of the 2020 election season, helped along in part by significant changes by the big social media platforms in some of their most problematic "engagement" tools. Let's keep those tools on ice, and consider some other changes in the role that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms played in our civic (if sometimes uncivil) discourse on the way to Election Day. Let me know what you t...

I'd been expecting the Quibi collapse for a year before the mobile video site even launched,, but that doesn't mean there aren't lessons to learn from its just-announced and still-unfortunate fall. I talk about those lessons in this episode, plus share my recent conversation with Govind Balakrishnan, the CEO and co-founder of subscription audio app Curio, which takes meaningful stories from such top journalism sites as The Economis...

Tubi is the biggest ad-supported video service in streaming, and was bought by Fox earlier this yea for a hefty $440 millionr. I sat down with Adam Lewinson, the company's chief content officer, this week as part of the virtual NATPE Streaming Plus conference. We covered a lot of ground, talking about all the company's news about big jumps in viewership, new territories and sections, whether they'll ever make original shows, and wh...

Labor Day Weekend is normally a dumping ground for the movie business, but not in 2020. Two blockbusters, "Mulan" and "Tenet," are using very different platforms to reach audiences this weekend. One is a pricey premium addition to streaming service Disney+, the other is available in whatever theaters across the country are open amid the pandemic. How each of these $200 million blockbusters does on its respective distribution platfo...

Walter Murch is a pioneer in using digital non-linear editing software to create films, and helped create the notion of "sound design" as well. He's won three Oscars in sound and film editing (for The English Patient and Apocalypse Now) and been nominated for six more. He talks with me about his latest project, the documentary Coup 53 (available through virtual cinema at coup53.com), the extremely secret British agent at the heart ...

Three of entertainment's biggest media companies - Disney, NBCU and ViacomCBS – helped make it a red letter week in the history of Hollywood's grudging embrace of streaming video, as all three took actions that will pivot them ever more sharply toward online distribution platforms for their shows. Add in significant actions by Cinemark, Regal, the U.S. Department of Justice, Microsoft and TikTok, and the week was one for the ages. ...

Universal, the big movie studio, cut a landmark deal this week with AMC, the nation's biggest theater chain. The business of showing movies may never be the same, though not just for what it means for those two big companies. This episode of Bloom in Tech looks the direct impacts of the deal for Universal and AMC, how likely other studios and theater chains are to copy it, and what might come hereafter with the big subscription vid...

My quarterly grades for the big subscription-video services is out. I talk about which "students" did well, and which need a lot of work among Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, Quibi, and CBS All Access. I suspect there's little surprise about who's at the head of the class, but it's also clear the pandemic has both been the biggest opportunity and biggest challenge for all the new competitors launching in the mi...