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Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix
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About This Book
The first comprehensive account of the biggest wake-up call in the history of the entertainment business: the pivot to streaming. Go inside a disparate group of media and tech companies -- Disney, Apple, AT&T/WarnerMedia, Comcast/NBCUniversal and well-funded startup Quibi - as they scramble to mount multi-billion-dollar challenges to Netflix. After spotting Netflix and the deep-pocketed Amazon Prime Video a decade's head start, rivals from the tech and start-up realm (Apple, Quibi) and traditional media (Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal) all decided to move mountains to enter the streaming game. At a cost of billions, each went after their own piece of the market, launching five new services in a seven-month span. And just as the derby was heating up, the coronavirus pandemic arrived, a black-swan event bringing short-term benefits but also stiff challenges. The battle for streaming supremacy may end up having more than one winner, but the cost and disruption to decades-old business models have also produced a lot of losers. Binge Times reveals the true costs of the vision quest as companies are turned inside-out and repeatedly redraw their org charts and strategic plans. Stretching from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Wall Street, it is a mesmerizing, character-rich tale of hubris and ambition, as the fate of a century-old industry hangs in the balance.
Reviews
"While the book can be good at pointing out less-than-obvious motivations—the role of executive bonuses in driving bad business decisions, for example—the authors show some peculiar lapses in judgment."
"A revealing, highly readable look at the making of the modern home-entertainment environment."
"Things get bogged down a bit with the long-winded and fawning appreciation of Netflix, but the copious research and astute analysis are worth the price of admission."
"The book places the launch of streaming services within the larger context of the mergers and acquisitions that have been happening within the entertainment industry."
"This excellent book takes readers deep behind the scenes at Netflix and its challengers, showing us the people who had the ideas, made the decisions, and, in some cases, took the blame."
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