Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. | | | | | George Blagden as Louis XIV in "Versailles" (Ovation) | | | | |  | “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
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| | rantnrave:// AT&T and TIME WARNER. Here come the prognostications (doomsday and not) given the whole 3 days to digest. Why? Consumer advocates and regulators? We're in a time when distribution and platforms are key. I haven't dug into all the specifics but the combination is very interesting and something all the "we're not a media company" companies have thought about. Yes, pipe owners don’t need to own what they transmit, but in an era where great content so easily goes unseen, there’s an opportunity for owners and distributors to unite. A real dilemma for legacy companies. Recently, I've become more of a full stack student. A media full stack. This is what AT&T is going for. So what to look out for? Usually, these deals die in integration and reluctance to take big risks. One of the challenges faced by the media companies and distributors is the degree of cannibalization needed to embrace digital. NETFLIX loses hundreds of millions each quarter and accepts a fraction of the margin. Competing with today’s digital leaders means taking a long view to success and doing what's necessary to get there. Part of AT&T’s risk is that having acquired DIRECTV and TIME WARNER, the pain of cannibalization could become too significant to be embraced – even if it’s this same risk and scale that could enable them to be the next hybrid giant. How do you do this? We said in "Big Media's 'Death Star' Strategy", you need to set expectations with shareholders. That’s how BEZOS, HASTINGS, ZUCKERBERG and others all did it. If public shareholders (or expectations) are the problems, CEOs need to confront them, admit the challenges in front of them along with the pain and cannibalization they’re going to embrace and articulate how they’re going to lead into the future rather than manage through the end. There are lots of opportunities. HBO OTT. Integration of online video brands into TV stack. Some of Time Warner's brands have been shackled over the years to make up for others. Give them the resources for the transition. Challenges too. The self-interest of AT&T could align with their customers in terms of aggregation and yet much of the content is locked into distribution deals with competition. Can AT&T create great consumer product experiences? Traditionally, telcos and cable companies have not. The entire space is in upheaval. Internal culture and talent need evolution too. Can they attract the product and software talent they need to compete with the tech-media giants? Long ball, folks. Oh, and there will be a ton of talk about regulation and anti-trust. Fair enough, but while WASHINGTON takes a look, they need to take a look at the new behemoths who face almost no scruitny comparatively. Our agencies are the worst equipped they've ever been to deal with the rate of innovation. More thoughts this week... I rarely thought about technology's negative impact on me (and culture) as I was coming up. I do now. BLACK MIRROR is so directionally correct (IMHO) it's depressing. We don't often think of consequences when we seek innovation... Our debt to TRUMP?... Something's missing from US football in 2016, and we don't mean PEYTON MANNING. Who or what's to blame for plunging ratings? Cord-cutters? The presidential election? On-field protests? Lousy games? And how worried should the NFL be? SportsSET: "NFL Blues: Where Did All the TV Viewers Go?"... The problem with introspection is once you're in there, you're in there... I'd love to see visualizations of some people's thought processes... Give me someone who has an eagle eye, ambition and strives for perfection that can never be attained. It's a rare commodity... My pal ANTHONY SALEH and his partner NAS on investing in products people want... Happy Birthday to TROY YOUNG, DAVID KATZ, ALEX FARRILL, JOSH BERNOFF and JUDITH CLEGG. | | | - Jason Hirschhorn, curator |
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 | Esquire |
| Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can't really talk about it. | | |
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 | MSNBC |
| Rachel Maddow shares a video of former Supreme Court Justice David Souter talking about the importance of civic knowledge in the maintenance of a democracy. | | |
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 | Charlotte Observer |
| Former Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth is scheduled to be released from prison in October 2018. Carruth’s disabled son, Chancellor Lee Adams, about to turn 17 and being raised by his grandmother in Charlotte, will be there. | | |
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 | Wired |
| On April 15, 2015, a network engineer noticed a strange signal emanating from the US Office of Personnel Management. That was just the tip of the iceberg. | | |
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 | Eater |
| Why an emerging artisanal food community is thriving in Motor City | | |
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 | CBS News |
| Social media stars are earning big money for pitching products in short, often silly, postings seen by millions of followers. Bill Whitaker reports on this new trend in advertising | | |
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 | Outside Online |
| With Airbnb and Yelp already operating in Cuba's capital, will hordes of American tourists sipping McDaiquiris ruin the very authenticity that draws us to the rebel island nation? | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| It's the Wild West in the world of virtual reality and game makers are writing and scrapping rules in real time. | | |
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 | The Fader |
| Calling out impossible beauty standards is cool, but so is consent — and control. | | |
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 | The Illusion of More |
| As AI increasingly becomes a reality in our world, removing uncertainty from life-and-death circumstances is not how we're used to coping. | | |
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 | Fortune Magazine |
| Iridium could ensure that no airliner ever is lost again-if only it could get off the ground. | | |
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 | Hollywood Reporter |
| CNN has the patina of objectivity and is more likely to draw those without a clear agenda - but increasingly it has a subtle point of view too, and it is allowing Trump's correct claims of a "media conspiracy" to legitimize his other craziness, writes the producer and THR columnist. | | |
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 | Katie Couric Podcast |
| Samantha Bee ("Full Frontal with Samantha Bee") is the only woman in America with her own late-night television show. She discusses the outrage she summons in order to do her job, how her three young kids prevent her from overthinking things, and her dozen years as a correspondent for "The Daily Show." | | |
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 | India Today |
| From no-name villages and tiny towns, the designers have made their way to the rarefied heights of the worlds most elegant runways. | | |
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 | Financial Times |
| Feeling guilty about being untidy? Don’t. A cluttered space can help you be more organised. | | |
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 | Hyperallergic |
| The CIA’s abstract art collection isn’t as “secret” as a series of articles made it seem--but it’s more politically significant than it appears, and there are still unanswered questions. Here, exclusive photographs of the collection are published for the first time. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| How an advisory firm with roots in the Democratic Party establishment fosters a network of power and politics for the benefit of its clients. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| Henry Ford, who passed up profits to provide society with good jobs and cheap cars, thought so. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed |
| A BuzzFeed News analysis found that three big right-wing Facebook pages published false or misleading information 38% of the time during the period analyzed, and three large left-wing pages did so in nearly 20% of posts. | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| From "World of Tanks" to "World of Warships," the Wargaming.net was started by a chess champion in his basement and is now a global phenomenon. | | |
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 | The Baffler |
| The alt-right hopes to be saved by the apocalypse. | | |
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 | Heavy Blog Is Heavy |
| With cold, treble-tipped tremolo riffs, agonized rasps and Satanic imagery, black metal might seem like the farthest thing from acoustic folk. But despite their distance, acoustic guitar has slowly crept into black metal since its unholy birth, even with the strict cultural norms that once governed the sound and image of black metal. | | |
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| | | | | The Cinematic Orchestra feat. Moses Sumney |
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| © Copyright 2016, The REDEF Group |
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