It was a jackpot week for Team Ankler in Vegas, where our Media and Entertainment stage at NAB Show became a hub for conversations about where the business is headed next.
Across panels and interviews, a few themes kept surfacing: AI’s growing role (and its limits), new models for building media businesses and the increasingly fragmented paths to audience.
We heard from everyone from Jen Psaki to JB Smoove, Markiplier to MatPat, and top executives, creators and investors shaping what comes next; those topics were on the table also at a private dinner hosted by Janice Min, Ari Melber and NAB’s Karen Chupka at Hakkasan. We’ll be rolling out some of these conversations as bonus Ankler Agenda podcasts and on the Ankler’s YouTube soon.
ON OUR STAGE 1. JB Smoove. 2. MS NOW’s Jen Psaki. 3. Our private dinner at Hakkasan. 4. From left: Erin MacFarlane, Susan Rovner, Scott Brown and Jana Winograde. 5. Mark Fischbach, aka Markiplier. 6. From left: MS NOW’s Ari Melber co-hosted our dinner with NAB’s Karen Chupka and our Janice Min. (NAB Show)
And now, ICYMI, our best and buzziest stories of the week:
Post-Sora, AI video is fragmenting, Erik Barmack writes, into three separate ecosystems — the feed, the creator pipeline and the edit bay — each with its own stealth threat to showbiz:
It’s not your imagination. Hollywood is populated by loud, sports-obsessed, business-driven oafs instead of the industry’s legendary misfits who delivered creativity and originality. Richard assesses the bro-ification of showbiz:
Veteran TV execsJana Winograde and Susan Rovner revealed to Elaine why they’re all in on microdramas, the name of their new app — and how they pulled off a career pivot:
Courtney Kemp, the creator-producer behind Power, tells Lesley Goldberg how she built Netflix’s Nemesis to be a franchise from day one — and what took so long in her overall deal to get going:
Katey Rich chats with Death by Lightning’s Matthew Macfadyen about his star turn as the man who assassinated President James Garfield. Plus: Hacks guest star Christopher Briney on his swoony role:
Euphoria's Bad Vibes and Impeccable Performances, Plus Matthew Macfadyen on Death by Lightning's Twisted History
Rushfield Lunch: Richard sits down with the legendary RZA to discuss his revenge thriller, RZA’s One Spoon of Chocolate, his apprenticeship with Quentin Tarantino and his love of movie theaters:
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