Marketing BS Podcast: Streaming Grab Bag Marketing BS with Edward Nevraumont

Essay and Briefing production has been low the last few weeks as I have been spending more time on building a GPT-3 powered comedy writing tool (and writing “business comedy” with the tool). If you have not checked out ChatGPT in the last two weeks, you should really do so. It is much slower now than when it launched, but still mind blowing. If it is too slow you can just use the GPT Playground, which is powered by the same back-end. GPT itself moved from 3.0 to 3.5 right around when chat launched. 3.5 is very impressive (it can rhyme now!). Spend some time playing around! It’s not often that the most interesting, most advanced cutting edge technology can be in your hands this early (and practically free).
Marketing BS is on vacation the next two weeks. In early January I will be back with another podcast episode (moving to Fridays), and hopefully some more text. Have a great holiday!
Full Transcript
Edward: Were you a Westworld fan, Pete?
Peter: That first episode in the first season was one of the most awesome pieces of television I ever saw. I was hooked with the first season and maybe watched one or two more episodes. That was it. How about you?
Edward: One or two of the first season, or finished the first season and then one or two of the season?
Peter: Finished the first season, that was, must watch tv. And then in my view, it jumped the shark very quickly after that. In fact, when I saw that news that H B O is gonna give up on it I thought they were just killing the program, but I didn't realize they were actually killing the, getting rid of the catalog too. That, that's crazy.
Edward: Is this the first example of hbo? So HBO has pulled stuff from their catalog before, like they, they pulled some Sesame Street episodes people were upset with, but is this the first time they're pulling their own content from...
Peter: It's the first I know of and indeed, the Sesame Street thing is different because that's not their content, but for them to have stuff that, that should be uniquely associated with them and still does, and on catalog basis, we'll have some value for them to say, nah, we don't need this anymore. It does have me scratch in my head.
Edward: So there's no actual cost for them, whether they put it on the platform or not. There's no cost. But what there is an opportunity cost, and I think that opportunity cost has really been ignored in the past. And now they're saying, Hey, we can take this product that we have and instead of using it on our own platform, we can turn around and sell to some, sell to Netflix, sell to Amazon, have someone else owed it exclusively instead of...
Peter: But it does make you wonder, like sometimes you'll sell content outright and say, here, it's yours now. Or sometimes you'll just license content. Or access. You think about lots of examples where, I don't know where Verizon will let Comcast use Verizon's phone services as a private label kind of play. So they're not giving up on it, but they're saying, Hey, we can have other access points to it as well. I just wonder if, maybe providing broader access rather than giving up on their own access makes sense.
Edward: HBO has done that before, they kept Sopranos on their system, but they offered Sopranos to Amazon as well. So you can go on Amazon Prime and watch Old Seasons of the Sopranos. But what was happening there is it was non-exclusive. It was still available at hbo, but also available at Amazon. I think what's happening here is that there is a higher value in a piece of content that's exclusively available someplace else, and HBO's gonna try to realize that with Westworld.
Peter: So you think it's an opportunity play for them that they'll make more money by auctioning it off to the highest bid. you don't think a kind of a cost cutting move
Edward: No, I don't think there's any cost. The cost to have more video on your platform is as close to zero as it comes. The storage cost is you're storing it anyway. And I think this a