The Business of Content with Simon Owens

Simon Owens
  • 4.8 (29)
  • News Commentary
  • Updated Weekly

The show about how publishers create, distribute, and monetize their digital content.

  1. 2d ago

    How the NBA's esports league reinvented itself as a media company

    My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/ When the NBA teamed up with video game publisher Take-Two Interactive to launch an esports league in 2017, the idea was to replicate the traditional sports model within the world of competitive gaming. NBA teams would field their own esports franchises, recruiting elite gamers to compete in organized tournaments. But as the esports industry matured, it became clear that the biggest audiences weren't necessarily tuning in to watch professional gaming competitions. Instead, they were gravitating toward individual creators on platforms like Twitch and YouTube. Recognizing this shift, the NBA and Take-Two decided to rethink their joint venture, transforming it from a traditional esports league into a broader media company that produces creator-led competitions, original video series, and social content centered on basketball culture. To lead this transformation, they hired Andrew Perlmutter, a media executive who previously worked at The Atlantic and The Daily Beast. Since becoming CEO of NBA Take-Two Media in 2023, Perlmutter has overseen the reinvention of the NBA 2K League while developing a slate of original programming designed to reach audiences well beyond hardcore basketball fans.  In a recent interview, we discussed why the traditional esports business model struggled to gain traction, how the company is building a network of creator-led shows and social media franchises, and how it plans to turn that programming into a sustainable business through sponsorships, licensing, and other revenue streams.

  2. 4d ago

    How a freelance writer turned a job board into a thriving subscription business

    Amy Suto spent years climbing the Hollywood ladder, eventually landing a writing credit on the TV series Condor. But by the time she achieved that milestone, she was already questioning whether she wanted to spend the rest of her career writing other people's stories. Meanwhile, she had built a lucrative side business ghostwriting memoirs for everyone from professional athletes to wealthy entrepreneurs. She eventually left Hollywood behind and began building a career that now spans multiple businesses, including a ghostwriting consultancy, a paid Substack newsletter, a freelance job board, and several self-published novels. She's also cultivated a large audience on TikTok, where she shares advice on how to make a living as a professional writer. In a recent interview, Amy explained how she manages to juggle so many creative projects while still finding time to pursue new business opportunities, how she built a Substack with more than 1,000 paid subscribers by putting curated freelance job opportunities behind a paywall, and how she's using serialized fiction to generate recurring revenue while building an audience for her novels.

  3. Oct 14

    Will Apple TV ever turn a profit?

    Despite producing critically acclaimed shows like Severance, Slow Horses, and The Morning Show, Apple TV remains one of the smallest players in the streaming industry. It also reportedly loses billions of dollars a year, which raises an interesting question: Does Apple actually care whether its streaming service turns a profit? Or is the company perfectly happy to subsidize expensive Hollywood productions if they help sell more iPhones and drive subscriptions to its broader services ecosystem? And if Apple does want to become a serious competitor to Netflix and Amazon, what would it need to change about its business strategy? To help answer these questions, I invited back Jason Krebs, a media industry veteran who's held senior roles at The New York Times, Google, and Disney. We discussed why Apple has been so reluctant to embrace advertising, whether its limited content library is holding back subscriber growth, and how its investments in live sports might fit into its long-term ambitions. We also talked about the growing number of traditional media companies launching newsletters on Substack. Once viewed primarily as a platform for independent journalists looking to escape legacy media, Substack is increasingly attracting established publishers like The Economist, The New Yorker, and The Ringer. What's driving this shift? Are these companies simply experimenting with a new distribution channel, or do they see Substack as a way to reach paying subscribers who would never visit their websites? And could these standalone newsletters eventually cannibalize their existing subscription businesses?

  4. Oct 9

    A former touring musician is building the next children's entertainment empire.

    My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/ After spending more than two decades touring with some of the biggest names in music — including the Jonas Brothers, John Legend, Eminem, and Selena Gomez — Benji Woerly decided it was time to build something of his own. He turned to an idea his father had dreamed up back in 1994: a fictional world populated by magical creatures called the Soovins. What began as a small passion project has evolved into an animated children's YouTube channel with more than 138,000 subscribers and several videos that have generated hundreds of thousands of views. And Woerly has much bigger ambitions. He wants to turn The Soovins into a global entertainment franchise that spans streaming platforms, music, merchandise, and live events. In a recent interview, Woerly discussed how he assembled a production team with virtually no animation experience, why he's treating YouTube primarily as an audience-building platform rather than a major revenue source, and how he plans to leverage that audience into lucrative distribution and licensing deals.

  5. Oct 8

    Is Facebook now a zombie social network?

    For years, Facebook has steadily reduced the organic reach of businesses and publishers, forcing them to pay for advertising if they want to reach the audiences they've spent years building. Now Meta is taking things a step further by imposing what amounts to a link tax: Businesses that want to post more than two external links per month to their Facebook pages will have to pay at least $49.99 a month. News publishers are supposedly exempt from the new policy, but given Meta's history of broken promises, there's little reason for them to feel secure. At this point, is there any reason for a media company to maintain a Facebook presence at all? To discuss this, I sat down with Jason Krebs, a media industry veteran who's held senior roles at Google, The New York Times, and Disney. Jason has spent decades navigating the complicated relationship between media companies and the technology platforms they depend on for distribution. We discussed why publishers continue investing resources into Facebook despite its dwindling organic reach, whether the platform still offers any meaningful value, and why media companies should be wary of building audiences they don't directly control. We also turned our attention to Paramount Skydance's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and the enormous challenges that lie ahead. David Ellison plans to combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into a single streaming service, but integrating millions of subscribers while managing $81 billion in debt could prove far more complicated than executives anticipate. We discussed whether the merger will deliver any meaningful benefits to consumers, why Ellison decided to keep Mark Thompson in charge of CNN, and whether the combined company has an opportunity to build a streaming platform that blends Hollywood productions with creator-generated content.

  6. Oct 2

    Has the Conde Nast magazine empire lost its influence?

    Condé Nast was once synonymous with the excesses of the magazine industry's golden age: chauffeured cars, lavish photo shoots, enormous expense accounts, and glossy titles that commanded both cultural influence and premium advertising dollars. That world is long gone, but Condé Nast itself has endured. With CEO Roger Lynch now leaving the company, it's a good moment to ask what remains of that old empire. Has Condé Nast successfully reinvented itself around subscriptions, events, and premium advertising, or has it simply become a smaller, less culturally relevant version of what it once was? To talk through that question, I brought back Jason Krebs, a media veteran who has held senior roles at The New York Times, Google, and Disney. Jason also spent time at Condé Nast, giving him a firsthand view of how the company operated during an earlier era. We discussed how the publisher survived the collapse of the print advertising model, why its decision to avoid the programmatic advertising race mattered, and whether the next generation of leaders can keep brands like Vogue, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair relevant. We also dug into another question facing legacy media companies: Should the traditional wall between editorial and business still be quite so high? As creators build lucrative businesses around sponsorships, merchandise, and other direct monetization, many traditional publishers and TV networks still leave their biggest digital audiences largely in the hands of platform revenue shares. Jason and I discussed why editorial and commercial teams should be talking to each other more often, how those collaborations can happen without compromising journalistic independence, and what the media industry can learn from creators who have become much better at monetizing the trust and attention they've built.

  7. Sep 30

    How a few local meetups spawned an entire B2B media company

    My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Startup CPG didn't begin as a media company. It started with Daniel Scharff inviting a few people from the consumer packaged goods industry to meet up at a bar in San Francisco. But those informal gatherings eventually grew into something much larger: a 40,000-member Slack community, dozens of in-person events, a podcast, webinars, newsletters, social channels, and an awards program for emerging brands. Along the way, Scharff realized he had effectively backed into building a media company — one whose audience consists of the founders, investors, retailers, and service providers powering the next generation of food, beverage, beauty, and wellness brands. In a recent interview, Scharff explained how the pandemic helped transform a local events company into a national community, why Startup CPG keeps most of its products free while generating the bulk of its revenue from sponsorships, and how its events are increasingly designed to connect emerging brands directly with the retailers and investors who can accelerate their growth.

  8. Sep 24

    Are betting apps fueling a sports bubble?

    Sports betting has become one of the most important new revenue streams in sports media, but the relationship is quickly moving beyond simple advertising. News organizations and broadcasters are increasingly incorporating betting odds and prediction-market data directly into their coverage, blurring the line between journalism and gambling promotion. At the same time, legalized betting may be helping drive more attention toward live sports, giving fans a financial incentive to watch games they otherwise wouldn't care about — just as streamers like Amazon, Netflix and YouTube are bidding aggressively for sports rights and team valuations continue to climb.   To unpack all of this, I brought back Jason Krebs, a media veteran who has worked at Google, The New York Times and Disney. We discussed whether media companies can justify embedding prediction markets into their journalism, how sports betting has become intertwined with the economics of live sports, and whether the massive influx of streaming money is creating a bubble in sports rights and franchise valuations.

See All (317)

4.8
out of 5
29 Ratings

About

The show about how publishers create, distribute, and monetize their digital content.

Information

You Might Also Like