How 60 Minutes is being transformed by Bari Weiss

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While Netflix continues to duke it out with YouTube, and streamers like Paramount and Peacock fight over the leftover scraps, Amazon is quietly capturing a larger and larger share of the streaming market.

From Puck:

Prime Video Channels is now responsible for nearly 70 percent of all subscriptions to specialty premium streaming platforms—e.g., Crunchyroll, Acorn TV, Shudder, etcetera. (Note that the category doesn’t include non-specialty subs like HBO Max, Paramount, and Peacock. Disney+ and Netflix aren’t available through Prime.) Furthermore, about 20 percent of customers who sign up for any streaming service via Prime Video Channels sign up for another service within six months.

It still invests heavily in original programming, occasionally producing hits like Reacher and Project Hail Mary. But increasingly, that programming functions almost like a loss leader: It gets customers in the door, then encourages them to subscribe to other streaming services like HBO Max and Paramount+ through Amazon’s platform. Throw in the fact that Fire OS comes pre-installed on a significant share of new TVs, and Amazon’s ultimate endgame becomes pretty clear. As Puck’s Julia Alexander puts it, “Prime Video is finally becoming the Amazon of streaming.”

Amazon has also created tremendous user lock-in by bundling its streaming service with Prime’s delivery benefits. That allows many consumers to think of Prime Video as essentially a free add-on to a membership they were already paying for.

Then there was its savvy decision to automatically move subscribers onto an ad-supported tier. That sucked from a customer perspective, but most people begrudgingly went along with it. In the process, Amazon created a massive new pool of ad inventory for its already-booming advertising business.

So while other streamers continue competing by spending more and more on content, Amazon is turning itself into a marketplace for everyone else’s content. That reduces the pressure to outspend Netflix while giving Amazon a cut of an ever-larger portion of the streaming economy.

(I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)

When Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter launched the Design Better podcast, they did it on behalf of InVision, a tech platform used by designers and other creatives. Aaron was the head of content at the company, and the goal of the podcast was to educate the designer community while also raising awareness of the InVision brand.

But when InVision decided to wind down its content operations, Eli and Aarron negotiated to take over Design Better, and now it’s a thriving standalone business. In a recent interview, Eli talked through everything from the evolving format of the show to how it became an independent media business to its current monetization models.

From the NYT:

Google quietly rolled out a new program on Monday that will allow candidates, political parties and political action committees to more easily bypass Gmail’s spam filter and send fund-raising appeals to the inboxes of the company’s many millions of email users.

The change comes after years of complaints from Republicans that Gmail’s spam algorithm unfairly blocked their committees’ emails more than those of their Democratic counterparts, although those complaints were dismissed in court. For campaigns and PACs that meet the terms of the program, it is expected to route an influx of cash solicitations into Gmail inboxes, helping campaigns raise millions of dollars more in the final sprint to the midterm elections.

This indisputably sucks. Nearly all campaign fundraising emails are unsolicited, and they’re enabled by unethical data brokers that make it incredibly difficult to opt out of their databases. It’s pretty much the textbook definition of spam. Every day, millions of Americans are inundated with fundraising emails and text messages, and the problem seems to get worse with every election cycle. It’s disheartening to see Gmail bow to political pressure rather than take a stand against such an abusive industry. The same goes for the major phone carriers, which allow campaigns to bombard their customers with texts multiple times a day.

This is precisely why I stopped donating to political campaigns years ago. There’s been extensive reporting that Democratic leaders have explicitly endorsed these aggressive fundraising tactics. Donating simply ensures that you’ll be put on a list of targets that every campaign, no matter how small, has access to.

Here’s what I have on deck for paid subscribers:

1. How 60 Minutes is being transformed by Bari Weiss

2. Puck’s talent-forward strategy continues to pay off

Let’s jump into it…