Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Rayburn Podcast, the show that curates the streaming media industry news that matters most, unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the factual data you need to know, without any of the hype, the pulse of the streaming media industry.

Speaker 2 0:22

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn Podcast. I am Dan Rayburn. I'm co-host Mark Donegan recording on Friday October 18th Mark, it was a busy week for news.

Speaker 3 0:31

Yes, it was.

Speaker 2 0:32

I'm going to apologize in advance for my voice. I've been talking all week. It's starting to go already. I don't know. This week was just exhausting for some reason.

Speaker 3 0:40

How many shows were you on?

Speaker 2 0:43

Actually I only did two this week around Netflix earnings oh okay, yeah, yeah, just two.

Speaker 2 0:48

Just I don't know. Just a tiring week, a lot going on with news. So let's jump into what we're going to cover here. We're obviously going to cover Netflix earnings. We've got some things on Nielsen, the Gotham Sports app launched a week ago. I've got a little bit of review on that. We've got news from peacock, warner bros, discovery, prime video, youtube, espn, nba, the ftc that was kind of interesting. Uh, then a few other pieces here just in terms of uh, some some content news. And we're also going to talk about producing podcasts with ai at the end, because I've seen some things that I definitely don't agree with that people are posting online. But let's jump in real quickly to thanking this week's podcast sponsor again, ids. If you guys don't know who they are integrated-digitalcom. These guys produce some of the most efficient backend development in the industry across content discovery systems, custom video processing in the cloud, pretty focused and tailored in what they do. So check them out, integrated-digitalcom.

Speaker 2 1:53

Let's jump into Netflix. So, mark, we have some you know, some things to cover here that Netflix gave us, but frankly, not a lot. I'd say. More of what we're covering here is, again, just, I don't understand why the media is getting so much wrong here. So let's just go through the basic numbers here. Netflix and Q3 added 5.07 million subscribers globally, so they now have a total global sub count of almost 283 million. Revenue of 9.83 billion billion, which was up 15 percent year over year. Free cash flow in the quarter of 2.19 billion pretty good number, but you know, here's the numbers I'm looking at. They're projecting free cash flow for 2024 the whole year of between six to six and a half billion dollars, which is incredible it is for 2025, they forecast total revenue between 43 to 44 billion, with a 28 operating margin.

Speaker 2 2:57

So netflix balance sheet still doing very well. If anyone's trying to convince you otherwise, they're wrong. Yeah, uh, also, netflix gave us this stat that netflix engagement now averages two hours a day per paid membership.

Speaker 2 3:13

So that was kind of interesting yeah, that's incredible the stock closed today up 11 just over, so almost 77 up today to 763 dollars and 89 cents. It got multiple price raises on Wall Street anywhere from targets where between 800 and the low 850 on the high. So still doing well there from a stock standpoint. Now let's talk about the ad side. We still don't know how many total subs Netflix has on the Avod side. They didn't talk about it, but they did say that their ads plan accounted for over 50% of signups in countries where it's available and the membership in Netflix ads plan grew 35% quarter over quarter. They had a bunch of people online being like, okay, 35% means nothing, we don't have much. That's growing Agreed means nothing, we don't have much that's growing Agreed, but you're talking about 50%. Over 50% of signups in countries where it's offered are taking the AVOD plan yeah that's right.

Speaker 2 4:11

Right, that's a big number. The other thing is they're doing a broader launch to you know, all ad. So if you think about where they are right now with the ad plan, it's continuing to roll out a lot of additional countries. It's it's not everywhere yet, so it's actually in less. If you think about it's in less than seven percent of all the countries netflix is available. And now that number is a little um, it's accurate, but it's's a little misleading, because the US makes up 30% of Netflix total.

Speaker 3 4:48

Yeah, I was going to say those are some of the biggest countries.

Speaker 2 4:51

Right. However, it shows there's still a lot of room to grow here. Yeah, yeah, Netflix said that they'll roll out their first party ad tech platform in Canada next month and a broader launch to all ad countries in 2025. Platform in Canada next month and a broader launch to all ad countries in 2025. Now Netflix again reinforced quote it takes time to build a new revenue stream. We don't expect ads to be a primary driver of our revenue growth in 2025. So again, the folks who are just like hey, they're not moving fast enough, um, they've.

Speaker 2 5:31

Netflix has not changed what the projections are. They're going to wall street in terms of when they think the avod business is going to have material impact in the company, which is 2026. That's where they're seeing the growth come from and they've stuck to that. That's the reality of it. A quick breakdown on their paid net and so be it. In us and canada, uh, emea, emea, an apac, uh, but there was that was partially offset by a slight um net decline in latam. Netflix says that was primarily driven by price increases and weaker content in the region. Now, during the the call call with the management team, I thought it was interesting, mark. We had all these questions around price raises and all this other stuff. Nobody asked a question about the NFL games at Christmas. That's incredible, I know. I just I wonder. Like just what is the point here that analysts are missing when you think about the NFL and their history has never given a streaming service global rights ever yeah until christmas with netflix for two games like that's a really big deal.

Speaker 2 6:32

Based on an ama metric, it's going to be the largest streaming event ever in the us. Yeah, so interesting that people still aren't talking about that now. Netflix by themselves mentioned the tyson fight, jake paul, nfl, wwe and mark the. The term they kept using for that was events as opposed to live programming. Yeah, season specific live sport. They just keep reinforcing to everybody.

Speaker 3 7:03

We like event driven material yeah, and that's the live events business, but it's events that's right and we've called that out before you know you've made that reference, that you know. Look, netflix thinks of these as events. You know they are, and they are viewed as um sort of individual entertainment.

Speaker 2 7:23

Um well, events yeah, that's, that's what they are, they're one-offs, yeah exactly a little bit different, because that'll be in a regular basis, but it's still one sure per week, sure, sure, yeah, but for those that are still writing, okay, you know, netflix is just struggling.

Speaker 3 7:38

I saw the word struggle yeah, I saw, I saw that too. I saw that around the ad business.

Speaker 2 7:43

I was like go look up the definition of struggle.

Speaker 3 7:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell the analysts to have an $800 or $850 price target on Netflix, now that Netflix is struggling.

Speaker 2 7:56

It's interesting the folks writing that are not looking to financials, they're not looking for free cash flow, no, no, they're not looking at what Netflix is projecting next year. Yeah, talking about projecting a 28% operating margin? Yeah, I don't think they know what an operating margin is.

Speaker 3 8:11

No, no, what free cash?

Speaker 2 8:12

flow is, which is my guess of why they're just avoiding it.

Speaker 3 8:15

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 8:16

So odd to me.

Speaker 3 8:17

Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 8:29

The other thing is yes, we know Netflix is going to stop reporting subscriber metrics next year. No one should be concerned by that. They've been reinforcing over time that its business is going to move from a high growth, low profit business to a slow growth, high profit business. So nothing wrong with that. Um, you know, mark, I did call out. You know one thing I saw an article yesterday on advanced television, a website. Now, first problem here is I don't understand how you can be a news site these days and get away with publishing articles with no authors. That is the strangest thing to me. Yeah, so advanced television published an article titled Netflix excels at user retention. And then it's based on data from a company called bb media and even though there's a chart here and all this other stuff, yeah, the bottom line is they're saying netflix wins because it has a lot of content compared to apple tv plus.

Speaker 2 9:18

Like we need a report in the market to tell us that yeah we know, content is king yeah so silly but also interesting, talking about retention, retention, retention. With no numbers in here, right because you don't know what the numbers are.

Speaker 2 9:32

Netflix doesn't but yeah, there was a lot of, there was a lot of sense after netflix earnings, as usual. Um, I wasn't too surprised. But bottom line is is Netflix is doing very well? Now let's move into Nielsen. Uh, nielsen, you know just, I just don't get it. So Nielsen put out their gauge, you know report like they do every month, and they say September NFL did really big because of prime video. Yeah, doesn't surprise anybody, I mean everybody. Mark reported on this chart. Reported on this chart. I didn't see a single report. Maybe someone got to it, but I didn't see a single one that noticed.

Speaker 2 10:11

In the fine print, nielsen says, quote linear streaming, including virtual mvpds and mvpd apps, have been removed from the streaming category. They've also been removed from the streaming category. They've also been removed from other streaming and Hulu and YouTube now reflect usage to Hulu SVOD and YouTube main without their respective Hulu live and YouTube TV. Well, you know, we've always asked like what exactly are they measuring in terms of these different services? Yeah, and I had never seen previously them calling out what was included in some of these buckets. Now, the fact that they're calling out they've removed certain services. Now we know what used to be in them, but no one seems to pick up on that, which to me was very odd, because it changes the numbers. You're now comparing Netflix premium Asfod Avaat service to what they're calling YouTube main. Now we know that YouTube TV is not involved.

Speaker 3 11:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2 11:15

So you're comparing that to just a free service of YouTube where more than half the content, according to YouTube's own numbers from last year, was less than three minutes long. Yeah, exactly. So it's fascinating how now we have some information and no one in the media picked it up. And also, I can't believe I actually have to say this Nielsen is supposed to be the digital currency of our entire industry. Anyone from Nielsen is listening. You're spelling YouTube wrong. How can?

Speaker 2 11:47

you not spell the company's name properly in all your charts? I don't get it. I really don't. Youtube is capital U, capital T one word.

Speaker 2 12:00

It shows not only the lack of understanding of the market you're in. It shows not only the lack of understanding of the market you're in. It shows a complete lack of attention to detail. I mean, you can't spell YouTube correctly, really, so check out the chart if you want to. On Nielsen, I don't find it useful at all. I really never found anything Nielsen's very helpful, to be honest, but of course that's what we're using in the industry, since these companies don't put out anything themselves.

Speaker 2 12:30

Let's go into the launch of Gotham Sports app. Oh yeah, so last week the Gotham Sports app launched. This is a joint venture between yes Network and MSG Networks was not a great experience. I was notified about it the day it launched because users and people in the industry were writing it to me. So then I went on LinkedIn and Twitter and started looking at all these comments. So many technical issues because users couldn't log in. They couldn't log in using the Google feature. Then the Google feature was removed. They were sharing screenshots on the phone where the app was directing users to subscription sections of the phone with pricing that doesn't match the website oh no yeah, and then users trying to log in on tv were giving a message on the tv of hey, it seems you created an account on social.

Speaker 2 13:20

Go log in there, social what? You're not providing any sort of link. You also had reporters, you know, talking sorry reports of people being in chat queues for a long time and not getting help. I was complaining online even though Twitter Gotham sports account wasn't posting any updates. They finally did and they basically just said sorry for people having problems. Go here to the support page. The problem is, when you went to the support page, um when.

Speaker 2 13:52

I was typing in um, when you had a problem on on the TV, you know it would give you a word or whatnot, whatever it may be. But when you type that word in the support page it would say no results found. So I'm just like, oh really, that's a problem. Keep in mind this thing costs $42 a month.

Speaker 1 14:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2 14:14

Or the limited time promotional price of $320 for the year. Wow, others were logging in, but then all the games were locked. Now when you went to the Gotham Sports support page and you put in the word games locked, you got a no results found message. Great, so that was an issue. So you know a lot of problems here. But this is going to just sort of put it in terms people can understand, so I'm going to read this real quickly. Okay, here's how you sign up. Okay, you ready.

Speaker 2 14:49

If you purchase a subscription to MSG Plus and are the yes app via the web, apple, google or Roku, your subscription will migrate seamlessly to the app. If you have accounts with both MSG and yes app, you have to log in using the yes app credentials. If you purchase a subscription to MSG Plus on the YesApp via any other platform, you need to cancel your subscription on the platform and re-subscribe through the web. Now, in some cases, your subscription will be automatically canceled by the platform and a refund applied. If your television provider subscription includes yes network but not msg, you'll only have access to yes content within the gotham sports app, but then you can purchase a separate msg subscription directly from the website. That's actually what their website says. Hey, could that be more confusing? And the the one that I found funny, mark, was in some cases, your subscription will be automatically canceled.

Speaker 1 15:52

Oh really, what are the cases?

Speaker 2 15:54

And how am I going to be notified? Yeah, exactly, and if you really want more than what we're giving you, go cancel your other stuff first. I'm just like wow.

Speaker 3 16:02

Yeah.

Speaker 2 16:03

Now the other thing is for those in the industry tracking all this. Remember that gotham, when they announced that they were going to be launching this, also said that they were going to get into the business of selling their technology to other ott providers and sports leagues and whomever else who wanted to get into the ott game. Because they have all this expertise and rolling this out to the industry.

Speaker 2 16:24

I can't imagine anyone's going to buy this? That doesn't look. So that's that app. Let's move into Wall Street Journal's reporting that Peacock will begin offering NBC-owned RSNs in early 2025. That's pretty interesting.

Speaker 3 16:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2 16:43

If you live in Boston, philadelphiaadelphia, california, um, you might be able to get some, some content from rsn's. Now, what we don't know is is this going to be free? And peacock, I doubt it. You would think there's going to be a price on top of the normal subscription, but we don't know.

Speaker 2 16:58

Just again goes to show how confusing the the rsn landscape is yeah, for sure uh, warner bros discovery announced that they're gonna launch max in indonesia, malaysia, philippines, singapore and thailand, also taiwan and hong kong, so that's coming no surprise. The interesting to note there is in some countries they'll have a mobile only plan no surprise to me. Yeah, some of those countries are absolutely mobile, first Yep. Or even mobile only.

Speaker 3 17:31

Yeah, or only that's a valid point? Yeah, I mean really yeah.

Speaker 2 17:34

No details on pricing. They're going to release that in the coming weeks. Also, amazon's going to expand their ads in Prime Video to a whole bunch of other places in New Year India, brazil, japan, new Zealand. Not surprising, there Also some Amazon news. The rumors are true that we heard a week ago about Brian Williams. He is going to host a one-night special in Prime Video on election night, delivering election results and analysis, so I'm interested to see what that looks like. I'll be watching a lot on election night, just streaming-wise. Amazon also said he's going to be joined by various experts across news and politics. Don't know who that is. And then the good thing I liked here, mark, is it's going to be available on Prime Video for free, regardless of whether or not you have a Prime membership.

Speaker 2 18:21

Yeah, that's good, which I would expect.

Speaker 3 18:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2 18:27

YouTube real quick. Check out their blog post. They announced over two dozen improvements coming to its player, so that's really good to see. Uh, espn. Espn has been pushing out a lot of press releases over last week about wmba and look, women's basketball. It growing. That's a great thing, nothing wrong with that, but you know they're leading with the most viewed in 25 years. Viewers up 142%. That's all great, and then those numbers are accurate, but they still average less than a million viewers. Across 17 playoff games, it was 970,000 viewers. So, hey, good Growth is great, yeah, but keep it good. Growth is great, yeah, but keep it in perspective. It's less than a million viewers. Some NBA news the NBA announced launching new features for the NBA app for the 20, let's see NBA season 2024, 2025 season. It's too many to cover, but the two biggest ones that I think are most relevant is multi, multi view, so you can watch up to four games at the same time, yeah, yeah and they're also going to be offering game recaps in french, portuguese and spanish.

Speaker 2 19:34

So I think that's that's good. The price on nab and nba league pass premium ad free is 160160 a season or $25 a month. They also have the package with ads for $110 a year or $17 a month. Now, going back to RSN's mark, the Dallas Mavericks announced NBA games are going to be available for free to local fans across more OTA stations in Texas. So they let's see when they're not exclusively normally televised. There's eight additional broadcast stations that are joining six, so approximately 14 million people in texas will now have access over the air across great television. Next star sinclair, uh, tanga. So that's that's great to see trying to make it as as easy as possible, but again, it's another example of how ugly the RSN business is right now.

Speaker 3 20:36

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 20:37

So the Federal Trade Commission has announced their final click-to-cancel ruling and the whole goal here is to make it easier for consumers to end reoccurring subscriptions and memberships without having to jump through a lot of hoops. So this provision will go into effect 180 days after it's published into the Federal Register, so next year. And if you don't know what this is, bottom line is businesses a few of the things, I'm not going to cover them all, but businesses can't force consumers to cancel subscription using a different method from how they signed up. So sometimes companies will say, okay, well, you can't cancel on the line, you need to call us, knowing that you're never going to get through.

Speaker 3 21:26

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 21:27

So that's, that's never fun, that's the age-old trick. Call us, you can cancel.

Speaker 3 21:33

And then you call there's no one there.

Speaker 2 21:37

So this is going to apply to anything that's renewing subscription-based gym memberships, magazine subscriptions, streaming memberships. It also covers free trials that charge you if you don't cancel in time. Now, not surprisingly, the MPA Motion Control Association of America didn't want this. They were fighting it. They also represent Netflix and others, and I have to read what they said here because it's just comical. They said, quote if we simplify the cancellation process, member companies will not be able to offer alternative plans or discounts to users. Why not? You can just email them. That's odd. But then this one was even better. They said, quote consumers generally do not think that they can cancel with one click. So if it becomes possible to cancel with one click, one click. So if we, if it becomes possible to cancel with one click, there's a possibility that unintended cancellations will increase which I thought was I give them credit for being creative.

Speaker 2 22:41

but now they're saying it's so easy to cancel that you might accidentally click cancel subscription. So obviously they didn't win here. Now, what did happen here? I didn't see people reporting this either. If you read the fine print from the FTC, the commission voted to adopt a final rule with certain changes, and most notably, they dropped a requirement that sellers provide annual reminders to consumers of the negative option feature of their subscription. Right, so they don't want you being reminded once a year, but illegally. Oh, by the way, you still have a subscription that maybe you don't know about.

Speaker 3 23:20

Yeah.

Speaker 2 23:21

So they did win there deal they were going to do here on sellers telling consumers seeking to cancel their subscription about plan modifications or reasons to keep their existing agreement without first asking if they want to hear about them. So I thought that was interesting so I did a quick check. Uh, mark, this was in the last couple of months. For Netflix, it takes five steps to sign up, takes six to cancel, but in no time did they try and um, save me from canceling by offering other. You know? Oh, but wait, there's a better deal.

Speaker 2 24:02

Prime video takes two steps to sign up to cancel, but it tries to save you from canceling two times. Yeah, so this total varies by service. Once this takes into effect, if it takes you two or three clicks to sign up, from what I understand here, the ftc is saying that's how many it can take you to cancel. So we'll see how that's actually rolled out by these companies. But I think it's a good thing. Uh, I saw AFTV News, which is a news website, put out some news saying Walmart's on 4K Pro with Google TV has been a big hit. I don't know what that's in reference to, since we've never had data on how that's being sold.

Speaker 3 24:44

But it's a big hit, dan. Big hit, yeah, big hit, huge.

Speaker 2 24:45

Big hit, yeah, big hit, huge. Thompson Electronics is going to sell the same device, but in Europe under the name Thompson Streaming Box Plus 270. So there you go, mark. Yeah, ask how many people you know. Hey, are you going to be buying that? Thompson Streaming Box Plus 270?

Speaker 3 25:04

device Plus 270?.

Speaker 2 25:06

Yeah, really, guys, that's the best branding you can do here.

Speaker 3 25:13

Wow, guys, that's the best branding you can do here. Uh, wow. Well, I'm pretty certain that thompson is just a licensed brand, that you literally can just, you know, pay a very small fee and you can put it on your product. I'm pretty certain, potentially, thompson and and and rca um, now it might be that they are tied to a handful of oems in china that are, you know, so it could be that. But still at the end of the day, and that's why, when you go in uh target or you go in walmart or you go in these kind of big chain stores and you go in the electronics aisle and you'll see all these, like I mean, you'll see cables, you'll see power strips, you'll see all the stuff with, like, the rca brand on it yeah, just you know yeah, exactly, and yet they're all different.

Speaker 3 25:57

You know, packages, form factors, colors. I mean, it's super clear that this is not the same company, that's.

Speaker 2 26:04

You know like, hey, we're gonna at least make all of our stuff the same, you know and yet it's essentially the same device oh, 100, yeah, and so I thought it was interesting because af tv news is like oh, this is a big deal, this is so great for consumers and I'm like so great for consumers. Well, first of all, this box is really slow, yeah. Second, it only runs google tv 12. Oh, wow, right, google streamer is google tv 14, so it's way behind. And then I saw people online being like it's such a steal at 30 pounds, and then every person's like but it doesn't have gigi, so I bought that it doesn't have micro sd, so I bought that and so you spent 100 pounds on it.

Speaker 2 26:41

So now it's no longer a cheap device, it's an expensive device. That's slow, yeah, with an older os, yeah. But yeah, we're seeing some of these devices, to your point Mark, just be rebranded under a different brand outside the US.

Speaker 1 26:55

Yeah.

Speaker 2 26:56

So this is coming to Europe at some point. So you know, put on your Christmas wishlist that you want the Thompson Streaming Box Plus 270. It's just incredible. You wonder if these companies use their own products. Yeah, let's go back to Europe here for a minute. So this is always an interesting one here.

Speaker 2 27:17

So, for those that are tracking what's going on in European telcos, they've been asking for basically a traffic tax on content owners based on traffic growth, and there's been this whole debate back and forth about who should pay this, and transit and peering and free and interconnects, and just on and on and on, and it's all political and everyone's posturing for what they want. Almost everyone I've seen commented on it. You know put out a report, study paper as a conflict of interest. Um, so, uh, you know, fascinating that basically the lobby for EU telecom, connect Europe, you know, is telling policymakers the industry is suffering. Um, you know they don't have funds to invest in infrastructure. Um, you know who's one of the ones telling policymakers it's struggling, just put out an investor deck to investors and is absolutely thriving.

Speaker 1 28:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 28:20

It's stronger than ever. So this is directly from them. Yeah, these are the slides by their CEO saying that Deutsche Telekom is stronger than ever and, quote is tough to compete with them because of how well they're doing. And then, if you look at the financials, their financials are doing really well.

Speaker 3 28:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2 28:43

So they're one of the fastest growing telcos in Europe.

Speaker 2 28:54

In Europe and the company actually was recently said they're continuously investing in fiber and in 5G, so we can see their numbers, we can see how profitable the business is, we can see how well they're doing. But then the European Commission came out and said um, basically that we should not look at the numbers or their financers, because that, um, it is just positive results from one company is not a sector wide trend. But if you actually go and look at the profitability and loss of these companies, it is a sector-wide trend, yeah, yeah. At the same time, you have the European Commission that is saying the EU telecom sector is not able to invest enough in networks due to a weak return on capital. And then you got TT telling investors man, we're doing good and we're making a lot of money and we're profitable and here's our margins. So just absolutely silly.

Speaker 2 29:57

Tying into this which I thought was really interesting is you see some of these folks pointing to charts like look, here's how much traffic's growing. This is why you know so-and-so can't invest Well. At the same time, it was interesting today that Elsia E-L-I-S-A, which is a Finnish Finnish Is that the way you say it? Yeah, finnish.

Speaker 2 30:20

Yeah, I guess Country region. They just disclosed an error in their traffic growth numbers, so all the traffic growth that they were talking about for the past two years it's gone. There was actually a drop in Finnish mobile data traffic, so I thought that was. Interesting too is here are some of these regulators and others saying look, because of this data we have, look how much traffic is growing in this particular region of the world, and then that operator comes down and goes oops, our data was wrong, it actually declined.

Speaker 3 30:59

And isn't the European Union, or at least a number of the regulators, basing their limitations of like, for example, 4k, or even prohibiting 8K, or you can only stream, you know, above like 12 megabits, and all these, and they're basing it on congestion, right, you know? In other words, the networks are too crowded.

Speaker 2 31:24

Yeah, I haven't looked at all that in the spectrum and everything.

Speaker 3 31:26

But in this. You know this is now, you know, pandemic. When you'll recall that Netflix was forced to cut, you know, their top profile for 4K because the European Union said you know, we're not going to allow you to stream at 18 megabits.

Speaker 2 31:44

I don't remember. I know YouTube was, I didn't remember that Netflix.

Speaker 3 31:47

Netflix. Yeah, netflix also got called out. Now I don't know if maybe that all sort of just went back to. Maybe there was three months they adjusted it down and now they're back to streaming. You know, I don't know, but yeah, interesting to see the numbers.

Speaker 2 32:03

And the bottom line here is, when you're having a debate like this.

Speaker 2 32:12

Anybody, you and me included could just slice off a piece of data to make it look like it's supporting our thesis. You have to look at all of the data in the market from all the parties involved, and nobody ever seems to do that with these debates, and I'll just throw into here. Lisa also announced in a slide deck that I put up on LinkedIn that, due to a new codec implemented in their IPTV service, they've reduced the amount of data transfer by up to 30%, while providing the same quality video with lower bandwidth and reducing its electricity consumption. So, mark, I bring that up because you know, lately there's been some new. I don't want to call them CDNs because they're not. They're companies in beta that raised a little bit of money saying that they have a new decentralized way to deliver video token based blah blah, bitcoin mining, something or other DeFi throw in every other word you want or other DeFi throw in every other word you want. Right, and they're talking about, because of all the quote capacity restraints, you need to implement new multicast enabled something or other.

Speaker 3 33:16

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 33:17

And you know one of them. I just I pulled out. Here's what they're saying. You know that they do Multicast technology, breakthrough, token incentives, driving decentralization, pandemic-driven rise in streaming costs. Actually, streaming costs have gone down, scaling high bitrate content delivery by enabling 4K and 8K streaming. Who's doing 8K? And then they use the example well, notice, prime Video could only deliver Thursday night football on 1080p. No, it's not that, they can only deliver it. Yeah, as we've heard Amazon say directly from the Prime Video team, they don't see a business benefit in delivering 4K. So I've always said the theory of a proposed replacement is always more appealing than the reality of a solution in use.

Speaker 3 34:05

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 34:07

That's the case here, yeah that's right, that's the case here?

Speaker 2 34:10

Yeah, for sure. I love the fact that we're seeing examples from operators, carriers, contenders, broadcasters, saying hey, by the way, we're delivering the same quality experience we were a year or two ago, with fewer bits and less electricity. You're using the best technology in the marketplace and what your business model is and what your needs are. Using the best technology in the market, based on what your business model is and what your needs are. This idea that everything we're doing now is broken has to be replaced. Can't scale because it's not multicast or some other technology thing that a company wants to sell. Also, every one of these companies. Mark and I look back at cdnlistcom, where you can see a list of just companies dating back to the mid-90s, when the CDN market started Around 2000,. There was 15 to 20 different CDNs that we're all talking about. Really, what people are talking about today, which is peer-assisted delivery, none of them made it back then, none of them are making it today, and every single time I exchange emails or LinkedIn with one of these companies, they're all in beta. None of them have a real customer. They've never been deployed. Yeah, they will drop like oh well, the carrier is testing us. Okay, they're testing you in a lab? A lab? Yeah, that doesn't count.

Speaker 2 35:23

And then the ones that do come out, yeah, notice, it's all user-generated content. It's never a studio, it's never a sports league, it's never a broadcaster. It's all user generated content. It's never a studio, it's never a sports league, it's never a broadcaster. It's user generated content. And it's for sites and people who are trying to create a business online generating their own content. But it's content people aren't going to pay for, so there's never a lot of traffic. So the whole point of your solution is to handle volume, which you don't have. So interesting just to see that out in the market. But don't be fooled by it. Right? The reality is it's not. The method we're using to deliver video today is not broken. Now, does it need to be optimized? Yes, are there places where the QoS has to get better? Yes, are there ways to do it with better route optimization, redundancy? Yes, we're going to continue to do that, but what we're doing is, you know, we're optimizing it.

Speaker 2 36:17

Mark, one of the things I thought of the other day and I forget where I saw this, but the BIC pen. You know, I looked up the history of the BIC pen and it's fascinating because if you look at the actual images of the Bic pen over the last 30 or 40 years, maybe even longer, the basic Bic pen has never changed. It's never changed. But what was interesting was one year, what did change and you couldn't see it, just if you took a photo of it was kids were chewing on the top and swallowing it, choking on it. So what Bic did was they inserted a hole in the cap. So if that happened, you could still breathe. And I thought that was fascinating. Because what did BIC do? They didn't change their entire pen, they didn't redesign it, they fine-tuned it.

Speaker 3 37:05

That is super interesting. I never knew that. Because I mean, now that you talk about the hole, I'm like'm like, yeah, there's a hole in the top and I've always sort of wondered, like, why is that there? Don't, don't you want to like not let the air, you know, touch the ink so it dries out?

Speaker 2 37:21

yeah, I had no idea. I just I didn't even know there was a hole. I can't remember.

Speaker 3 37:24

Wow, actually when you say that I'm like well but yeah, that's why there's a hole.

Speaker 2 37:28

weird now. Wow, here's what's fascinating. A year or two years ago, or whatnot, bic decided to change the ballpoint in their pen, apparently from metal to some sort of plastic and, as a result, apparently the pen stinks. So look what happened when they tried to change something that was already working well. Now I don't know if they've changed it back. I'm not like a pen expert now. Yeah, so people started emailing me questions about pens. I don't know.

Speaker 3 37:56

Yeah next thing, you know, dan, it's a new line of business for you.

Speaker 2 38:00

I don't want to be the pen expert. But it's a great example of where, if something's working well, you fine tune it. You don't have to change your entire technology. And that is the CDM market today.

Speaker 3 38:11

Yeah, so I can actually amplify what you just said, and I think there's a very important lesson in what you said and then what I'm. You know, those who are finding themselves, you know, looking for new opportunities or are worried about, you know, futures, really need to listen up. And this is I just came back from Demuxed and you know it's the video engineering meetup of, at least for our industry and, you know, sort of ground zero. It's in San Francisco. You've got, I mean, all the biggest platforms that were there. Yeah, it, it, it is, but but it's like it's the, you know, I don't know, dare I say, the smartest nerds and the ones that you know like a lot of super senior people, the people who are, you know, making these engineering decisions and they're doing the R&D.

Speaker 3 39:12

So the point is is that there's one particular company again, I won't even hint at who they are, but you know we talk about them from time to time who has a very strong and for years has had a very strong video podac engineering team a lot of PhDs, very, very smart people, smart, some of the smartest in the industry. Well, that team is now being redeployed and what's super interesting is that it's not that this company has, you know, is has stopped. You know, yes, they still test Kodak's test encoders, and that's all apart, all a part. But now the team is focused on optimization. The team is focused on building out new capabilities. The team is looking at how to do more with less. And I mean not even people. I mean, how can we get greater density? How can we use less power? How can we? And on one hand, people might say, well, yeah, of course, everybody's trying to cut costs. So, ok, that's the job of the video engineering team.

Speaker 3 40:17

But think carefully about, you know, what I just said. These are PhDs who have spent their lifetimes, and some of them, you know, they've written papers, they've got names on patents. They're, you know, real and at the lowest levels of video encoding, in video codec development. You know, they're in all of the standards bodies there, you know. And what are they spending their time on? They're spending their time on how to build better experiences in other ways, and I won't say what cause, then I'd start to give it away. But you know, and it is just, I walked away from some of these conversations that I was a part of and I went wow, this is. You know, this is how engineering teams this is how engineers need to think need to lean in.

Speaker 3 41:07

One person actually made the comment this is amazing. I'm a PhD, I spent my life building codecs and I now have the opportunity to be a student, still get paid, stay in my team, but learn this whole new, you know, in this whole new area. And this person's perspective was I'm having the time of my life. You know, like this is super exciting. You know like this is super exciting. Yeah, and there's an important lesson in this, dan, you know, because we know there's a lot of people that you know teams have been cut and people are kind of out looking for yet another Kodak job. I would just encourage, if anybody fits into that, really think carefully. Like, ok, you know, maybe you still go, look for those opportunities. You know there are companies still hiring Kodak engineers, but that's not really where the future and where the growth is. It's in building new live experiences and building new, you know, advertising platforms. It's in, you know that's. You know, maybe look in that direction.

Speaker 2 42:05

It's efficiency, it's refinement, yeah, refinement, yeah, it's about do you take what you have now and make it more operationally efficient? So it impacts the bottom line, the balance sheet, but also impacts consumers.

Speaker 3 42:18

And I a hundred percent agree with that.

Speaker 2 42:20

Someone who's not in our industry asked me the other day Dan, what's, what's the next thing for streaming? Right, what's, what's the next generation streaming? I said there isn't one. And they were like what, what are you talking about? Let me ask you your Netflix experience three years ago and today. Does it look any different to you? And I'm like no, it works when I turn it on, it looks great.

Speaker 3 42:39

Yeah, it works, it looks good.

Speaker 2 42:40

Yeah. Now what's going on in the back end? Yeah, Better recommendation engines, better targeting with ads, new technology yeah, that's improving the experience that's already out there. Yeah, that's right. That's all it is. Yeah, that's all we're going to continue to do, which I think is a good thing.

Speaker 3 42:55

Yeah, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2 42:57

So a couple more things here. Mark VideoAmp Look, I like VideoAmp, I want those guys to succeed so that there's a real competitor to Nielsen. But they put out this press release and the first two paragraphs. Here's what they include tech first, media next generation, industry first, end to end, unparalleled flexibility, industry leading, enhancing efficiency, comprehensive. That's all in the first two paragraphs.

Speaker 3 43:23

What the heck does that mean?

Speaker 2 43:25

Yeah, and I'm like okay, what exactly do you do here? Now I get to one sentence Video AM's full suite of solutions can now be accessed through always on API integrations and user-friendly dashboards. Cool, that's great, but is that your way of saying you didn't have API integrations before? I can't imagine that's possible. Or you didn't have user-friendly dashboards earlier. Because if that's all you've added, why are you putting out a press release about that? That makes it seem like, hey, by the way, we've been really far behind everybody else, but now we've caught up.

Speaker 3 44:01

We've caught up, and so we're going to make an announcement.

Speaker 2 44:04

But then you fill it with all kinds of just high level marketing nonsense. So you just again you wonder who's writing these releases, because the one sentence in here that's beneficial is like oh okay, hey, man, you made your platform easier to use and you got better API integrations or first-time API integrations, but then why not make the press release about that? Why fill it with 15, 20 words of marketing? It's just not helpful. Yeah, no business impact. Well, I don't not helpful. Yeah, no business impact.

Speaker 3 44:33

You know that's what you're pointing out. Well, no, I mean, I you know. Of course I don't know, but you know this guy. If, like you're an analyst and we're in the business and we sort of would force ourselves to read through this, how is someone who's looking for a solution, a busy executive, I mean, they're not going to read this and read it again and then go back and try and figure out how that sentence you know so there's, going to be very little business impact.

Speaker 2 45:00

I like the fact that they say you know, warner Bros Discovery is a customer and they've seen 166% growth in data-driven video cross-platform campaigns. Great, I still don't know what that means. What type of campaigns are they doing? Is it for live on demand, like you don't say, and what part of the feature set of your platform did they really use to be able to do that? Oh, and, by the way, over what period of time did they see 166%? Because if it's over five years, that's not a great number.

Speaker 3 45:31

Yeah it's over five months, six months right to your point.

Speaker 2 45:35

Even when they try and put in something they're business related, which is great, put more of that in there. There's no context for yeah, yeah. So it's just frustrating uh, yeah, we.

Speaker 3 45:45

It feels like we need to have a podcast, just like you did one about you know job searching. You, you know how to position yourself. We need to do one on marketing. I have no interest, because coming out of again, coming out of Demux and Demux is awesome because they actually have like in the tagline, like no marketing, and they really hold to it. You know it's like, hey, this is an engineering event, engineering conference. You know they have sponsors who help keep the. You know it's like, hey, this is an engineering event, engineering conference. You know they have sponsors who help keep the cost low, but it's like no marketing.

Speaker 3 46:20

I used to hate that and in fact, you know I think the organizers know that I very much resisted participating for a couple of years and then I got my arm twisted and then now I'm like, I'm like a huge fan because you know what it does is it allows you to set up real conversations that are actually meaningful, that are, you know, devoid of just a whole bunch of these. You know stupid words, right, you know that don't mean anything, but you know I had conversation after conversation where both technical leaders inside you know very large platforms, large streaming companies and other marketers and just other business people are lamenting, like just the state of marketing in the industry and just the just the fact that so many companies are just making noise and it's just meaningless. And then that causes you know the market to sort of just shut off to everything you know, I don't think that's changed, honestly, mark, in 30 years.

Speaker 2 47:13

It's just the words have changed and whatnot. But look, let's use a real world example Awards programs yeah, awards programs are pay to play. You can only get an award if you exhibit at the show. So even if you have a better product than someone who's exhibiting, you can't be considered for an award.

Speaker 3 47:30

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 47:32

The a product and someone who's exhibiting you can't be considered for an award. Also, the amount of marketing people and look, I don't have a problem marketing people I work with them every day.

Speaker 3 47:36

You're talking to one.

Speaker 2 47:37

There's tons of really good PR agencies I work with for vendors. They send me the news, they do the briefings. But the issue is when you're going on LinkedIn and you're patting yourself on the back for winning an award that you paid for, for exhibiting in a booth, for exhibiting in a booth and I happen to know, and so do others, that, by the way, you've already raised six or seven rounds of money you can't get any more. Your growth has declined over three years. What are you celebrating?

Speaker 3 48:03

What are you celebrating?

Speaker 2 48:04

None of these awards programs are ever actually based on what the product does or how it scales. No one is. The show goes well, let me talk to a couple of your customers. But part of that Mark clearly the reason why it's doing all that is it's keeping people in jobs and marketing, yeah, but well actually it's not even for the, for your award examples.

Speaker 3 48:27

It's not even jobs and marketing. It's keeping these event. You know, let's face it, a lot of these magazines are basically just event companies. You know, at the end of the day, I mean, that's what they are, right, you know, and so it just it's another revenue stream.

Speaker 2 48:43

Anyway, it's a revenue stream, but the bottom line is just you know marketing is all about. I don't care what industry you're in. Yeah, your product, what does it do? What problem?

Speaker 3 48:51

is it selling the market? Exactly? You're selling it. What? What problem? What problem does it?

Speaker 2 48:55

and who's your target customer. Yeah, yeah, and, and it's incredible how many of these releases that many of us get in the industry obviously not just you and I, others listening yeah, we don't really know what they're trying to get across and it just always surprises me that vendors still struggle with that, when we have all the data and the information in the market and you can talk to your customers to figure that out and, by the way, you can also look at what your competitors are doing wrong to fine tune your message.

Speaker 3 49:21

Yeah Well, Dan, if we keep talking like this, AI is going to replace our podcast.

Speaker 2 49:29

Well, it's not going to replace ours, it might replace somebody else's.

Speaker 3 49:35

you know what we get to that for those people who are doing the empty marketing. Uh yeah, it will replace them, but hey, you know they'll.

Speaker 2 49:41

Uh yeah, we'll get to that yeah, before we get to that, because I know where you're going there just let me real quickly give a shout out to Dave Otten, uh CEO over JW JWP Connections which is now what it's called Um.

Speaker 2 49:55

I had a great conversation with Dave about just the acquisition, I should say the merger. What took place, what didn't um, you know cause last week in the podcast we were saying, well, we don't know anything. Yeah, they didn't put anything out. So I had a great conversation. The vast majority of it's off the record, so I'm not going to go into numbers and whatnot, but I am going to work on a blog post so I can put out what I can. Uh, the deal is is better than it initially looked to me now that I have some details. Also, I did some other checks with bankers and whatnot to see the size of the deal and whatnot.

Speaker 2 50:29

It was interesting that both of the companies have nearly identical revenue. One was not much larger than I thought, another one was. And, yes, they are going to rebrand, so that's not what they're going to be called. Going forward, jwp Connectix. They're going to come up with a new brand in the new year. But thanks to Dave for that, because he did obviously hear what you're talking about and was like oh man, yeah, we we.

Speaker 3 50:55

I dropped the ball on that, let's make sure you know. So I'll put out some more information on that.

Speaker 2 50:57

So that's great. Yeah, yeah, so ai mark podcast. So the reason we're going to end with this is over the last week I've seen quite a few posts on on linkedin and I honestly I don't know what spurred them all sort of this week, unless I know what spurred it.

Speaker 2 51:11

You do, okay, then you can tell me. But basically what I, what I saw a lot of people saying is hey look, I created this easy podcast that automatically, just thanks to AI, took me one hour to do it, to have a finished podcast. I didn't even create any content myself. I took, like, all this content from 10 or 12 other people in the industry. I all this content from 10 or 12 other people in the industry. I fed it into this LLM and here's what it spit out and you know it has a really great voice and I found that fascinating, mark, and I know you have some hands-on experience with this, so I'll let you talk about that in a second. But here's what I found fascinating about that.

Speaker 2 51:44

Yeah, but it goes to show me that people don't understand how to create relationships with one another, because if you think that you're going to get into producing a podcast and your goal is to do it fast, then you shouldn't do a podcast, because to get it right, it's time consuming and you have to create content. On a podcast, like any other streaming service, content is king. So this idea that you're going to create a podcast with content that's not even yours, with thoughts that are not yours. That's going to be read and scripted. You know, mark, imagine what our podcast would be if we were just reading from a script.

Speaker 3 52:20

Actually, actually, you know what. If you transcribed you know 100% accurately this and this is how real humans talk, right, you know, like you and I do back and forth it would be grammatically incorrect. You'd say, well, that's wrong, we have to. You know that sentence? Oh, that's two sentences, we need to split, you know whatever. And yet if you then corrected all the grammar, you had a. You know you used AI voice. You know you used uh ai voice. You know synthesized voice. It would sound so stale, and so you know like like generic?

Speaker 2 52:56

yeah, exactly which is what it sounds like. So I listened to a couple this week and I'm like that's terrible, I don't, I don't care that the person's voice sounds better and maybe better than my voice or your voice easier to listen to great, I get it. That's. That's a difference of opinion. Yeah, but having a pre prescripted, non-authentic podcast will not resonate with listeners. Yeah, and what resonates is content frequency. Right, frequency is key. I look back, mark, in my RSS feed. There's over 40 podcasts over the last five years tied to streaming that are gone. And why? Because everyone's like I'm doing this podcast and they do two to three, maybe five episodes if they're lucky and they're gone right.

Speaker 2 53:33

So podcasting is all about content frequency, but it's also about building a relationship with your listeners. It's the same if you're writing content, whether you're doing analyst research work, whether it's a blog. It's all about relationship building, which seems to be for many lost in this world. About relationship building, which seems to be for many lost in this world. And if you think AI is going to now produce this podcast that everyone's going to love, they're going to listen to in a voice that's not even yours, I'm telling you right now.

Speaker 3 54:01

Yeah, yeah. So, um, where this all comes from, uh, just you know. To end on this, in case people are like what the heck are they even talking about and why this week? Yeah, exactly, so Google introduced one of those. Google has this 20% project things or policies, I guess it is, I don't know but where basically you can go to your boss. You can say, hey, I got this idea for this, whatever, and from what I understand, it's like almost nothing's off limit limits. I mean, it can't be illegal, but you know. So you can go to your boss you can say, hey, I got this idea. And they're like great, you know, one day a week or however you split the time, you can work on that and you know, and you do, you know your job. The other 80%, so. So somebody had an idea to basically create this product or this service or application, I guess inside Google, that you could upload like academic papers and it would create like FAQs and notes and it would do the things and notes and it would do the things.

Speaker 3 55:08

Yeah, oh yeah, I mean and, and, and. I've played with it. It's, it's pretty cool and it works really well. Okay, so they built this thing and, you know, students and academics started using it. You know they quickly grew to like 60,000 users.

Speaker 3 55:24

Well, about uh, maybe it was uh two months ago now, uh, 60 days ago, maybe it's 90 days, but real recent they added a feature where it would create a conversation between two people, a man and a woman, bantering back and forth about whatever you gave it. So, if you upload a PDF, I mean, and again, you can give it anything, you give it the most technical paper, you give it just anything. You just upload it and it would spit out this conversation. And, Dan, I have to tell you it's amazing, it is absolutely. I mean, they make jokes, they, they cut it. No, no, but I'm but, but I'm leading to the whole, you know, to the punchline, which is 100%.

Speaker 3 56:12

What you said is correct. So, okay, so people, you know, pushed a button and went, wow, this is incredible and it really is. I'll send you a few things and you'll be like okay, that is pretty amazing. Here's the problem, though. The problem is is exactly what you said is that it assumes that people are so hungry for audio, in this case audio that, um, you know that they're just willing a to listen to anybody talk about anything. Uh, oh, by the way, the other thing is, um, this Google tool, you have no ability to like impact, like you know, like, if it says something you're like, ah, I really wanted, wanted it to kind of bring out this other point, or totally missed a point. Again, you know, it's a large language model, so it's not perfect. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 57:04

I noticed that it doesn't know what to highlight.

Speaker 3 57:11

Exactly, exactly and that's, and so that's one of the things, too, that you know in my testing of it anyway. So so the the major imperfection there, but but the real point though, that you're making and I think that we should end on is this is that there are no shortcuts to doing the work that connects to people, that that is authentic, that is built on the sorts of insights and wisdom and knowledge that's gained generally over years and years and years, that allows you in a whether it's a podcast or just two people talking, or a presentation on a stage at a conference, trade show, whatever that then allows other humans to listen and go. Wow, you know 25 minutes of that. I already knew it. But that one insight, that two minutes, you know was worth. You know my whole time investment. Two minutes, you know, was worth. You know my whole time investment.

Speaker 3 58:10

And so the problem, you know, is that that I'm seeing, because I have tested all this and there's going to be I'm actually going to I'm finding some ways to utilize some of it, but that's for for another day, another time. But you can't if you just push a button, just like if you go to chat GPT and say write me a paper about and you, you know, include a couple generic Sure, it's going to write you something and on the surface you're going to be like this is amazing, but then you read it and you go it's not saying anything. You know, it's amazing, it's well-written, I just pushed a button. So I think that what's going to happen is lazy. I use the word lazy.

Speaker 3 58:50

I don't know if people are really lazy, but those who are looking for shortcuts okay, they initially feel like I found the secret tool. No, you did not find a tool. And in reality, it's going to put a bigger divide between those who are invested in their craft, invested in learning the industry, really becoming a student of the ecosystem, building relationships, those who invested there. Just, this divide between those who are always looking for a hack and those people who have done the hard work is going to become just wider and wider and wider and wider. And it's my observation that you know what this means is when you're looking to make a hire and you have an opportunity to, you know, to meet somebody who's invested in their craft versus someone who you know is sort of on a fast track, but it's all hacks. I know who I would want to hire.

Speaker 2 59:50

Yeah, I mean what you're talking about here. You know I liked how you said it, being good at your craft. You know, I say to people all the time it's the professor, not the class, that matters. Yes, yes so you have to learn to be a good storyteller. Humans are wired for narrative.

Speaker 2 1:00:05

Yes for narrative, for story, Story is much more memorable, compelling and shareable than just a collection of facts being read by a third party. The other thing from listening to some of these Mark, I've heard how they do this and it's just. It kind of just drones on nonstop. But there's enormous value in simplifying.

Speaker 3 1:00:26

Yeah, and that applies to communication.

Speaker 2 1:00:28

You have to strive to use less jargon. Yeah, fewer metrics, shorter lists. Right now, when you're talking about some of the stuff we are with finances, you want to use that, but you know, part of that, I think, also just comes from people aren't confident being able to talk about what they're doing, and so they're going to use ai. But you know, confidence comes from preparation. It comes from a sense of belonging and trust and as a leader, you have to build that deliberately and you have to reinforce that frequently, and that comes with everything that you're doing in terms of how you communicate.

Speaker 2 1:01:04

And to me. That's what a podcast is. That's what a blog post is. You're, you're telling a story, sometimes short, short, sometimes long, sometimes it's more in-depth story. Yeah, but ai is not going to fix that for you. It's just not 100. So I I've I'd listened to a bunch of them this week because, to be honest, I hadn't and, preparing for the podcast, I wanted to. There's some voices out there that frankly, sound a lot better than mine, which maybe people would like listening to more, because it's easier to, or soothing, or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 3 1:01:34

I get that.

Speaker 2 1:01:35

But that doesn't help if the content behind it is not providing the education that

Speaker 3 1:01:41

you need.

Speaker 2 1:01:42

That's why it's about the professor, not the class.

Speaker 3 1:01:45

Yeah, exactly, and you know, just as the new graphic design tools, you know video animation. You know I'm a musician, so you know all of the. You know the digital music making products that have come out over the years. You know all of those had kind of presets that initially, like sold them. You know. I can remember going in music stores. You know latest keyboard and there was always sort of this demo mode, you know, and you'd push it and the thing would just sound up. You know you're like, oh, wow, I have to have this. Well, guess what? You know you take it home and and you actually have to learn not not only how to use the instrument, you actually have to have those musical ideas. That's a good example instrument, same tools.

Speaker 2 1:02:46

But you know, uh hands of a master you know so I think it all comes down to just creating a relationship. Right, that's what.

Speaker 1 1:02:56

That's what life is about you know, I said when we were at the streaming show.

Speaker 2 1:03:00

You know I was introducing somebody before they spoke. You know I said to people in the room I said we're not here. Many people think we're here to talk about streaming, yeah, or business or technology. We're not here to talk about people. That's what business is about. It's about people. It's about the people you hire, the culture you build.

Speaker 2 1:03:19

That is going to make or break your company more than anything else, not the codec you implement yeah, that's what we're in the business of people, and to me, podcast, blog, whatever content I should just say content creation is the exact same thing. Yeah, you have to create a following and you do that by being authentic, even if people don't agree with you.

Speaker 2 1:03:40

Yeah, that's okay, but be professional, be authentic, and I don't ever see ai foot in that bill. So, mark, we rambled on enough about ai. Yeah, um, let's close it down now. Uh, we're gonna be taking what a week about a week break. I gotta bounce out of here for a while. But on the next podcast we are going to be able to cover earnings from harmonic alphabet. We've got roku, charter, amazon, apple, comcast, fubo. We've got almost 14 different earnings between now and when we record the next podcast. So we will be back for the next one About 10 days or so with just a ton of earning things to cover, which will be good, a lot to cover there.

Speaker 2 1:04:22

Everything Mark and I talked about today is online On my LinkedIn. I put up maybe four or five posts a day with some of the Deutsche Telekom the links to some of the data. So check that out because definitely interesting to see. Also interesting to see the comments there in terms of what people are arguing about. And then thank you to IDS sponsor this week. Check them out at Integrated Hyphen Digital. If you have any questions, comments, reach out to Mark and I. We appreciate everyone listening. Everyone have a safe week and we'll be back in about 10 days with the next podcast. Thanks very much.

Speaker 1 1:04:57

If you enjoyed the show, send it to a friend, have questions for Dan or Mark, connect with them on LinkedIn at any time, and be sure to check out Dan's blog at streamingmediablogcom.