The original TV adaptation of “Shogun” simultaneously benefitted from already rising American interest in Japan and helped to drive even greater Japanophilia. One (possibly apocryphal) story credits the original series with popularizing sushi in the U.S. What remains to be seen is whether this year’s “Shogun” will have a similar cultural impact.

Longer-term trends show growing American demand for Japanese content. From 2021 to 2023, U.S. demand for Japanese shows doubled. At the same time, Americans became more open to a wider variety of content from Japan. Anime series still make up the majority of international demand for Japanese content, but there has been a shift in the past few years. In 2021, about 90% of U.S. demand for Japanese series was for anime. That dropped to 77% by the end of 2023.  

While anime is still one of the best examples of globalizing content consumption, with outstanding demand growth, the broadening of American interest in Japanese content beyond this niche genre indicates that U.S. audiences are more receptive to stories about Japan.  It makes sense then for U.S. platforms like Max and Hulu to try and tap into this demand with shows like  “Tokyo Vice” and “Shogun.”

Another benefit of expanding beyond anime is that it draws in different audience demographics. Anime is one of the youngest skewing genres, with over half of the audience for anime coming from Gen Z. Meanwhile, a show like “Tokyo Vice” appeals more to older audiences. More than two-thirds of the audience for “Tokyo Vice” is over 30. This shows that together, content imported from Japan and shows about Japan can have a broad appeal across age groups.  

Christofer Hamilton is a senior insights analyst at Parrot Analytics, a WrapPRO partner. For more from Parrot Analytics, visit the Data and Analysis Hub.

The post Beyond Anime: Demand for Japanese TV Shows Has Doubled Since 2021 | Charts appeared first on TheWrap.

But whether he will be able to do that is at the heart of the bitter dispute between UTA and the powerhouse strategic adviser.

UTA, led by CEO Jeremy Zimmer, is accusing Kassan of “wasting millions of UTA’s dollars” and says Kassan has a noncompete for two years, while Kassan’s lawyer says that doesn’t hold because he quit — freeing him to poach clients and employees from the Hollywood agency.  

“I didn’t walk away from $10 million in severance, I walked away from Jeremy’s hope I would be beholden to a noncompete,” Kassan told TheWrap as he boarded a private plane to Cabo San Lucas late Thursday. “Whatever I decide to do next will be successful, it will deliver high value to the clients and the community I love to serve, and I’ll be doing it with a martini in my hand, I promise you that.”

The 150 staffers of MediaLink, a powerful strategic consulting firm, will stay at UTA unless they leave with Kassan, one UTA insider told TheWrap. “There are four or five managing directors at the company who are being groomed to take Michael’s position,” the insider said. “We’re going to be fine without him.”

Some of Kassan’s friends told TheWrap that the mogul has been stoic about the split from UTA, which they say exploded after he and Zimmer had a fundamental disagreement over management style. 

Kassan has denied charges that he misappropriated UTA funds and filed his own lawsuit on Wednesday accusing UTA and Zimmer of breach of contract after the $125 million marriage of the two companies soured.

Whatever I decide to do next will be successful…and I’ll be doing it with a martini in my hand.

Michael Kassan

News of Kassan’s exit — his team says he resigned a day before UTA fired him — has rocked the advertising and media world because of his popular profile and deep connections in media, advertising, tech and entertainment. 

He has received messages of support from a host of business leaders including Omincom CEO John Wren; Carolyn Everson, the former global ad chief for Facebook; and even Martin Sorrell, the British founder of WPP Plc, the world’s largest advertising and public relations group, one person close to Kassan told TheWrap.

The Lew Wasserman of media consultancy?

Without Kassan leading MediaLink at UTA, the future of the agency is uncertain, a handful of industry insiders told TheWrap, especially if prominent MediaLink clients decide to desert the Hollywood agency to follow Kassan to his next venture.

“MediaLink without Michael, my own opinion is I don’t think it will prosper,” Wren said. “That’s how important he is to it. He’s unique.”

Wren compared Kassan to Lew Wasserman, the legendary studio head and talent agent. “What Lew Wasserman was to the talent business, Michael is to the media consultancy business,” he said. “The success that MediaLink had is attributable to the relationships that he has.”

Kassan has a “unique skill of matching people who have a particular need and putting them in contact with somebody that they may be able to work with in resolving that need. That’s his magic dust,” he added.

MediaLink boasts clients from AT&T, Salesforce, General Motors, Adobe and a plethora of ad agencies and holding companies. 

Wren and other industry figures told TheWrap that the dispute over Kassan’s spending seems out of proportion compared to his importance to MediaLink.

UTA’s lawsuit alleges that Kassan “has run rampant” with his “special expenses” budget, which pays him up to $950,000 a year after taxes, to fund a “lavish personal lifestyle…with the goal of leaving no trace behind.” 

The agency also claims in its complaint that Kassan “spent hundreds of thousands on private airfare for his entire family for trips that [he] acknowledges were personal in nature and had no rational business purpose.”

The idea that UTA has four or five executives they could stick into Michael’s shoes, I say good f–ing luck with that.

Ad industry veteran Lou Paskalis

UTA retained law firm Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which obtained Kassan’s flight manifests and allegedly found that some of the private jet flights were actually for family vacations to locations including Cabo, Westhampton, NY, and Europe with no clients on board, according to one UTA insider. 

Kassan and his wife, who had a MediaLink credit card, also showered gifts over staffers and clients including Universal Music Group Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge, another person close to Kassan told TheWrap.

UTA’s lawsuit also says that in 2023 Kassan used nearly $500,000 in company funds to pay off his personal credit card debt. “In short, Kassan erased any line between his personal and business expenses,” the suit adds.

The marriage between MediaLink and UTA, which stemmed from UTA’s purchase of Kassan’s firm from Ascential Plc in 2021 for $125 million, appeared doomed from the start. Kassan agreed to the deal with the stipulations he would be paid a $2 million base salary, get the special expenses budget, be named a UTA partner while retaining his MediaLink CEO title, and be given a high-profile role running UTA’s entertainment and marketing group. 

But once he arrived at UTA, according to Kassan’s suit, the agency’s marketing heads, Julian Jacobs and David Anderson, were promoted so they didn’t have to bow to his authority.

MediaLink turned a profit for the agency, earning $16.5 million in 2023 according to a source close to Kassan. A UTA insider responded that the talent agency makes “more than 10 times that much in a year.”

Media and advertising executives express support for Kassan

Many in the advertising and media world say MediaLink clients are shocked by Kassan’s departure. He would be impossible to replace, said former Facebook ad chief Carolyn Everson.

“When you have somebody that is as well regarded, well-known, connected in the industry as the pinnacle….that’s hard to overcome,” said Everson, who now sits on the boards of Walt Disney Company, Coca-Cola, and Under Armour. “I’ve got to imagine that there’s a lot of dialogue going on with clients. Should we continue with the business we were going to do with MediaLink? How does it change? This isn’t what we signed up for. You cannot underestimate the enormity of the change to have Michael not be part of MediaLink.”

Everson expressed doubts about UTA’s allegations against him. “The way I look at it is he was very clear when he did the deal that he had a special expense account exactly for $950,000,” she said. “And so to now rake him over the coals and try to destroy his reputation and question his integrity over something that was actually disclosed, it is just wrong.”

Jon Miller, the former CEO of digital media at NewsCorp and the current CEO of TPG-backed investment firm Integrated Media Co., also questioned the nature of the split: “I don’t get this as a business issue, UTA paid $125 million for that company,” Miller said. “And I got to tell you, I don’t know what it’s worth without Michael.”

Miller added that he believed UTA’s move to cut Kassan was part of a trend where Hollywood agencies are being forced to retrench while feeling the pressure to reduce costs following the strikes and challenging economic headwinds. In the back half of 2023, both UTA and CAA underwent layoffs.

Can Kassan really move on?

UTA counsel Bryan Freedman insists that Kassan cannot simply move on and start a new business. “Kassan was fired for cause for stealing millions of dollars from UTA,” Freedman told TheWrap, insisting that Kassan is still bound by a noncompete. “For him or anyone else to talk of a $10 million severance or setting up a new business is delusional.”

Kassan “abused his position” to circumvent the company’s control processes that ensure expense funds are properly accounted for, Freedman said. “He ignored repeated requests to explain and provide documentation for his expenses.”

Sanford Michelman, Kassan’s attorney, insists the circumstances of his exit — including turning down the $10 million separation agreement — mean the exec can fully compete with MediaLink, which means luring away clients and former MediaLink employees. 

“Their agreement spells out that Michael can waive his severance in exchange for the right to solicit current MediaLink clients, current MediaLink employees and fully compete,” Michelman said.

[Kassan] may be the connector, and people may like him a lot, but it is those teams under him that do the real work.

An entertainment industry executive

Ad industry veteran Lou Paskalis also has doubts that MediaLink could continue without Kassan and believes UTA has thrown away its investment in the company. 

“When UTA purchased MediaLink, they were really purchasing Michael Kassan’s access to the senior people in the marketing industry,” Paskalis told TheWrap.

Paskalis, founder and CEO of marketing consulting firm AJL Advisory LLC, said letting Kassan go “was an error in judgment” and that everybody in his business circle remains squarely behind the MediaLink founder.

He predicted UTA would try to operate MediaLink for the next 18 months without Kassan. “But I think eventually UTA will take a writedown on the asset and incorporate the MediaLink talent into the broader company,” Paskalis said. “UTA slammed the door in their own face with this really immature move … It could not have been handled worse.” 

Paskalis compared Kassan to the “Pulp Fiction” fixer The Wolf, played by Harvey Keitel in the 1994 film. “The idea that UTA has four or five executives they could stick into Michael’s shoes, I say good f–king luck with that,” he said.

But other industry insiders insist MediaLink could continue without connector-in-chief Kassan because the firm boasts teams of experienced consultants.

One former entertainment advertising executive who has worked with MediaLink said the company has a significant practice in strategy consulting for media aside from Kassan’s relationships. “They’ve built a brand based on their competency and their work, which really goes to the credit of the teams and their leaders,” the former executive said. “If UTA continues to invest in that side of the business and retains those leaders, they’re going to have a bright future.” 

A second industry insider and executive agreed. “It is an insult to MediaLink’s talented teams of marketing experts to suggest that the company is solely built on Michael Kassan,” this person said. “He may be the connector, and people may like him a lot, but it is those teams under him that do the real work. And it is very hard to set up a new company if you are in active litigation.” 

Yet few doubt that Kassan will push to get back in the game – soon. One friend joked, “Michael is saying sarcastically he will be back on the Croisette at Cannes Lions in June 2024 with a martini and, after all this drama, his new company: MediaStink.”

The post Hollywood Brawl Intensifies: Michael Kassan Plots New Venture as Insiders Weigh MediaLink’s Future Without Founder appeared first on TheWrap.

With just a 48% drop from its $57.9 million opening weekend, “Kung Fu Panda 4” now has a two-weekend total of $107 million domestic and is well on pace to blow past the $186 million domestic run of fellow animated franchise feature “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” a year ago. Globally, “Kung Fu Panda 4” has a total of $176.5 million and will be released next weekend in China, where the film has enjoyed success in the past but where Hollywood now has little sway over audiences since the pandemic.

“Dune: Part Two” could still take the No. 1 spot from “Kung Fu Panda 4” with an estimated $29.1 million in its third weekend, once again keeping its weekend drop exceptionally low at just 37%. It now joins “Barbie” and “Wonka” as the third Warner Bros. release in the past eight months to cross $200 million in domestic grosses with a $205 million running total, and it will cross a half a billion dollars worldwide in a matter of days as it sports a running global total of $494 million.

Lionsgate’s “Arthur the King” is the sole newcomer to the top 5, taking $7.5 million this weekend from 3,003 theaters and meeting the low end of pre-release projections. The good news for the film is that it has been well received by moviegoers, with an A on CinemaScore, while critics give it a more mixed 63% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Starring Mark Wahlberg as an adventure racer who befriends an injured dog during a grueling competition in the Dominican Republic, the film is reported to have a $20 million budget and aims to bring in older audiences over the coming weeks as an inspirational alternative to “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.”

A pair of films in their second weekend, Lionsgate/Blumhouse’s “Imaginary” and Angel Studios’ “Cabrini,” round out the top 5. “Imaginary” will turn a modest theatrical profit as it adds $5.5 million in its second weekend to bring its running domestic total to $19 million. “Cabrini” added $2.9 million to bring its 10-day total to $13 million.

Farther down the charts, a trio of specialty releases rolled out nationwide this weekend, though none had exceptionally strong results. The best of the bunch was A24’s crime thriller “Love Lies Bleeding” starring Kristen Stewart, which expanded to 1,362 theaters after a limited release last weekend and grossed $2.5 million.

With a tense LGBT romance and plenty of gory crime at its center, “Love Lies Bleeding has Rotten Tomatoes scores of 92% critics and 88% audience. It is hoping to find traction with younger arthouse audiences as it continues to expand nationwide next weekend.

Bleecker Street’s “One Life” was released in 983 theaters and grossed $1.7 million. The film stars Anthony Hopkins in a true-story retelling of Nicholas Winton, a London broker who became a national hero after the story of his rescue of hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis was told on the BBC show “That’s Life!” The film has been well received, with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 88% critics approval and 92% from audience members.

The worst-performing of the trio was Focus Features’ “The American Society of Magical Negroes,” grossing $1.25 million from 1,147 theaters. The satire about a secret society of Black people who use their magical powers to keep white people comfortable received mostly negative reviews after its Sundance premiere, holding a 30% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The post ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ Edges Out ‘Dune 2’ at Box Office With $30 Million appeared first on TheWrap.

In its second weekend, “Kung Fu Panda 4” is currently estimated to earn $31.5 million, dropping just 46% from its $57.9 million start. Fueled by families who haven’t had an animated movie to see in theaters since “Migration” during the holidays, as well as by some nostalgic millennials who grew up seeing the first “Kung Fu Panda” back in 2008, this DreamWorks sequel is set to blow past $100 million in domestic grosses by the end of the weekend.

“Dune: Part Two,” meanwhile, is just behind “Kung Fu Panda 4” with an industry-estimated third weekend total of $28.5 million. That’s another strong hold as it drops just 34% from its second weekend.

The acclaimed Denis Villeneuve film may take a steeper drop next weekend as it will lose IMAX and other premium formats to Sony’s “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” but will have surpassed $200 million in domestic grosses by the end of this weekend. Three of the last four films to pass that mark have been Warner Bros. releases, with the others being “Wonka” and “Barbie,” while the fourth went to former WBD director Christopher Nolan with Universal’s Best Picture winner “Oppenheimer.”

The sole newcomer to the top 5 is Lionsgate’s “Arthur the King,” a true-story inspirational film starring Mark Wahlberg as an adventure racer who befriends a wounded dog during a grueling competition in the Dominican Republic. The film earned $3 million from 3,003 theaters and is set to earn an opening weekend of $7-8 million against a $20 million budget.

Similar to Channing Tatum’s 2022 film “Dog,” “Arthur the King” is hoping to leg out among an older, female-skewing audience subset that shows up to inspirational films — particularly ones involving animals. While critics were only mildly positive with a 64% Rotten Tomatoes score, the film earned an A from opening night crowds on CinemaScore.

The post ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ Holds Narrow Lead over ‘Dune 2’ at Box Office appeared first on TheWrap.

“It’s an opportunity to serve. We all have the ability to give back, to serve, to be part of something greater than ourselves,” Boykin-Towns, who is vice chair of the NAACP national board of directors as well as the chairman of the Image Awards committee, said.

The Harlem native’s drive to help the world become a better place was instilled in her at a young age by her mother, who migrated from Alabama and took on domestic work before ultimately entering the medical field, a sector Boykin-Towns also took on with her 22 years at pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation Pfizer. While there, she helped diversify the company, an effort she believed she could pull off with the help of her cultural experiences and exceptional work as corporate manager despite having no prior credits in human resources.

“All I knew about diversity and inclusion was being Black and being a female … [but] I had built a reputation within the company of someone who could get things done, was a team player and was a leader,” she said of why then-CEO Jeffrey Kindler entrusted her with the initiative. “I figured if I didn’t blow myself up in the process, I would get to go back into corporate affairs at a higher role than I initially had — and that’s exactly what happened.”

Today, she’s advancing the NAACP Image Awards, which spotlights and celebrates the performances of Black people in film, television, theater, music and literature, by shaping the 55-year-old award show into a true culture experience.

“This is a show that continues to be about us, for us and by us. It’s like an old home where there’s nothing but love and celebration and excitement,” she said. “Where everyone is cheering for each other, whether you win or not. Because at the end of the day, everyone’s a winner. And we’re really there to uplift and celebrate ourselves.”

Through her extensive work in servicing communities and helping move forward diversity, equity and inclusion, Boykin-Towns is a firm believer that no corporation can maintain its success without bringing in people from unique backgrounds.

You’ve really committed much of your life to some form of service. What prompted that instinct in you?
It was my Mom. I remember being in the first grade and all of a sudden being taken out of that school and being bused. My first elementary school was in Harlem. I was bused from Harlem to a white community. I guess that was integration. I was probably one of the only Black kids in my class, particularly in the second or third grade. Maybe a few more came later. But I did not understand why my friends from the neighborhood didn’t have to get up so early to catch the bus to go into a place where no one was like me. 

It was my mom being an education advocate, wanting to ensure I had a quality education and wanting to ensure I was in a place where they took our safety seriously. Seeing her as an advocate in that way. She was a member of one of our local unions 1199 [The National Health Care Workers’ Union]. She was a delegate. She was always working with her colleagues to help when they had issues on the job, being an advocate for them and for the Union and ensuring that they fought to get the wages and benefits that they needed to have quality level of pay equity. 

Her thing was to ensure that her two girls – I have a younger sister – had an education. We were the first to graduate from college. 

When and why did you become part of the NAACP?
When I graduated college, I went to work for my local state senator, who later became our governor, David Paterson, so I was involved with the community working for our local elected official. Of course I knew of the NAACP, I knew the legendary Hazel Duke, who was the president of the New York State NAACP. I was in the community doing work, but I wasn’t part of the NAACP. 

I joined the NAACP when I started working at Pfizer … when I joined the health committee and then it was just doing the work. One thing led to another, I got elected to our foundation board. I became the president of our local Brooklyn chapter. I was a branch president for seven years while also being on the national board. It’s just been a career that was not so much intentional, but one where I wanted to ensure that I was doing my part.

March 16 marks the 55th NAACP Image Awards. How will the ceremony be different from the years prior?
It has really grown. We have 90 categories – another way in which it has expanded – which you can only do, in a good year, eight, maybe nine [categories] on the live telecast. So we have these other virtual award shows, which was on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We have a dinner this evening, our fashion show. The breadth of the awards has increased, certainly, and I think the level of participation and engagement has, as well. 

What do you make of the fact that many Black-led shows are getting canceled and we are witnessing a major DEI executive exodus?
After the murder of George Floyd, we saw all types of companies across industries make these pronouncements and whatnot. The proliferation of diversity and inclusion officers went off the chart. That was 2020, 2021. Getting into 2023,  a lot of those folks have been exited from their companies. I read in February that there was another 8% had been eliminated. There have been some companies that have totally erased those departments. Those who are true to it will remain, and those who maybe didn’t want to do it in the first place find this environment, one where they can have the excuse to go in a different direction. By 2045, we will be a majority minority country, and the numbers don’t lie.

The smart ones are the ones that are figuring out – despite the backlash that may come – how to still move forward, where you have representation, where you have inclusivity, where you have equity. Because if you don’t have that, your company cannot be successful. Period, point blank. 

Those who are short-sighted will pay. Their stock will be hit, their ability to get talent, because these [new] generations are really like, ‘Yeah, no, that’s not how we get down.’ If you want to have the best talent, there is going to be a need to have a place where people can feel seen, where they can feel heard, where they can feel valued. And if that’s not your company, then that’s not who you will have in your workplace.

What advice do you have for people who are on their come-up in this realm, whether its entrepreneurship, civil rights activism, next-gen leaders or even your daughters on their own career journeys?
For me, it’s about being open to opportunities. Along the way, there are going to be people who come into your path. You want to find those who you can connect with, bring them into your personal board of directors. Those people who you can call upon. There’s roles that I’ve had where I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make it work, but what I knew was that I was smart, I was a quick learner and I had a network. And between those three, I knew I would be able to figure it out. So really making sure that as opportunities came, I was open to them. 

The other thing is: don’t ever let yourself stay comfortable. If you are in a role where you know, you can phone it each day, where you’re not really being stretched, your talents are probably being wasted. You’re probably not living up to your potential. You want to look at opportunities when they come, don’t just be very rigid in your thinking and just stick to what you know. You want to expand.

You also want to take risks. You want to surround yourself with people who can enhance your knowledge. I would always tell my girls, if you’re the smartest one in your friend group, you need a new friend group.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

The post ‘Smart’ Companies Know They Can’t Succeed Without DEI, NAACP’s Karen Boykin-Towns Says appeared first on TheWrap.

The prediction seemed aggressive, especially given that Microsoft Bing — with its AI chatbot — hadn’t gained much share at all in a hype-filled 2023. If it comes true, it would be an earth-shaking moment in the tech world, leading to chaos within Google and the web. So I asked Gartner to talk.

This week, Gartner Vice President Alan Antin, who made the prediction, spoke with me via video call about what led to the prediction, and how likely it is to hold up. Though I’m still a bit skeptical, it didn’t seem so outlandish after we talked. Below is our conversation, edited for length and clarity. 

Alex Kantrowitz: Don’t take this the wrong way, but when I saw Gartner’s number that search will decline 25% by 2026 I thought it was crazy. Why do you think that’s going to happen?

Alan Antin: Let me walk you through the thought process. We saw incredibly fast adoption of ChatGPT. The fastest ever to 100 million monthly users…

Right, but that has leveled off…

That has leveled off. That’s true. But think about this more broadly as answer engines. Some people are using ChatGPT, Claude, and other chatbots to answer questions like you would with search. As these bots become connected to the real time internet, the reliability of their answers is getting better. And they’re not going to be the last ones.

We don’t do the calculations of how many searches there are, so this is coming third party, but over 8 billion searches happen per day. So even with 100 million ChatGPT users, you might say, ‘Oh, you’re never gonna get there unless you see all kinds of other things come into the market.’ And the way we got to this potential decline in search traffic is we have yet to see major companies who control a lot of the access to the internet besides Google, do anything in this space. 

So if you think about it, there are over 1.5 billion Apple iPhones. All it takes is a new rollout. And suddenly, the access point to impact that giant number of daily searches happens without people having to download or subscribe to a version of ChatGPT.

Google pays Apple $18 billion a year to be the default iPhone search. So are you suggesting that Apple will forego that revenue to put a large language model (LLM) that replaces search in their phone?

A shift in the marketplace might happen through new complete entry points. In which case, it might take longer for that to happen, because the behavior is going to need to evolve over a longer period of time. Or it could happen much more rapidly if a business decision was taken to say, well, we’re not going to have that same sort of platform relationship.

Right. And how did you get to the 25% number, exactly?

Just through internal debate.

Can you share a little bit about the contours of that debate?

I know you already think that 25% is a crazy number, but the first number put out there was actually even higher. The thought was you could see multiple entry points besides ChatGPT, and should you see some of the other companies that have large scale distribution come in, you could actually get there a lot faster. 

So the contour of the debate was, well we don’t know what that cycle is going to look like. And so, it just became….  Within a couple of years time, the probability of one of these events happening — either an acceleration of new entry points, or a sea change in how current relationships and current platforms work — if you put some probability statement around each one, then you could say, ‘Okay, well that could get you to that point.’ So it’s not tremendously scientific. It’s probability statements that we look at to get to that. 

But do you believe that search and chatting with large language models is zero sum? I have this hypothesis that search is effectively for web navigation, whereas a chatbot is to satisfy curiosity. There is some overlap, but not dramatic overlap between the two. 

It depends on which platform you’re using. Using something like Perplexity, which is an AI-first search experience, where it’s giving you a nice summarized answer, but also saying, well, here’s where we drew that from… it’s giving you a blended model. Whereas, a pure chatbot may be satisfying a little bit more of a curiosity but you don’t necessarily know where it’s coming from, so you need to fact check that. You’re getting different experiences.

But from a research perspective, if you have it on your smartphone, and you are trying to get an answer, and if you believe their reliability is better, why would you want to go look at all of the links that turn up from traditional search, versus just ‘Oh, I got the answer right here in a couple of sentences.’ Depending upon the sophistication of the person doing the search, they may or may not have different considerations about that output.

So if people use Perplexity that would count as replacing the traditional search?

That’s right. 

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what this all means for Google.

They have fantastic products and they certainly are heavily invested in artificial intelligence. They have to be able to think through how they continue to deliver a great entry point and a great experience for users. And, at the same time, understand what the business model is going to be. That’s fundamentally what they have to work through and it’s a very challenging question. 

If Google were to lose 25% of traffic within two years, that would be one of the greatest business tanks of all time.

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the earliest days of the consumer internet. There was a time where the main way to get on the internet was through a company called AOL… 

Of course I remember

Things can change. We don’t have a crystal ball that says, ‘Well, we know exactly how that’s going to play out.’ But there are enough signs of change of behavior — and change of technology — that would suggest this is something that’s evolving and changing. Over the next couple years we’re going to see whether or not the incumbent players are able to figure out how to offer better experiences and not lose to new entrants.

Search replaced portals like AOL because search was a better way to access the web. But if you’re right about this 25% decline in search, it’s also a decline of the web. Because if you go chatbot instead of search, you’re not navigating to web pages.

It’s quite possible that the corollary is exactly that, which is the importance of individual web pages will also decline. But at the same time, think about what might be feeding large language models. Let’s say LLMs are the main way people are getting their answers and doing their research, there still needs to be some way for those models to be fed. 

This is really a big part of what we wanted to get people starting to think about, which is you may need to be thinking about what your content strategy is and what your digital content strategy looks like. So that way, even if your site traffic goes down, which could very well be, you’re still going to be part of the conversation and part of the outputs that come from the answer engines.

I have covered internet companies for a while. In my experience, when a company comes across a formidable competitor, that tends to slow down its growth. But to lose 25% share over two years almost goes against the law of nature on the internet, where web traffic tends to expand year over year. So that being said, do you still stand firmly behind your 25% number?

Well, it’s a prediction. There are a lot of variables that are moving. We’ll probably update it next year because there are a lot of moving parts.

The post Will Search Engine Traffic Really Drop 25% by 2026, As Gartner Predicts? appeared first on TheWrap.

The model introduced by the proliferation of streaming platforms favors more condensed episodes when compared to the traditional network model. However, the gap between the average season lengths of network and streaming shows has narrowed over the last six years. The average number of shows per season for network shows decreased from 15.4 in 2018 to 10.2 in 2023, closely mirroring the average for streaming shows at 9.6 episodes in the same year.

This shift reflects not only the growth of streaming TV, but also a broader change in viewer preferences. Audiences today seem to prefer tightly knit narratives, leading to a decline in the popularity of long-running seasons. Data shows a stark decline in the proportion of U.S. scripted shows releasing new seasons with more than 20 episodes, dropping from 19% in 2018 to just 4.5% in 2023.

These trends raise questions about how audiences engage with episodically released content. Are audiences maintaining interest throughout the season or do they lose engagement midway? Using Parrot Analytics demand data, it’s possible to analyze when the peak demand for a season occurs. If it occurs near or at the last episode, it indicates that audiences are maintaining interest until the end of the season.

Around 40% of network-released shows saw their peak demand during the season finale over the last six years. HBO stands out, with over 50% of its seasons peaking in demand around the finale, a testament to its ability to captivate audiences consistently. Among the other major broadcast networks, this share ranges between 40% and 45%.

For streaming services (excluding binge-released shows), there’s been an uptick in seasons that maintain viewer interest until the conclusion, growing from 30% in 2018 to nearly 50% in 2023. “Only Murders In The Building” Season 2, both seasons of “Our Flag Means Death” and “The Orville” Season 3 exemplify this trend, maintaining high audience engagement through their finales, all released after 2022.

Streaming platforms are adapting their shows’ storylines and screenplays to create content that holds people’s attention until its conclusion. This includes using cliffhangers and other writing techniques to keep viewers looking forward to the next episode. On the same page, seasons are getting shorter for both network and streaming shows, reflecting a landscape where the competition for the audience’s attention gets fiercer.

Daniel Quinaud is a senior data analyst at Parrot Analytics, a WrapPRO partner. For more from Parrot Analytics, visit the Data and Analysis Hub.

The post Why Your Favorite TV Shows Are Getting Shorter | Charts appeared first on TheWrap.

The U.S. domestic box office in 1999, according to Box Office Mojo, saw films like “Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace” top the charts with $431,088,295; with “The Matrix” ($171,479,930); and “The Blair Witch Project” ($140,539,099) rounding out the top 10.

But the crossover appeal to the teen market didn’t live exclusively in sci-fi, horror or comedy. Serious filmmaking by auteur directors and writers with daring new perspectives would dominate the latter half of the year, specifically “American Beauty,” “Election” and the sex comedy “American Pie” also courted teen audiences and are now synonymous with the youth market.

With audiences now 25 years removed from 1999, TheWrap decided to look back at what many consider to be the last great year in movies. The handful of industry players who spoke to TheWrap saw 1999 as a year of intense innovation in filmmaking, where executives and creatives were willing and, more importantly, open to taking risks. And when it came to catering to a youth market with a mess of disposable income, it was a fantastic year to be a kid — or a teen — at the movies.

Though demographic records for teen audiences in 1999 aren’t available, the teen market became highly attractive to Hollywood. A 2000 study of teen spending from the Monthly Labor Review found that in 1999 teens spent $105 billion of their own money and “influenced $48 billion in family spending.” A Consumer Expenditure Survey from the years 1997-1998 of 2,552 teens showed that 6.2% of their income went to entertainment. By 2005, teen spending had grown into a $159 billion industry (driven partly by more teens having credit cards), according to CQ Researcher. And by 2015 teen movie attendance had reached its highest per-capita attendance of 7.3, a study by the MPAA revealed.

A key proponent of the teen market was MTV Films, producers of the Alexander Payne-satirical comedy “Election.” It seemed like a no-brainer for the TV network to craft a film company in 1995, as the music-centric television station had come to define youth culture since its inception in 1981.

“When we were asked to start a film division, I felt strongly that while an occasional franchise property like ‘Beavis and Butthead’ or ‘Jackass’ can be a movie, we really wanted to break the mold a little bit,” said David Gale, “Election” producer and head of MTV Films at the time. “When we started looking for films we wanted to be the anti-studio film division on the Paramount lot.”

The company’s mandate was to look for movies that represented youth-driven culture or pinpoint trends that felt unique and personal for the audience they were serving. MTV’s content also had to be different from what was on television, so a theatrical component emphasized to audiences that these weren’t just TV shows on a bigger screen. Gale searched for films that weren’t typical teen fare and was approached by Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa with the script for “Election.” Based on a Tom Perrotta short story, the book and movie follow a high school presidential election. For Gale, it felt subversive and different.

We wanted to be the anti-studio film division on the Paramount lot.

David Gale, former head of MTV Films

“Election,” the novel, was an allegory of life under President Ronald Reagan, while the film focuses on 1990s politicians like Ross Perot. The film, at the time, was a refreshing look at the politics of the era. To audiences today, the dirty pool politics of its iconic character Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) feels almost quaint compared to our politically divided times.

“I didn’t really overthink things back then, because that really wasn’t the way you did things at MTV,” Gale said. “You were meant to look at things that just caught your eye.”

The auteur ethos

Another movie that ended up appealing to a teen fanbase in spite of being an R-rated drama was “Fight Club.” The David Fincher-directed feature would not have been made without producer and Fox 2000 Pictures President Laura Ziskin. “She was the executive who championed that and championed a lot of tough movies,” said Brian Raftery, author of “Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen.” (Ziskin, who died in 2011, also was a producer of “Pretty Woman” and the “Spider-Man” franchise.)

Other executives fought for the auteur ethos at multiple studios, as Sharon Waxman explained in “Rebels on the Backlot,” including Lorenzo di Bonaventura, president of worldwide production at Warner Bros. and Mike De Luca, president of production at New Line. It was DreamWorks executive Glenn Williamson, then-President of DreamWorks Bob Cooper and DreamWorks co-founder Steven Spielberg who helped get “American Beauty” over the finish line.

The combination of Spielberg and DreamWorks was the secret to success, according to Cooper. “It would never have been made without [Spielberg],” he said. “And I don’t mean because of his name only or because he liked the script.” Spielberg allowed director Sam Mendes, making his feature film debut, the freedom to make mistakes and learn from Spielberg himself. DreamWorks also gave the production as much rope as it could. “My experience at DreamWorks was a great, and I really mean great, willingness to take risk. To go against convention,” said Cooper.

These executives weren’t afraid of the relative inexperience of the directors they were working with. Darren Aronofsky directed his breakthrough feature “Pi” in 1998 at age 29 and made his startling “Requiem for a Dream” in 2000 at 31. For Sam Mendes, “American Beauty” was his first feature; “Election” director Alexander Payne was making his third.

The filmmakers of this period were mostly self-taught, learning the tools of the trade from watching the works of auteurs of the 1970s. “Magnolia” director Paul Thomas Anderson dropped out of NYU Film School after a few days figuring “he had nothing to learn from the process,” Waxman wrote in her book. No doubt these stories inspired a cadre of young film lovers already disaffected by the conformity of high school and college.

Meanwhile, the studios were in a creative doldrums, watching indie hits like “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting” suck up all the cultural attention.

After “sputtering a bit” in the mid-to late-1990s, “the studios were a little desperate and they saw all these kids, because they were much younger, making these out there, interesting, provocative movies that did okay in theaters and then had a huge life on video,” said Raftery.

Part of this is connected with what Irving Belateche, a cinema professor at USC, calls “the baby boom echo.” “In the ’90s, especially towards the late ’90s, there was this demographic bubble,” he said. The directors crafting these films were themselves the children of baby boomers as well as the audience they were reaching. “They were teenagers just finishing off their teen years in the 1990s.”

But as Waxman explained, the rebels of the era “did not submit peacefully to the studio process.” Films like “Being John Malkovich,” “Election” and “American Beauty” didn’t gestate in the studio’s development pipeline, wherein pitches are bought and then turned into scripts. In many cases, directors and producers like Gale, with “American Beauty,” came to studios with completed scripts, hoping for a champion like DreamWorks’ Cooper.

As “American Beauty” producer Dan Jinks explained, the team at DreamWorks — still a company finding itself — felt the movie wouldn’t sell internationally, that it would only play well in the big cities like San Francisco, and that it wouldn’t cater to teen audiences. Neither ended up being true.

And the films that were hits did not respond to the studio marketing machine either. “‘Boogie Nights’ would be a dismal failure, market research predicted,” wrote Waxman. “Research audiences never got [David O.] Russell’s ‘Three Kings’ or the Wachowski’s ‘The Matrix.’”

The profit motive

The desire to make money wasn’t the sole objective for DreamWorks and MTV Films. “We were looking for [unique] voices,” said Gale. “Those could be filmmaking voices, screenplays, the material that was as close to the cultural zeitgeist or could help create a cultural zeitgeist, and not just a box office success, though, of course, that always felt good.”

After 1999, these movies turned into television shows with series like “Dawson’s Creek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Teen dramas today dominate the small screen while the movies that still get made end up on streaming services like Netflix.

Jinks doubts “American Beauty” would be made in today’s studio system. “If a giant filmmaker wanted to make it at a streaming service with two huge stars that’s the only way something like that seems to get made now,” he said.

Today’s executives should be empowered to take risks and focus on entertaining stories, to return to their love of movies when picking their projects, Raftery said. Executives at studios in the late 1990s who were in their late 30s and early 40s watched “L.A. Confidential” or “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and became inspired. “They’re like, ‘That’s why I want to make movies,’” he said.

Raftery is optimistic that the youth could bring back another Golden Era equivalent to 1999, especially with so many people (including celebrities) sharing their opinions on movies, new and old, via Letterboxd, a movie-centric social media platform. “Letterboxd really has turned film-going for young people into something that they get excited about,” he said. “I see it at repertory screenings out here. I see people who are way too young to be seeing the movies that I’m going to see. I’m like, ‘Why are you watching ‘The Long Goodbye’ with Elliott Gould?’”

As Gale put it: “It was [a] golden age of movies, and it became a golden age of youth movies that does not exist anymore at all.”

The post The Year of the Teen: How the Risk Takers of 1999 Reflected a Changing Youth Landscape appeared first on TheWrap.

It’s rare that not only would a non-Netflix program sit at the top of the chart, but that it would do so for two weeks in a row. Such is the case with “Shōgun,” the FX / Hulu series about feudal Japan. Following a strong debut last week, the series continued to attract viewers across the week of March 4th to 10th. 

“Shōgun” wasn’t the only non-Netflix program making waves this week. Just as Timothée Chalamet dominates the box office in “Dune: Part 2,” he lands in the No. 4 spot on the streaming charts with “Wonka” on HBO and Max. The origin story of the eclectic candy maker was seen in 1.1 million U.S. households over the first three days it was available to stream, over-indexing in viewership among Gen Z households.

Netflix may not be number one this week, but it holds six of the top eight spots. Season six of “Love is Blind” continues to rack up strong viewership numbers with the wedding episode this week, bringing it to second place. “Damsel,” the fantasy flick featuring “Stranger Things” star Millie Bobby Brown, is third. “The Gentlemen,” a new Guy Ritchie action comedy series, follows “Wonka” at No. 5 after one million U.S. households watched the first episode over the weekend. 

The docuseries “The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping” sits in sixth, while “Avatar: The Last Airbender” dropped from second place last week to No. 7 this week. Rounding out the Netflix fare is “Spaceman,” which rose two spots from No. 10 to No. 8 this week.

The last two entries are the comedy film “Ricky Stanicky” on Amazon Prime Video at No. 9, and Apple’s big-budget WWII series “Masters of the Air,” which dropped from No. 8 last week to No. 10.

The linear TV Top 10 looks a bit different this week, as the Oscars and the State of the Union crashed the party. Hollywood’s big night was the most-watched linear program of the week, and its pre-show managed to come in fourth, part of a big week for ABC.

President Biden’s State of the Union is No. 2, followed by linear powerhouse “The Voice” at No. 3. “Wheel of Fortune” claims three spots this week — No. 5, No. 7 and No. 8 — while “The Bachelor” comes in at No. 6. “Young Sheldon” on CBS is the only scripted show to crack the linear top 10 this week, coming in ninth. Closing out the list is “Survivor,” also on CBS.

Cole Strain is VP and Head of R&D at Samba TV, a WrapPRO partner. Click here for more data and analysis from Samba TV. 

The Wrap Report provides an exclusive first look at the most watched movies and TV series from the past week across streaming and linear television sourced from viewership trends collected from Samba TV’s panel of more than 3 million households, balanced to the U.S. Census.

The post ‘Shogun’ Is a Bonafide Breakout Streaming Hit | Charts appeared first on TheWrap.

The Season 28 premiere of “The Bachelor” has hit a three-year ratings high in delayed viewing, TheWrap can reveal exclusively.

After 35 days of viewing across ABC, Hulu and other digital platforms, the first episode of Joey Graziadei’s season tallied up 7.70 million total viewers and a 2.82 rating in the key broadcast demo among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen live-plus-35-day figures and internal viewing data.

The opener marks the show’s strongest multiplatform performance in both total viewers and in the demo in nearly three years, since the finale of Matt James’ season on March 15, 2021.

The Jan. 22 episode initially debuted to an audience of 3.18 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures, which eventually soared by 89% within a week of multiplatform viewing to reach 6.02 million viewers. After over a month of viewing, the opener picked up an additional 4.52 million total viewers — marking the show’s biggest multiplatform lift in three years.

Likewise, delayed ratings for the premiere saw a whopping 432% uptick from the initial live-plus-same-day rating of 0.53, marking the show’s largest delayed-viewing increase to date. The opener grew even more within the first month of its release, after it rose to a multiplatform rating of 1.69 within a week of viewing, which marked a 219% raise from the initial live-plus-same-day rating.

“The Bachelor” Season 28 premiere saw a 17% uptick in total viewers when compared to last year’s premiere of Zach Shallcross’ season, which brought in 6.56 million total viewers within the same time frame. Ratings for the Jan. 22 premiere were similarly up 18% from the debut of Shallcross’ season, which debuted to a 2.39 rating.

Overall, the launch of Graziadei’s season garnered the show’s strongest multiplatform opener since the debut of James’ season on Jan. 4, 2021.

“The Bachelor,” which is produced by Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in association with Warner Horizon, is gearing up to debut its buzzy “Women Tell All” episode next week before airing the finale of Graziadei’s journey on March 25.

“The Bachelor” premieres Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

The post ‘The Bachelor’ Season 28 Premiere Hits 3-Year Ratings High in Delayed Viewing | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.