The Eric Jackson Podcast

In 1995, Disney "bet the company" on acquiring Capital Cities/ABC which owned 80% of ESPN. It worked out, but not for the reasons Michael Eisner thought going into it. Eric discusses this in relation to Rich Greenfield's recent blog post on what he'd do to turn around ESPN if he was Bob Iger.

It's common today to hear critics say that Disney and ESPN management should have moved quicker to launch an over-the-top offering or that they overpaid to recent sports rights deals. Eric explains why ESPN and Disney are in a really strong position to reboot themselves and what kinds of new services they might launch in the future.

Instagram has turbocharged Facebook's growth in the past 5 years. It's now up to 700 million users. When it bought Instagram, Facebook was worth $58 billion. Today it's worth $435 billion. How much would it be worth without Instagram? A lot less, Eric argues.

Only a few years ago, Wall Street analysts didn't think it was likely that Netflix could grow its subscribers beyond 30 million. They now have 100 million worldwide. Where will it stop? Is the company spending unsustainably on content or is it prudent given its growth opportunities?

In 2015, Bill Simmons was unceremoniously fired by ESPN in public. Two months later, he signed a lucrative 3 year deal with HBO that will end next year. Will he continue The Ringer independently or team up with ESPN or some other major media outlet? Eric makes the cast for why both Simmons and ESPN should swallow their pride and put Humpty Dumpty back together.

Five years ago, I predicted the New York Times would be out of business by now. It's not, but print and text in general - even digital media companies based on text like Vox and BuzzFeed - are having difficulty making money next to long-form articles. We are a visual society moving more to video and images as our preferred method of consuming information. This has lots of business and investing implications.

Eric discusses why so many tech and media companies have preferred to stay private vs. go public over the past 15 years and why that's outside what's typically been the norm. With the new Snapchat IPO getting a higher valuation from public investors compared to private ones, look for more and more companies to go back to IPO'ing sooner in their life cycles.

NBCU spent $500 million on Snapchat stock in its IPO. Disney recently bought a path to control BAMTech. Can these traditional media companies make money in digital through these investments? Will upstarts like Cheddar running on Facebook Live overtake them? There are a lot of questions still to answer before we figure that out. Eric runs through all the important ones.

Eric speaks with BTIG TMT analyst Walt Piecyk about Charter's results, whether it will be bought by Verizon, what Verizon is doing with its new Unlimited plan, if Sprint and T-Mobile will merge, how AT&T is posiitoned, what smaller players might be bought on the path to 5G, as well as how Apple is positioned going into the roll-out of iPhone 8 later this year.

Apple has spent $150 billion on stock buybacks and $50 billion on dividends since starting the capital return program in 2012. They've also tacked on $100 billion in debt that needs to be repaid down the road. They'd have been better off buying Facebook, Netflix or Instagram. Google hasn't minded taking big swings at YouTube, Android, or DoubleClick over the years - and it's reshaped the company. Eric outlines why Apple needs to face its big M&A blind spot.

Verizon's Go90 strategy looks dated compared to AT&T's with DirecTV and Time Warner zero rated data streaming as well as Sprint and T-Mobile's unlimited data plans. Eric outlines why Vessel isn't a solution for Go90 and Verizon likely needs to make a much bigger content acquisition.

With Michael Lynton leaving to go to be Executive Chair at Snap, many in the media have speculated that Sony is about to sell off its movie studio to either CBS or someone else. Eric gives his read on why he thinks it's more likely that Sony's CEO Kaz Hirai will double down on its investment in the movie studio as it tries to better fuse its hardware and software.

The NFL's TV Ratings ended 2016 down 8% from the prior year. That's much better than earlier in the season. Some think the blip was purely the result of the election year. Eric explains why he thinks there are still big ratings problems ahead for the league next year and after.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Verizon executives have approached Charter about a potential tie-up of the cable and wireless companies. It demonstrates how Verizon feels it’s ill-equipped to compete against the cable/wireless/content behemoths of AT&T and Comcast. Eric explains what's behind the interest in the deal.

Eric speaks to Laundry Service Founder and CEO Jason Stein about what to expect from the Tech and Media sectors in 2017. Topics include: (1) how successful will Snapchat’s IPO be?, (2) the speed at which ad dollars are moving to Snapchat, (3) why Facebook has been forgotten and what you’ll see from them this year, (4) can anyone else besides Google and Facebook make money in digital in the near term?, (5) which companies are best poised to be the next content bundlers?, (6) can Twitter be saved?,(7) what's going to happen to live sports in 2017?, and (8) which of the wireless company strategies will be most successful?