Gold Rush

Hi all, I write a fair amount daily. But, that’s mostly in the form of tweets and private notes. A bunch of people have pushed me to blog more. I don’t think that’s because I am a good writer. I don’t believe I am. I just tend to have a lot to say. That often gets me in trouble!

I used to blog fairly consistently on Medium.

I wouldn’t say my writing will always be insightful or provocative. I do subscribe to Fred Wilson’s thought process though. Just in a different way.

"I can’t imagine writing in a format that has an end. I can’t imagine writing in a format that doesn’t provide instant feedback. I can’t imagine writing in a format that requires a structure" - Wilson

So, lets get to it. My topic for today is script writers!

I came across this today.

First, I love free markets. They enable competition and choice. But, as with everything else, there is a downside. We can plant seeds all we want, but only a few will germinate and fewer will grow into trees over time. An optimist would say that’s the cost of innovation. A pessimist would lament wastage of capitalism. I am in the former camp. An unsurprising consequence of trying to figure out why only few worked out coupled with our collective desire to attribute successes to a set of neatly defined factors often leads to an illusion ( with its own set of benefits and challenges) that those that did succeed got everything right or got more things right than the others. My point it is always important to keep things in perspective that for every single thing that works in any market, there most likely were dozens and dozens of attempts that went nowhere. This isn’t limited to streaming services market, obviously.

Second, and more relevant point, is that in all the chatter about the “peak TV” and “content gold rush” memes, we often forget that now is such a great time to be a script writer. Studios are no longer the only brokers of the entertainment business. On top of streaming companies like Netflix, entertainment companies like Disney and dozens of other smaller streaming services, tech giants have their own studio divisions that spend copious amounts of dollars on churning out original shows and movies. While this makes the market extremely competitive for consumer dollars and attention, this feels like such an incredible time to be able to write a script and shop it around. It surprises me that this isn’t discussed. Perhaps, it is. I am yet to see this narrative get traction in my information and conversation bubbles.