The Ankler Podcast
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Top 10 The Ankler Podcast Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Ankler Podcast episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Ankler Podcast for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Ankler Podcast episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Pod: Hollywood's Economic Armageddon Looms
The Ankler Podcast
06/17/22 • 43 min
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Hosts Janice Min, Richard Rushfield and Tatiana Siegel are joined by new Ankler contributor Sean McNulty of The Wakeup newsletter to discuss the first likely recession of the streaming era, which, if it were to happen, would further roil companies already getting pounded by Wall Street and, in the case of Netflix, subscriber losses.
McNulty references the last recession following the 2008-2009 collapse of the financial markets. It was pre-streaming and HBO was the dominant premium player at the time. “HBO really never saw a big hit in [previous] recessions... but that was in the ecosystem of cable TV, where it was a lot harder to cancel your HBO,” says McNulty, a former executive at HBO and Charter. “Now, you can literally cancel at the click of a button on your [remote]. I think we haven't seen too much [subscription decline] yet. But I think by end of by Q3... this will be very interesting.”
Marketing cuts appear already to be underway as the streamers tighten their belts. “You're not gonna cut back necessarily on production, but you cut back on marketing and advertising... [they] take the first hit, which is where Warner Bros. Discovery already has positioned its ax,” adds McNulty. “And layoffs are sweeping the industry.” Additionally, an across-the-board pullback in advertising is expected as well right as streaming services pivot to advertising to goose revenue.
Siegel also discusses the role of inflation in the new subscription economy: “Everyone right now is terrified of the economic outlook, because no matter how wealthy somebody is in the industry, even if they're at the highest echelon of the industry, they are seeing that a pint of strawberries is $19. And you have to wonder how long will people be able to have four different streaming subscriptions under those kind of economic [conditions].”
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Inside Bob Iger's Ticking Timeline
The Ankler Podcast
06/16/23 • 53 min
The most-watched entertainment company in the world, Disney lately is roiled by major exec changes, an animation eclipse from other studios, layoffs and a CEO racing to both name a successor and right the ship at the same time. CNBC media reporter Alex Sherman joins Sean McNulty and Elaine Low to talk the perfect storm facing the company with less than 18 months left in Iger’s second term. Also: the PGA-LIV anti-trust problem (2:27), latest on the strike, and what’s next on the Sun Valley agenda (43:52).
Full transcript here.
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Pod: Netflix Becomes a Takeover Target
The Ankler Podcast
04/22/22 • 34 min
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Today's Hot Seat Podcast is hosted by Richard Rushfield and features special guest, media investor and analyst extraordinaire Rich Greenfield, Partner and TMT Analyst at LightShed Partners and LightShed Ventures.
Greenfield has long been one of Netflix's most ardent enthusiasts in the investment community, but in a wide-ranging conversation on the state of the media world, post-Netflix earnings, he’s changed his tune.
Says Greenfield, “If you think about the sort of rocky road, Netflix was at an all-time high in October or November, and it reminds me of the Ferris Bueller quote — things move fast. You really have got to pay attention because this industry is moving at pretty crazy speed right now.
“That's what's so scary. The reality is we coined the term #goodluckbundle cause we saw what was happening to linear television before others. The question now is everyone looked at Netflix, everyone looked at Disney and the success they had and said, ‘Oh my God, this actually isn't as hard as it looks! Wall Street will reward us! We're gonna build this massive streaming juggernaut. We can be like Netflix too!’ So everyone's all in on streaming and now you just go, holy crap, that valuation is no longer gonna be possible. Wall Street's not gonna reward us. Our legacy TV business and movie business is actually falling apart faster than we thought, because we've shifted so much content to streaming and change consumer behavior. So you can't go back to the old business. The new business is not economically as compelling as you thought it was. What do we do? Do we just keep plowing into streaming?"
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And in a reversal unthinkable just weeks ago, Greenfield sees the company — now at a bargain market cap of $100 billion — as a possible takeover target for Apple or Amazon, companies he also believes will increase their production spend to capitalize on where Netflix may cut.
"If Apple wants to step in, buy it or Disney wants to step in and buy it, I think there are certainly crazier things that have happened and maybe that's the opportunity, right? While I don't think they're looking to be sold and I don't think that's the plan, obviously, I can't imagine everyone is not thinking about if you want to have a 220 million global subscriber business with a growing library with incredible tech talent, there's a way to get it. So again, another reason why people don't just abandon Netflix as a stock is that it's actually gotten to a size where it actually becomes an interesting chess piece."
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Greenfield also predicts a possible role for Jason Kilar, the streaming age's golden boy, who recently was exited out of WarnerMedia and launched HBO Max.
"I was just sort of thinking out loud of like, if you were, if you were gonna build an advertising-supported streaming business, who would you call? If you got one call for help, who do you call right now? Why don't you pick up the phone and call Jason Kilar who has an entire team, that's done advertising on streaming, not once but twice. And his entire team is right now sitting on the side.”
Still, he scornful of Netflix's new ad push. “It really is surprising that the right answer for Netflix is to cave on their religion of advertising or being anti-advertising. And I think that of everything that happens this week, the one that is by far the scariest, is that they're now coming to the conclusion that advertising might be the only answer.”He continues, “When you think about Netflix and you can go through, you know, hundreds of episodes of content...how many seasons of Grey's Anatomy are there? You know, you can binge through the first three seasons of Stranger Things and you get lost. Without an ad break and the content just auto-plays, you totally get lost.”
“As soon as you start putting ad breaks in — and remember, none of the Netflix originals were made [even thinking] about with ad breaks...I don't know if you've watched Hulu with advertising late...
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How Formula 1 Caught Fire
The Ankler Podcast
09/30/22 • 43 min
In lieu of our regular weekly podcast, today’s edition is the first of four in our “What the World Watches” audio series from Singapore’s APOS conference. Our regular format resumes next week.
In five years, Formula 1 has evolved from a rich man’s pastime to one of the world’s fastest growing sports, thanks in large to Ian Holmes. F1’s Director of Media Rights and Content Creation, Holmes struck deals with ESPN (27:44), and Netflix, whose F1 docu-series, Drive to Survive, is renewed for a fifth and sixth season (16:10). In Singapore ahead of F1’s flashy Grand Prix, Holmes tells hosts Janice Min and Sean McNulty about what changed at F1 when Liberty Media took ownership (11:48), F1’s new deal with China Telecom (13:26), how Drive to Survive — Holmes is an EP — happened, and why gentleman have yet to start their engines on the Brad Pitt-Joseph Kosinski Apple TV+ F1 film nicknamed “Top Gun on Four Wheels” (30:56): “We’re working hard on an agreement.”
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This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/subscribe
The Most Blunder-ful Time of the Year!
The Ankler Podcast
12/22/23 • 60 min
From mass layoffs to major strikes to multiplex disasters, the entertainment industry isn’t likely to forget 2023. Richard Rushfield runs through his annual Ankler 100, Hollywood’s most miserable moments of the year, as 2024 looms with even more possible disruption as a Warner Bros. Discovery-Paramount merger raises myriad questions: Would a hypothetical deal even pass DoJ and FTC muster? What would HBO/Showtime and CNN/CBS News combos look like? And will any of these efforts even matter against Big Tech? Says Claire Atkinson, who joins Sean McNulty and Elaine Low: “It feels to me like they need to do these huge acquisitions or else the tech guys are just going to run away with the show.”
For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler here.
Note: The Ankler Podcast will not be releasing an episode next week. See you in 2024!
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Tales From the ’90s: Ain’t It Cool News’ ‘Titanic’ Impact on Hollywood
The Ankler Podcast
12/30/24 • 57 min
At the dawn of the internet as we know it today, long before social media exploded the Hollywood hierarchy, there was Ain’t It Cool News, an in-your-face site, launched in 1996, that covered the movie business — passionately, disruptively and absolutely without fear or favor. Drew McWeeny, who joined Harry Knowles’ Austin startup in its earliest days, writing from L.A. under the pseudonym Moriarty, tells Richard Rushfield how Ain’t It Cool News remade entertainment journalism, confounded the studios and enraged execs from Tom Rothman to Rupert Murdoch. Among other breaks with industry-coverage norms, McWeeny and his colleagues were the first to publish reports and reviews from test screenings, changing the fortunes of films including Batman & Robin and, most famously, Titanic. “I was addicted to Premiere, Movieline, all those magazines,” McWeeny recalls. “But it was all very carefully stage managed with the studios, and it had to be. We were the response to that, which was the most punk rock version of: No, not only do we not deal with the studios, but fuck the studios.”
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Hollywood’s New Mission Impossible: Greenlights
The Ankler Podcast
02/21/25 • 33 min
Budgets for studio theatrical slates and TV lineups are disappearing as fast as federal agencies these days. But there’s hope! Dealmakers’ Ashley Cullins joins to break down the new rules for landing a greenlight for an original film today, while Elaine Low reveals ways to navigate new small screen realities, from acing that Zoom pitch to turning that blinking yellow light green. And despite the industry’s collective surrender, Sean McNulty explains why more data could flip the narrative of an industry perceived to be in decline.
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Ankler Hot Seat: A Hollywood Producer's Secrets, Spilled
The Ankler Podcast
02/11/22 • 60 min
Ready for some dish and fun? Producer Christine Peters is a legendary Hollywood figure, an almost Zelig-like personage who, at various times, ran Robert Evans’ production shingle at Paramount, was married to hairdresser-turned-studio chief Jon Peters, and was proposed to by Sumner Redstone. During that time, she had a ringside seat to some of the biggest business headlines in Hollywood history —from which she shares many of the backstories in this episode. The producer of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days also stunned Hollywood in 2018 when she revealed her own #MeToo encounter with Les Moonves to Ronan Farrow, a move that played a crucial part in the CBS chairman and CEO’s eventual ouster. She talks in this episode about how that decision to make her sexual assault public happened and why (hint: it involves Mia Farrow).
In this episode, Peters also discusses her upcoming memoir, her involvement in Web3, and what she thinks about the portrayal of ex-husband Peters, played by Bradley Cooper, in the Oscar-nominated Licorice Pizza. She also discusses one bombshell after another, including her dinner with Redstone and Jeffrey Epstein, how she helped put Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible back together after Redstone fired Cruise, and — ouch — her true feelings about Redstone’s daughter, Shari Redstone, chairwoman of Viacom. She is candid and dishy and unfiltered in her appraisal of the industry today.
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The Hot Seat Podcast: Every Sensitive Topic
The Ankler Podcast
01/12/22 • 49 min
Welcome to The Ankler Hot Seat, our new podcast that takes you behind the scenes of Hollywood’s big personalities, power struggles and ever-changing playbook. It is a production of The Ankler, a subscription-only newsletter.
Everyone will have an opinion about the topics on today’s episode, as we dive into the most sensitive subjects currently raging in Hollywood — racial reckoning, “woke” culture, and #MeToo. We base today’s discussion on two news-making stories that reveal the death of consensus not just in politics, but also in this industry. You’ll also notice a theme in the discussions around redemption — is it possible for any one person or organization that has been disgraced?
First up, our special guest is writer Peter Kiefer, whose piece “Hollywood’s New Rules”, was in equal measures loved and hated as it made waves immediately upon its publication on Tuesday. Writing what many whisper, but few speak out loud, Peter reveals the private feelings of much of white Hollywood about so-called “woke” culture, their fear of misstepping or being “canceled”, and how things, as Hawk Koch, former president of the Academy told him, have “gone too far.” (Lots of voices in his piece would beg to differ).
Peter reveals the emails that a white male show-runner shared with him after he didn’t get certain jobs (possibly as convenient excuses):
“This one a dead end — they are going to limit search to women and bipoc candidates”
“Studio now telling us this job must go to a female / bipoc writer. Sorry — it sucks”
As the demographics of the country shift toward a non-white majority GenZ audience, recent cultural reckonings and a recognition of a century of exclusion for people of color in Hollywood have resulted in sweeping changes — critics would say regulation and interference — around representation. Diving into why what some of liberal (white) Hollywood says publicly differs from what some say privately, The Ankler Hot Seat asks the real question — has anything really changed at all?
Then after that:
Our hosts dive into the Golden Globes debacle, an epic, hilarious mess of an evening. After the Los Angeles Times expose, the publicist boycott, and botched attempts to shake it off, the Globes finally took the stage last weekend, to an audience of themselves. The proceedings were followed widely via a series of madcap Twitter announcements that somehow perfectly captured the zaniness that is the Globes’ calling card. We hash out what this night added up to, what did Hollywood lose in not having this show, and is there any path back?
The, we take up the fate of James Franco as he attempts to mount a comeback. Should he have been exiled? Was he even exiled? And what stands in the way of his return? There has yet to be a successful return from #MeToo jail; will this be the first? The reasons why he might not be accepted back are probably not quite what you think.
Finally, we have a quick recap of the Top 10 shows and movies on streaming.
What do you think about all this? Are the hiring doubts in Hollywood justified concerns, or sour grapes and entitlement? Should the Globes come back? Should James Franco? Tell us hear your thoughts in the comments...
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If you have thoughts about what is said on the pod, or have a guest or topic suggestion, let us know at HotSeat@anklermedia.com
Music by Jordan Sommerlad On Spotify @jordansommerladmusic
Follow @TheAnkler and our hosts: @janicemin @anklerrushfield @tatianasiegel27
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Pod: Bob II, The Batman and Rudin
The Ankler Podcast
03/12/22 • 42 min
Follow us at Apple Podcasts if you like what you are hearing. And please subscribe to The Ankler at TheAnkler.com for more interviews and stories like these.
This episode of the Hot Seat dives into The Ankler’s Anxiety Week. What is eating this business? As the Streaming Wars rage, money is flowing like never before, but a sense of unease among its workers has been the subject of several of our stories that clearly are touching a nerve. Hosts Richard Rushfield and Tatiana Siegel touch on why (Janice Min sat this one out), but also:
• Disney and the fallout over Florida. Bob II has gotten himself in another fine mess over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. We look at what drove him into such hot water, how Disney gets out of it, and wonder why no one else is getting the same scrutiny. (NOTE: This episode was recorded before Bob Chapek’s Friday apology for his earlier stand on the issue.)
• The Batman takes the box office. Another Batman scored another hit last weekend for Warners, showing another sign of life in the theatrical business. But with many caveats? Is it all going to be just like it was before?
• The return of Scott Rudin. A year after being sidelined for decades of fabulously awful conduct Tatiana exposed, the combative producer is inching his way back into the mainstream with a new project.
• The Oscars are coming! The field is wide open. At least five films have a plausible shot at the prize. Who will win? We give our picks. And will anyone be watching?
All that and more on this week's Hot Seat!
If you are already a subscriber, thank you. If not, come aboard today and join the community of some of the most powerful insiders in entertainment.
Also on The Ankler:
It’s Anxiety Week! An unemployed TV writer shares her years of agony. Slouching Towards Pavilions.
The Entertainment Strategy Guy takes a hard look at the numbers behind our collective feeling of instability and stares straight into The Content Bubble’s Sum of All Fears.
Then go deeper into our exclusive Anxiety Week coverage. For an understanding of why so many of us feel this way, start with The Pit in Your Stomach is Real, and continue on to “It Feels Like the Last Days of Rome” from new contributing editor Nicole LaPorte.
On the departure of Netflix’s flamboyant marketing chief, Bozoma Saint John , and her clap back.
CAMERA ROLL IS UP ! Great photos of who was where this week in Hollywood.
Check out our new awards season pop-up, The Glossy. It’s Vincent Boucher’s take in the ramp-up to the Oscars on the nexus of fashion and entertainment, who’s making money now and how, and the most inventive costume work in film and TV.
Zelensky Memo Reveals 'Your Business Smells Russian' Campaign: Sean Penn's co-director/producer shares the leader's call to action, revealed on The Ankler Hot Seat podcast.
On The Optionist:
Q&A: What A.I. Tells Us About Debut Authors
A highly curated list of 10 current and backlist books, new journalism, and podcasts ready for option. This week: divorcees, a detective and Ukrainian ghosts.
Subscribe during the free beta period here (it’s almost over!).
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Can’t afford The Ankler right now? If you’re an assistant, student or getting your foot in the door of this industry, and want help navigating the craziness of this business but don’t have money to spare right now, drop me a line at [email protected] and we’ll work it out. No mogul or mogul-to-be left...
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FAQ
How many episodes does The Ankler Podcast have?
The Ankler Podcast currently has 256 episodes available.
What topics does The Ankler Podcast cover?
The podcast is about News, Entertainment News, Podcasts and Business.
What is the most popular episode on The Ankler Podcast?
The episode title 'Pod: Netflix Becomes a Takeover Target' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on The Ankler Podcast?
The average episode length on The Ankler Podcast is 37 minutes.
How often are episodes of The Ankler Podcast released?
Episodes of The Ankler Podcast are typically released every 4 days, 19 hours.
When was the first episode of The Ankler Podcast?
The first episode of The Ankler Podcast was released on Jan 5, 2022.
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