Showbiz Sandbox

According to Digital Entertainment Group, consumers in North America spent $37 billion on home entertainment in 2022. That includes not only spending on streaming services, but also DVD, Blu-ray and digital sales. Not to mention physical and digital rentals. And none of these figures includes spending on cable television. Meanwhile, awards season is in full […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 609:...

Major television networks, cable channels and even streamers are all reeling from all of the changes the industry has been undergoing recently. New shows are being canceled before they air. Others disappear after only a single season with all their episodes yanked from streaming libraries. Ratings for linear and cable are way down causing every […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 608: The Televisio...

AMC Theatres, the world’s largest cinema chain, announced plans to start charging moviegoers based on where they sit in an auditorium. Preferred seats will cost a few dollars more than standard seats and those in the first two rows will cost less. At a time when movie theaters are having trouble attracting patrons back into […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 607: AMC Sets Sights On Upending Movie...

Though Beyoncé led the 2023 Grammy Award nominations with nine nods, in the end she did not win the top prize for Album of the Year for “Renaissance.” Much to the dismay of some, that honor went to Harry Styles for “Harry’s House,” though Beyoncé did break the record for the most Grammy wins ever. […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 606: Beyoncé Makes Grammy History As Harry Styles Wins Album of th...

This year’s Sundance Film Festival came to a close over the weekend marking the first time the event has been held in-person since 2020 due to the pandemic. This year’s Sundance was considered light on acquisitions, raising the perennial debate over the viability of the festival’s official selection whether it be theatrically or on streaming. […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 605: The Future For...

As we get deeper into this year’s awards season we’re finally hearing from groups whose opinions mean something. For instance, the guilds for directors, producers and cinematographers have all nominated their top picks from last year’s movies. In other instances however, awards are handed out in so many different categories, it seems like every film […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 604: Which Aw...

With 2022 now officially over, Nielsen announced the 100 highest rated primetime broadcasts of the year and sports programming dominated the list. Football was a big winner taking the top nine spots. The Oscars telecast was the only non-sports broadcast in the top 31 programs. “60 Minutes,” “NCIS,” “NCIS Hawaii,” “FBI” and other similar fare […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 603: Sports Programmi...

Filmmaker James Cameron delivered his long-awaited sequel to “Avatar,” the highest grossing movie of all-time and it delivered the blue Christmas movie theaters were hoping for. “Avatar: The Way of Water” is getting mostly glowing reviews for its visuals, less so for its story, and opened to huge admissions figures around the world. Whether it […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 602: Avatar Sequel...

The second Red Sea International Film Festival just came to a close in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a country which didn’t even have movie theaters until four years ago. In fact, several Saudi films premiered at the event which put an emerging Middle East film industry on full display. Meanwhile there is no debating that we […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 601: Middle East Film Industry On Display at R...

We were just as surprised as everyone else to hear that The Walt Disney Company was firing their CEO Bob Chapek and replacing him with their longtime former head, Bob Iger. Iger is returning to a markedly different media company than the one he left less than a year ago and his second stint as […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 600: The Return of Bob Iger at Disney appeared first on Showbiz Sandbo...

The nominees for the 65th Annual Grammy Awards were announced this week and as expected Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Adele and Harry Styles will all be competing for top awards. Yet some of the year’s biggest albums weren’t even eligible to be nominated because they were released after September. This is a continuous problem for the […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 599: The Grammy Awards Have A Timi...

It’s no secret that streaming services have been affecting every part of the entertainment business in one way or another, from movies and television to music sales and book publishing. After the latest round of earnings announcements from major media conglomerates a few realities become clear; producing original content for direct-to-consumer streaming offerings is costing […] The post Show...

Audiobooks have slowly gained enough market share in the publishing industry that the medium now rivals print and ebooks in terms of sales and consumption. How audiobooks are changing the way we read is a question Karl Berglund of Uppsala University in Sweden set out to answer through a study analyzing a large amount of […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 597: Audiobooks Are Changing Our Reading Ha...

It’s hard to believe that the compact disc format was first launched forty years ago this week. Billboard has a great oral history about the launch of the CD format and how it initially faced stiff resistance from record labels before kicking off a boom in music sales that lasted until digital MP3s took over […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 596: The Compact Disc Turns 40 Years Old appeared first...

With mid-year music revenue figures finally tallied it appears the growth of streaming music has begun to slow as vinyl sales has increase. Also on the rise are reports of payola as indie music artists can’t seem to get played on the radio without paying promoters for the privilege of being put in rotation. These […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 595: Vinyl Sales and Payola on the Rise in Music I...

The annual film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto overlap not only in their timing but often in their official selections and this year was no exception. As usual, titles that begin their festival tour as anticipated awards season contenders sometimes wind up as afterthoughts while unexpected discoveries gain wide recognition. The movie that took […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 594: Fa...

The 74th Annual Prime Time Emmy Awards were held this week and they managed to honor most of the winners from last year’s ceremony. The same shows, and at times the same actors, continue to top most of the big categories. This begs the perennial question, what is the actual purpose of the Emmy Awards? […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 593: This Year’s Emmy Awards Turns Into A Rerun appeared first...

At a time when streaming services are hoarding content in an attempt to attract subscribers and capture market share, Warner Bros. Discovery has taken the opposite approach with HBO Max; they are removing shows from their platform. Now comes reports that pulling shows from its library can save the company around $100 million annually. We […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 592: Why Is HBO Max Dumpi...

There is no better evidence that the streaming wars are still in full swing than the news that streaming services are accounting for more viewing than cable television for the first time in history. As streaming media companies fight for market share, they have turned to live sports as a means of driving subscriber growth. […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 591: Live Sports Becomes the Costliest B...

The newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery held its first earnings call last week making so many headlines it was all anyone in the entertainment industry could talk about. The company has a ton of debt, but a plan to get into better financial shape; stop producing expensive scripted shows, shelve pricey projects and layoff thousands […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 590: New Warner Bros. Discovery...

In an effort to make music valuable again, producer T Bone Burnett is getting behind a technology that allowed him and Bob Dylan to create a one-off re-recording of “Blowin’ In The Wind” and then auction it off for $1.8 million. But can recordings be treated the same way as paintings are in the art […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 589: Should Music Be Produced and Sold Like Fine Art? appeared fi...

Though the entertainment industry may be infatuated infatuated with streaming, the legacy media companies behind all the new subscription services haven’t quite found the right way to profit from them. NBC/Universal earned nearly a billion dollars in committed ad revenue with Peacock this year, causing them to take a hard look at all of their […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 588: Keeping Track o...

With this year’s Tony Awards having been doled out, the 29 shows currently running on Broadway are taking stock of what’s working, which ones should stick around and which should stop raising their curtains. At least 14 have announced closing dates or are expected to soon, including some big musical productions. Others are recasting their […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 587: How To Succeed on B...

After all of the obstacles the pandemic forced plays and musicals to deal with, this year’s Tony Awards looked to raise the curtain on a revived Broadway. The ceremony managed to honor some of the best productions and performances from last season while celebrating the efforts the Broadway community made just to stay in business. […] The post Showbiz Sandbox 586: Tony Awards Help Broadway Ge...