http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21711265-readership-surging-stephen-bannons-alt-right-news-outfit-about-launch-french-and
If Breitbart recruits well-known figures to head local brands, as the Huffington Post has done, its path may be smoother still. In Britain, alongside Mr Kassam, it appointed James Delingpole, a conservative polemicist who writes in the Spectator, a 180-year-old right-of-centre magazine. Things are going well: the site’s audience has grown by 135% year on year, to 15m monthly page views in July, meaning it has a bigger reach than the Spectator’s own website. Not bad for a firm recently called a “bunch of nuts” by a spokesman for Mitt Romney, a former presidential candidate. The business of outrage, led in the early days by Rush Limbaugh, a right-wing talk-show host, and then perfected by Fox News, may well become another ubiquitous American export.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/losing-it-all/505814/?utm_source=nl-atlantic-weekly-120216
Less than 40 years ago, casino gambling was illegal everywhere in the United States outside of Nevada and Atlantic City, New Jersey. But since Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, tribal and commercial casinos have rapidly proliferated across the country, with some 1,000 now operating in 40 states. Casino patrons bet more than $37 billion annually—more than Americans spend to attend sporting events ($17.8 billion), go to the movies ($10.7 billion), and buy music ($6.8 billion) combined.
http://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/washington_post_bezos_amazon_revolution.php
In the three years since Amazon’s Jeff Bezos bought the Post for $250 million—now seen as a steal for one of the great brands in publishing—the Post has reinvented itself with digital speed. Its Web traffic has doubled since Bezos arrived, and it far outstrips The New York Times (and even BuzzFeed) in the number of online posts its reporters file every day. So successful has the Post become in the digital game that it now licenses its content management system to other news outlets, a business that could generate $100 million a year.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/helen-mirren-pirelli-calendar_us_583efde8e4b0c33c8e134d4e
Mirren joined Nicole Kidman, Charlotte Rampling, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o and others in posing for the set of images, each expressing in the accompanying video above their admiration for Lindbergh’s ability to capture them in a more natural state than the usual photoshoot.
http://observer.com/2016/11/the-kremlin-didnt-sink-hillary-obama-did/
Yet again, President Obama’s unwillingness to confront Putin and his regime about anything—Syria, Ukraine, deploying nuclear missiles next to Poland—only encouraged the honey badger in the Kremlin to grow more adventurous and aggressive. By refusing to debunk noxious Russian lies, Obama encouraged Putin to tell more of them—including about Hillary Clinton. This culminated in the Russian intelligence operation which employed Wikileaks as a front to disseminate Democratic emails which had been intercepted by Moscow & which the National Security Agency has recently admitted.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21709574-tech-firms-battle-hire-and-hoard-talented-employees-huge-pay-packages-silicon-valley
To maintain their grip on top employees, the tech giants use several tactics in addition to handing out stock. Some provide generous signing-on bonuses that can be clawed back if an employee leaves within three years. Amazon heavily weights stock grants to an employee’s third and fourth year with the company, as an incentive for them to stay and continue to work hard. Another common practice is to offer a “retention” bonus to make employees who are considering going elsewhere reconsider. Apple, Google and Facebook are rumoured to keep a list of companies they do not want to lose talent to, and supervisors are empowered to offer large bonuses to prevent people moving in that direction. A famous example of this occurred in 2011, when Neal Mohan, a senior Google executive, was considering leaving for Twitter. Some say he was offered a bonus of $100m in stock to stay at Google.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21709584-escalating-fight-over-users-data-and-targeted-ads-digital-advertisers-battle-over-online
For advertisers, the result is an increasingly lopsided industry. Any new restrictions on companies, such as Verizon, which are vying to expand their digital ad businesses, will bestow more power to the already mighty Google and Facebook, points out Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group. For consumers, the result is a muddle: limits for gathering data depend on the identity of the gatherer. “Nothing in these rules will stop edge-providers from harvesting and monetising your data, whether it’s the websites you visit or the YouTube videos you watch or the e-mails you send,” declares Ajit Pai, an FCC commissioner who voted against the order.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37837432?SThisFB
If you were to base your view of the US election solely on pro-Kremlin newspapers and state TV, you might easily conclude that the election is rigged, that the result almost certainly will be contested and that America faces a prolonged period of post-election chaos.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-31/why-bettors-take-a-flier-on-trump
There are good reasons to ignore each of these predictions. Big-data analysis is a young discipline, and the methods are still relatively untested. All the models based on economic performance and the previous administration’s performance could be unreliable in this year’s race because it is so intensely personalized and scandal-ridden. Besides, these models do not boast perfect historical accuracy.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21709345-huge-merger-tries-follow-change-way-people-watch-television-angling
IMAGINE a television which, as in the old days, has only a handful of channels to choose from instead of hundreds, as a typical cable set-up might offer today. In a decade or so TVs will once again have only a few channels, but each will run miles deep, with content that can be viewed on demand. Netflix might be one such offering; Amazon another. Both firms are spending billions of dollars making and buying TV shows and films to sell directly to viewers to watch when they like, and on devices other than the box in the corner of the room. And other rich tech firms may join them.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/10/daily-chart-15
But gun-toting may bring actors more than just moral satisfaction. The number of different guns an actor has handled in films is strongly correlated with Ulmer scores, which measure an actor’s bankability—or ability to draw financing—on a scale from 0 to 300. This trend holds even when controlling for the total number of acting credits. Denzel Washington seems to hold a different gun in each movie in which he stars.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21709062-earlier-sunny-mood-about-technology-and-innovation-has-given-way-pessimism-techno-wars
The real question is not whether the IT revolution has run out of steam or whether creative destruction is grinding to a halt. In fact, the IT revolution is probably gathering pace and Google and Amazon are two of the most innovative firms to emerge in the past 50 years. Rather it is whether the new economy can counteract the forces ranged against it: ageing populations; a political class responding to populism by restricting trade and by over-regulating business; and education systems that in many places are failing. The big danger is that, while optimists and pessimists battle it out, the world becomes ever more divided between islands of high productivity surrounded by a vast ocean of stagnation.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/10/bang-your-buck
Given that a number of prominent actors—Matt Damon, Sigourney Weaver, George Clooney, Jodie Foster and Sylvester Stallone, to name a handful—are in favour of gun control, a public repudiation of firearms would have a significant effect on the industry. It would help, too, if free advertising was eradicated by film companies by demanding expensive product placement contracts from manufacturers. Actions films and the requisite guns would of course still have a place on the silver screen—but it might limit the collateral damage.
http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21709150-combination-huge-distributor-tv-leading-content-producer-bold
Time Warner has been here before. In 2000 its $350bn merger with AOL was the largest in American history. It was meant to be the dawn of a new era dominated by internet giants. That deal was a disaster that cost thousands of jobs and destroyed hundreds of billions of dollars in combined market value for the two firms (AOL spun off in 2009 and was acquired by Verizon last year for $4.4bn). Now Time Warner becomes part of a megadeal in another business with an interesting but uncertain future.
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21708876-political-reform-essential-prerequisite-flourishing-economy-milk-without
Innopolis has comfortable town houses, playgrounds with Wi-Fi and a large swimming pool. Igor Nosov, its manager, holds an American MBA. The city’s free economic zone is dominated by a circular office building for high-tech firms. There is just one thing in short supply: the firms themselves. So far the building has only about a dozen occupants. “Well, we’ve built a collective farm. Now we need the farmers,” quips one of the Tatar officials. Whether those farmers will come depends on a range of factors mostly outside Tatarstan’s control.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster
We are now on more lists than ever before, and computers have turned filing cabinets full of paper into instantly searchable, instantly actionable banks of data. Increasingly, computers are managing these databases, with no need for humans to get involved or even to understand what is happening. And the computers are often unaccountable: an algorithm that rates teachers and schools, Uber drivers or businesses on Google’s search, will typically be commercially confidential. Whatever errors or preconceptions have been programmed into the algorithm from the start, it is safe from scrutiny: those errors and preconceptions will be hard to challenge.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/06/liquid-assets-how--business-bottled-water-went-mad
Over the past two decades, bottled water has become the fastest-growing drinks market in the world. The global market was valued at $157bn in 2013, and is expected to reach $280bn by 2020. Last year, in the UK alone, consumption of water drinks grew by 8.2%, equating to a retail value of more than £2.5bn. Sales of water are 100 times higher than in 1980. Of water: a substance that, in developed countries, can be drunk for free from a tap without fear of contracting cholera. What is going on?
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-make-apps-addictive
“There are people who worry about ai [artificial intelligence],” Harris said. “They ask whether we can maximise its potential without harming human interests. But ai is already here. It’s called the internet. We’ve unleashed this black box which is always developing new ways to persuade us to do things, by moving us from one trance to the next.”
https://www.1843magazine.com/culture/box-baron
Since the start of 2015, FX has been host to the most critically acclaimed limited series (“Fargo”), the most acclaimed serial drama (“The Americans”), one of the most critically acclaimed comedies (“Louie”) and a highly praised and popular phenomenon (“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”). According to scores from Metacritic, a website that aggregates critics’ reviews, FX at the moment is better than every one of the big names: cable outlets such as HBO, Showtime and AMC – the network of “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men” – as well as the video-streaming services, Netflix and Amazon. In July FX won more Emmy nominations than Netflix. In August it was the biggest winner at the Television Critics Association awards.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21705353-can-netflix-stay-atop-new-broadband-based-television-ecosystem-it-helped-create-streaming
Some years hence, Mr Hastings envisages a future in which the main networks are Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, HBO, assorted sports networks and only a very few existing channels that are able to thrive on the internet, including the BBC (which has its online iPlayer and a captive subscriber base thanks to Britain’s licence fee). Live sports will be delivered online in ultra-high definition. Scripted television could become still more cinematic and expensive. HBO’s “Game of Thrones” costs around $10m an hour to make. Baz Luhrmann’s “The Get Down”, six episodes of which were released on Netflix on August 12th, cost roughly the same (see article). “What does $20m-an-hour television look like?” Mr Hastings muses. Whether it is Netflix or one of its rivals that casts caution to the wind and splurges the cash will hardly occupy viewers’ minds as they lower the blinds and prepare to binge.
