The Best One Yet - BONUS 🍿 “The Entertainment Pod” — Our Best Entertainment stories from 2024

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

(Tom Cruise jumped on a chair when he heard this episode):#1. Netflix just gave itself the biggest Christmas gift of all… NFL football on Christmas Day. (5/17/2024)#2. Sabrina Carpenter dropped 7 versions of the same song… because the music industry took a strategy from the ice cream industry. (7/22/2024)#3. The fastest-growing genre in books is “Romantasy”... Romantic Fantasies are driving book sales with pixie dust. (7/15/2024)Share this episode with your buddy in LA… or DM it to Oprah.We’ll be back on Monday, January 6th, with our regular TBOY podcasts. But look out for more bonus pods from us dropping over the holidays.And if you crave more business storytelling from us? Check out our weekly deepdive show: “The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with. From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly. Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And today's entertainment pod is the best one yet. The top three entertainment stories you need to know today. Besties, this is episode two of our holiday bonus week. I guess you could say it's the sequel of our holiday bonus week, Jack. How good you did it? Because this episode is the best of entertainment.

All of it. Our best stories of the year on media, music, and film. So Yeties, send this episode to your buddy who lives in lovely Los Angeles. Better yet, send it to your buddy who's always quoting Max Miss Desmus Meridius. Are you not? entertained. Are you not entertained? You will be entertained by our three stories. Jack, what are three stories for today's bonus pod? For our first story, we're going back to May 17th, when Netflix just gave themselves the biggest Christmas gift of all, NFL football on Christmas Day.

But Netflix isn't ready to buy football rights. Netflix is renting them. For our second story, we're going to July 22nd. Why did Taylor Swift drop 34 different versions of the same album? And Jack, Why did Sabrina Carpenter drop seven different versions of the same song? Because both were inspired by the ice cream industry. Music was inspired by ice cream. And our third and final store. We're going to July 15th when we covered the fastest growing genre in books. It was wild.

Romanticy. Romantic fantasies are driving book sales with pixie dust. Steamy hot pixie dust. I knew you would make things weird. I was ready with that octave. But yet he's, before we had that wonderful mix of stories. You're going to want to lick that book. I don't.

I'm sorry. You never say lick on this podcast. Great mix of stories. The most fascinating entertainment trend of this year, it wasn't licking. It was kissing. It was kissing. Actually, it was a lack of kissing. Because get this.

Hollywood is in a kissing recession. It turns out on-screen kissing in movies has fallen 40% since the year 2000. We're talking about a smooch scarcity. A snogging shortage. And we did a whole story on that this year. Not enough kissing. We actually covered a wild range of pop business stories from La La Land over to Broadway. Rod and Tomatoes gave our coverage two thumbs up.

We're very proud of it. For example, Deadpool and Wolverine had the best box office sales ever for an R-rated movie. While Wicked was so popular, it caused a shortage of the color green. True story. No surprise, though, the whole summer was filled with sequels. Moana 3 Part 2, the prequel to the sequel? Dune the 3rd? Before the Dune.

We even studied rom-commonomics because there were big profits in rom-com movies. In McConaughey, there's a new Chin in town. His name's Glenn Powell. Amazon launched its own Shark Tank TV show. And for that reason, I'm out. Mr. Beast got his own TV deal. Also with Amazon. And HBO cut up the Sopranos into 45 different TikTok videos.

It's waste management. What that is wrong with you? Gabagoola. Sesame Street's Elmo had the most viral tweet of the year. And Shogun got the most Emmy's... ever, even though it was mostly in Japanese. Get this, Disney is doubling their cruise business, because you're angry that Disney World doubled their prices, and Bluey is now worth $2 billion. $2 billion for a seven-minute kid show. Those cattle talks are making me thirsty.

So Yeti's lights, camera, action. These are the three best entertainment stories of 2024. Quiet on set. Even if there was less kissing in them. We're rolling, people. We're rolling. Let's hit him, Jack. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea that caused a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is an norm. Jack, you need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip.

Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more. So just start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor. Yeties, let's go back to May 17th, 2020. Because I'm checking my watch, Nick. Christmas is right now.

So we got the perfect story. Let's get into Netflix's deal with Santa to buy the NFL. Sorry, rent the NFL. Huge week for the NFL. First, the NFL posted their schedule for the next season. And then they announced a Christmas Day game on Netflix. The Netflix and NFL deal shows the power of renting. Jack, before we talk about a sports story, let's go full Mugatu here.

here. Live sports, so hot right now. In just the past couple weeks, every big streamer has jumped into live sports like they just got tapped by Rudy. First, Disney Plus broadcast their first ever live sporting event. Caitlin Clark's debut WNBA game was broadcast on Disney Plus. That Amazon Prime reportedly is about to announce a big basketball deal. Prime might get a piece of the NBA's next TV deal. And finally, Netflix will broadcast its first ever NFL game, This Christmas. with a double header. Netflix splurged $150 million to get the two games that the NFL has this coming Christmas day. All right, Jackson, since you were a quarterback in high school, I mean in college, I mean backup quarterback. I mean, you played football. Can you sprinkle on some context for us on

$150 million for two NFL games? So yeties, I started one college football game in my career. It was D3. So I was a backup for the most part, but Nick was there and he was cheering me on and we won the game. never not cheer you on, but back to the numbers, baby. Jack, can you sprinkle on some context to 150 million bucks for two NFL games. Netflix is paying $75 million per game or $19 million per quarter or $1.5 million per minute of gameplay. Jack delivered like a starting quarterback. Yeties for the first time ever, the biggest media company on Earth. Netflix. Just got the biggest live sport on earth. The NFL. Bill Belichick and Bridgeton. are officially on the same team.

So, yeah, if the NFL announcement was like a touchdown for Netflix, they got a two-point conversion, too. What my friend Jack here is saying is that 12 hours after the Netflix NFL deal got announced, the NFL also announced their schedule for all 32 teams. And guess who is playing in the Netflix's debut NFL game, Nick? He's going to play, he's going to play, tell us, tell us. On Christmas Day, this December 25th, the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, play on Netflix. Netflix just signed a deal to have the Kansas City Chiefs play on Christmas Day.

This is a Christmas miracle jack. You're going to get Santa Claus. You're going to get Netflix. You're going to get Patrick Mahomes and you're going to get Taylor Swift. Because yet these Netflix won't just draw every NFL fan now. They're also going to draw Swifties to their first NFL game. Now last year's Christmas Day game for the NFL also featured Taylor Swift and the Chiefs and it drew 29 million viewers. But this year with the added motivation to boo Harry Butker, we expect Netflix to break the streaming record of all time. Early prediction, this Chief's game on Netflix on Christmas Day will be the most streamed live thing ever. Yeti, sit down, stand up and grab a towel. We predict it again. This Chief's game,

this Christmas on Netflix is going to be the most streamed thing that's ever happened. Because you can't spell Netflix without NFL. I can't spell Netflix without NFL. We were so excited when we discovered that. Jack, I was writing out, the ticker symbol for today's podcast. I was like Netflix. NFL. Oh my God. The NFL is in Netflix. It was meant to be. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Netflix? With this NFL deal, Netflix shows the power of renting. Yeti's CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, each of those TV companies is the proud owner of the NFL. Because each of those legacy TV networks pay over $2 billion a year to get one NFL game per week. It's like they're homeowners. You know,

Like NBC's got like a 10-year mortgage to buy 10 years of NFL rights. It's like NBC owns the NFL. But Netflix isn't paying $2 billion a year or even $1 billion a year. Netflix is paying a reported $300 million for three years of Christmas Day football. Yeah, so like instead of buying 10 years of football, Netflix is renting just one day, Christmas, for the next three years. If Netflix's rental goes well, maybe it'll buy. Maybe it'll upgrade to buying a piece of the NFL like the other networks have. But for right now, Netflix is just renting, and Netflix will get 30 million households enjoying that rental on Christmas Day.

With this Netflix NFL deal, it shows the power of renting. Yeties, let's go back to July 22nd, 2024. Because you're not a true fan unless you've bought all three albums, both vinyl, plus Taylor's version. The music industry came up with a really interesting new strategy. Jack, let's jump into it. Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and all the cool music artists today have a new growth hack to scale their songs. And the strategy is inspired by ice cream. This entire music story was inspired by a pint of ice cream. But Jack, before we kick off this story, can we hit the record books?

What kind of numbers are we seen out there in Music Land, baby? Taylor Swift just set another record. Longest streak at the top of the Billboard album charts. Ding, ding, Ding, Taylor Swift's, the tortured Poist department is number one for 13 straight weeks. That's a whole bunch of fortnights, Jack. It's still number one. And no album has been number one in America, I think globally actually, for so long. Vesties, after three months, two and a half million album equivalents have been sold.

Jack, can you sprinkle on more context to that number, please? That's a lot of albums sold. In fact, it is more album sold than the next nine best-selling album. of this year, combined. Combined. In fact, 2% of the entire music industry sales right now are Taylor Swift songs. Nick, it's like if Shohei Otani hit 500 home runs this year, more than the next nine guys combined. You know what I mean? What we're saying is that the prophecy is GDP. But then Nick and I noticed a strange part of this story. This is where things get odd yetis, because Taylor Swift published one album. The tortured poets department. But we see

34 different versions of that album. Because on Drop Day, fans could choose from four different versions of the same album. The only difference was one different bonus track at the end. And then Taylor Swift dropped 10 physical albums as record CDs or cassettes, each with a different voice memo delivered by Taylor herself. And then finally, the anthology album had a whopping 31 tracks on this thing. I guess that one had more bonus tracks. Jack, I feel like we're living in the Matrix here. How can there be 31 different versions of the same thing? Neo, what's going on, man? I actually feel like we're living in the summer of 2020 all these variants. COVID got us used to different variants while Taylor Swift just whipped up a whole bunch of different variants of the same

underlying album. All right, Fauci. Let's talk Sabrina Carpenter now, because she's dropping some variants of her own. Get this bestie. Sabrina Carpenter, the singer of the summer, released a song called Please, Please, Please. And how many versions of that are there, Jack? I'm checking Spotify right now. There's seven different versions of the track, Please, Please, Please, by Sabrina Carpenter. We repeat seven different versions of the same single song. What is going on, man?

One of them is sped up. The other is slowed down. Another is acapella, acoustic, instrumental, and then just the regular version. Apparently, Sabrina Carpenter came up with a sped up version of her song because it's ideal for TikTok videos. And her slowed down version

might also be perfect for your TikTok. video you're trying to post right now. Yeah, you kind of want a version that just gets to the chorus sometimes, and other times, you'll wait a minute or two. But Nick, you're a big fan of the Beatles, right? I'm pretty sure the Beatles didn't drop Hey Jude version 8, as far as I remember, Jack. Ringo would have smashed his drum if they'd multiply their music like this. Jack, I don't think Yoko Ono would have been down with eight versions of the same song. See, Eddie's, we have Taylor Swift dropping 34 different versions of the same album. Then we have Sabrina Carpenter, dropping seven versions of the same song. Why are they doing this? Well,

The answer we discovered is that this is a growth hack. Taylor and Sabrina figured out how to keep their fans engaged longer, deeper, with the same core creation. Taylor drops so many versions of the album to extend the sales period to keep the buzz up, and that kept her at number one. Sabrina dropped so many versions of the same song so that you'd have the perfect version as the soundtrack of your social video you're trying to post. Jack, this is basically choose your own adventure when it comes to the same songs from the same

artist. It's also kind of cool to have a version that you feel like is unique in some way, not just mass produced. Yes, it feels like it's your song and then you want to tell people about it. I mean, Jack, heartbreak is one thing, my ego's another. I beg you, I beg you, don't have too many versions of the same songs, Jack. I know you love Sabrita Carp. I do. The music videos are great. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are everyone in the music industry? Music just borrowed a strategy from ice cream. Yeah, it is, Stick with us on this one. According to the Dairy Foods Association,

the majority of ice cream flavors have either a vanilla base or a chocolate base. But there's variants. If you add Oreo to vanilla, you have cookies and cream. And if you add cookie to vanilla, it's suddenly cookie dough. Ice cream brands have introduced

multiple variants of the flavor to drive sales, to give us a variety. Because you're more likely to buy a second scoop if there are different flavor options out there. And now music is doing the same thing, creating multiple flavors

from the same core creation. It's the same strategy. Honestly, kind of surprised it took music so long. Like, Ben and Jerry figured this out like 50 years ago, man. And those variations have turned Spotify

into like your own scoop shop of music options. Because different flavors of the same track are all we're seeing from the top artists. It's keeping the number ones at number one longer.

The newest music growth hack was inspired by ice cream. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Yeties, let's go back to July 15th, 2024. Because books are so hot right now, Barnes & Noble is adding stores, not closing them. And there's one particular type of book that's happening right now. So Jack, let's jump it to the story. The fastest growing segment of the book industry is Romantic Fantasy. And this new genre explains

the entire publishing industry right now. Yeah, it is. Burry your B-Tree, drop your James Joyce. Jack, pause, that Harry Potter, man. I just pushed pause because you knew I was listening. I knew you were listening to that thing. I was side listening. Because Bestie's the top trending book genre right now is Romantasy. Romanticy. It's a hybrid genre, and it's caused a literary frenzy in bookstores.

It's not romance. It's not fantasy. It's romantic. It's like a mystical character, but then the steamy plot of like a Nicholas Sparksnob. Fifty Shades of Gandalf. Gone with the Dragon Wind. Romeo and Juliet. Yeah.

and a hobbit. So Jack and I just totally made up those titles. Trotto, what are you doing here? No, Messi's Jack and I, we totally made up those titles. But there is one particular leader in the Romantasy genre, right, Jack? And this leader may or may not be in my house somewhere right now. It's called A Court of Thorns and Roses, or Acetor, for short, and it's the top-selling Romanticy novel. In fact, of the top ten best-selling books overall this year, half of them are Romantacies. Half of them are romanticies. Some by Sarah Moss and some by Rebecca Yaros. They make up five of the top ten, those two authors. And get this, Besties. Romanticie sales have searched 85% in the last year to 11 million

books sold. Or as Bloomberg recently reported, dragons and sex are now a $610 million business. Where are my dragons? They're reading a hot book, baby. Let me just say don't ask Dumbledore. But besties, this is is what Jack and I found fascinating about this story. Romanticy just turned the page on something else. And what is that something else? Jack, they turned the page on the entire book industry. The second quarter of this year was the first year in three years that total book sales rose from the year before. Book sales just rose for the first time in three years, and it's because of Romanty. So we jumped in T-boy style to the book industry. Turns out it's highly concentrated. Just five publishers control. 80% of all book sales. Like Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Penguin Books, those publishers,

they control almost the entire book industry, 80%. But one publishing house owns the Romanticy category. That's true, and that one publishing house has jumped on the Romanticy dragon, and it is surging. It's called Bloomsbury, a British publisher that is publicly traded. Their stock is up 50% this year because that Court of Thorns and Roses book may be on my bedside table. Those elves are hot, and this company's stock is feeling even hotter. But we're not going to stop there, are we, Circe? So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies in the publishing industry and the finance industry? The book industry is structured just like venture capital.

Yet he's wild stat, Jack and I discovered. According to a court filing, 90% of books sell fewer than 1,000 copies. In fact, half of books sell fewer than 12 copies. Which means that just 10% of books are profitable. and 90% probably lose money. Those 10% hold up the entire industry. They must make the profits to keep the whole industry going. Now, here's the interesting thing, Bessies.

That sounds surprising, but there's actually a precedent here, isn't there, Jack? That precedent is venture capital. It's the same concept in the venture capital industry. If you're a VC, you know that only 10% of the companies you invest in will succeed. The other 90% will fail. But when those 10% succeed, they carry the whole venture capital firm. In VC, you're hoping that you're investing in an Uber. In book publishing, you're hoping you're investing in a moby dick. And that is why Andrewsson Horwitz

looks a lot like Simon & Schuster. Because the publishing and venture capital industries share the same approach when it comes to risk and reward. They bet on a bunch of good options, but they depend on 10% to hit it big. Yeties, those are the three best entertainment stories of 2024. But now, It's time for something even more entertaining. It is time for the best fact yet on entertainment. Trivia. Guess what industry is bigger than the film, television, and music industries combined. Hint, Jack, can we get a hint on this one?

It's another sector within media. Ooh, I like this, and it's not Tomogachi, is it? What is it, man? Video games. Video games, bigger than film, TV and music combined. With three billion active video gamers, it's the hidden giant of entertainment. Yeah, and it's not hidden in your parents' basement, Jack, is it? No, because the average video gamer is actually 32 years old, probably older than you think.

And each successive generation is playing more video games and consuming less traditional media than the last generation. So Hollywood gets the red carpet. Yeah. Gaming gets the green carpet, if you know or me. And you get an Oscar for that analogy, Jack. Yeties, you look fantastic for today's bonus pod. Jack, I know we still got the makeup on from today's recording, but who do you think they should send this to for? today. I think they should send it to their buddy who saw Gladiator 2. Okay. And thinks it had gratuitous

violence, because that's what I think about it. Or send it to your buddy who saw wicked and wants to be popular. Oh, that's good. You'll learn. If you know, you know. You'll know everything about entertainment while you're schmoozing with the old langzine this New Year's Eve. Besties, we got two more bonus pods coming up for you this week. So listen up on Thursday. It's another surprise. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate. And Nick and I will see you Thursday. I can't wait.