I've noticed both Disney and Nick do this. Whatever they produce will always do ok because of their marketing muscle. They target children who are not jaded yet and parents either tolerate it or don't notice. I suspect most don't notice until their more experienced parents and by that time most parents are done with small children. I have 6 kids so this has become more noticeable to me.

They cartoons and shows my oldest 18 year old watched are totally differnt from the ones my 8 year and my 4 year old watch. They churn through things quickly and market things very slickly. For example, they produce something for 14 year olds, that most parents think is ok for 12-14 year old kids, but most of those kids aren't really that interested in. Then they drop the marketing into their 8-10 year old programs and boom, it's a hit for them.

These companies, especially Disney, are very insidious and clearly manipulating young minds. We should be disturbed, but I find very little buy in from other adults.

The insidious thing is that Disney is making an increasing share of all the things, too.

I don't understand why they were allowed to buy 20th Century Fox.

Because when you objectively analyze it, they don't have anything close to a monopoly on content.

How can you even say that? I’m dumbfounded. Only in this era of complete erosion of antitrust could this statement be made. Standard Oil would have been awed by this cornering of the market.

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/comp...

Pretty much all movie/TV content comes out of:

Disney

Comcast

AT&T

Amazon

Apple

Netflix

CBS

Sony

Fox Corp

It’s a get big or get crushed world right now. Of the latter 4, I wonder who Microsoft/Google/Verizon/Facebook will buy.

Well, seeing that you actually put Apple in that list shows a skewed perspective.

As far as getting big or getting crushed - both Blumhouse and Tyler Perry Studios make movies that get wide releases with budgets between $5 and $10 million.

Yes, there will probably be roles for small companies serving smaller demographics, but I meant to point out the weakening position of standalone media companies. The power is in the hands of the owners of the infrastructure, except for Disney who I think has an exceptional ownership of desirable content.

Apple I put on there because they can afford to burn so many dollars, it puts them in league with Comcast and ATT and Disney. The other media companies don't have a rent collecting cash cow to lean on.

The media companies don’t “own” the infrastructure. Anyone who can get the money can buy the equipment, hire the people and make a movie. Tyler Perry Studios and Blumhouse or proof. You don’t even need to put your movie in theaters.

There are plenty of streaming services looking for exclusive content. Barring that, you can sell your movie yourself over the internet or through any of the video on demand services.

You can even probably get Redbox to stock it.

Speaking of Tyler Perry, he started “distributing his content” decades ago by doing stage plays.

People complaining about big media keeping smaller players out is about like people complaining about not being profitable because of a dependence on Amazon Retail or Google ads. If your entire business model is based on being a sharecropper for big media/tech, you’re statistically going to be disappointed.

There are also small religious studios who are able to find an audience.

I wasn’t clear, but I was writing from the perspective of an investor. No one is stopping anyone from making content, but for purposes of investing, I’m claiming that what used to be many media companies available to invest in, are down to a few, and they will need help from a different business line to stay afloat.

They own an astounding chunk of the popular culture. They dominate the list of top-grossing films. There have been times over the past couple years when I couldn't see a movie in my local megaplex that Disney didn't own.

They are apparently also licensing the Nintendo reality-distortion field technology.