Silicon Valley’s arrival in Hollywood—initiated by Netflix, and followed by Amazon, Apple and others—set off the most momentous disruption to the entertainment industry since the advent of television. Hayes and Chmielewski give readers a ring-side seat to all of the fear, agita and corporate mud-slinging wrought by the shift from movie screens to laptops, setting up the stakes of a business-slash-cultural war that is far from over. This sharply-reported, colorfully-detailed yarn is a must-read for anyone wondering how Hollywood lost its grip.” — Nicole Laporte, author of Guilty Admissions and The Men Who Would Be King
“For years a debate has raged over whether content or distribution is King. This timely, engrossingly written and deeply reported book, crowns the new King: streaming. Month by month, year by year, Binge Times takes readers inside the momentous and disruptive battle for streaming supremacy among such media giants as Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Disney, Warner, NBC. You will be entertained to see a battlefield strewn with the withered bodies of smart executives who made dumb decisions. And you will glimpse how television and movies are forever changed.” — Ken Auletta, New York Times bestselling author
“Hayes and Chmielewski zoom way out to an altitude that offers the entertainment industry something it has sorely lacked: Perspective. The expertise and analysis in this book might just help us all avoid making the same sisyphean mistakes of the last two decades. But only if you read it.” — Evan Shapiro, producer and former president of Sundance TV, IFC, and Pivot
“Binge Times is a vivid behind-the-scenes account of the corporate streaming wars that changed the face of popular entertainment.” — Peter Bart, author and producer, Deadline editor-at-large
“This book was better than anything I’ve read in detailing how this new era of streaming evolved so quickly. Filled with colorful details and insider stories, Hayes and Chmielewski chronicle how the media landscape arrived at the ‘binge times’ we’re all living in and why the biggest players in the business made the choices they made.” — Marshall Lewy, Chief Content Officer, Wondery
“A revealing, highly readable look at the making of the modern home-entertainment environment.” — Kirkus Reviews
"This excellent book takes readers deep behind the scenes at Netflix and its challengers, showing us the people who had the ideas, made the decisions, and, in some cases, took the blame. In their writing, in their perceptive analyses, and in their vivid portrayal of a large cast of characters, Hayes and Chmielewski's book easily rivals such business-book staples as Barbarians at the Gate, The Informant, and Too Big to Fail....Riveting." — Booklist
“Binge Times breaks down the absolute mayhem of the streaming wars in a way that even a casual industry watcher can digest. It is a thoroughly reported work that makes for a compelling read.” — Broadcasting+Cable
"This excellent book takes readers deep behind the scenes at Netflix and its challengers, showing us the people who had the ideas, made the decisions, and, in some cases, took the blame. In their writing, in their perceptive analyses, and in their vivid portrayal of a large cast of characters, Hayes and Chmielewski's book easily rivals such business-book staples as Barbarians at the Gate, The Informant, and Too Big to Fail....Riveting."
Silicon Valley’s arrival in Hollywood—initiated by Netflix, and followed by Amazon, Apple and others—set off the most momentous disruption to the entertainment industry since the advent of television. Hayes and Chmielewski give readers a ring-side seat to all of the fear, agita and corporate mud-slinging wrought by the shift from movie screens to laptops, setting up the stakes of a business-slash-cultural war that is far from over. This sharply-reported, colorfully-detailed yarn is a must-read for anyone wondering how Hollywood lost its grip.”
Binge Times is a vivid behind-the-scenes account of the corporate streaming wars that changed the face of popular entertainment.”
“Binge Times breaks down the absolute mayhem of the streaming wars in a way that even a casual industry watcher can digest. It is a thoroughly reported work that makes for a compelling read.
This book was better than anything I’ve read in detailing how this new era of streaming evolved so quickly. Filled with colorful details and insider stories, Hayes and Chmielewski chronicle how the media landscape arrived at the ‘binge times’ we’re all living in and why the biggest players in the business made the choices they made.
For years a debate has raged over whether content or distribution is King. This timely, engrossingly written and deeply reported book, crowns the new King: streaming. Month by month, year by year, Binge Times takes readers inside the momentous and disruptive battle for streaming supremacy among such media giants as Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Disney, Warner, NBC. You will be entertained to see a battlefield strewn with the withered bodies of smart executives who made dumb decisions. And you will glimpse how television and movies are forever changed.”
Hayes and Chmielewski zoom way out to an altitude that offers the entertainment industry something it has sorely lacked: Perspective. The expertise and analysis in this book might just help us all avoid making the same sisyphean mistakes of the last two decades. But only if you read it.”
"This excellent book takes readers deep behind the scenes at Netflix and its challengers, showing us the people who had the ideas, made the decisions, and, in some cases, took the blame. In their writing, in their perceptive analyses, and in their vivid portrayal of a large cast of characters, Hayes and Chmielewski's book easily rivals such business-book staples as Barbarians at the Gate, The Informant, and Too Big to Fail....Riveting."
03/11/2022
The COVID pandemic will continue to reshape the entertainment industry for the better part of this decade, but for television and movies, the first lockdowns in 2020 both helped and hurt the launch of seven major streaming services. In this timely look at the industry's pivot toward streaming services, Hayes (Anytime Playdate) and Reuters entertainment business correspondent Chmielewski trace the decisions and deals that went into the creation of Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, and Quibi from inside their corporate headquarters. The book provides an early history of how traditional media companies attempted to take on Netflix and Amazon only to hit technological and cultural snags. The book places the launch of streaming services within the larger context of the mergers and acquisitions that have been happening within the entertainment industry. Hayes and Chmielewski's coverage of AT&T's streaming strategy, which ends with a jumble of HBO-branded services, provides an incisive case study. This book provides insight into the rationale and corporate strategy that caused five major services launches within a seven-month span. VERDICT This will appeal to readers of business and media books as it reports on the difficult launches of several streaming services. Recommended.—John Rodzvilla
2022-02-09
Anecdote-rich tale of how Netflix came to dominate the streaming-video market.
“Underestimating Netflix was an industry default,” write entertainment business reporters Hayes and Chmielewski in their aptly titled study of the streaming giant and the many tech- and film-industry competitors that rose to challenge it. The authors begin their account with the Covid-19 pandemic, which sent the world indoors. “America, already accustomed to spending hours a day in a screen-filled cocoon, would respond to the crisis by serving itself more and bigger portions of comfort food,” they write. This comfort food came in the form of bingeworthy series, freshly made or in the vault, and Netflix delivered a substantial portion of it, having essentially had a decade head start in delivering streaming video—though predecessors had paved the way. These included Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com, which, in the 1990s, pioneered the delivery of sports via the early internet, and Jonathan Taplin’s early amalgamation of the libraries of several film studios—a holdout being Paramount, whose corporate parent owned Blockbuster, the now-defunct video-rental chain. Netflix arose from its ashes with a business model that once relied on mail-order rentals but then captured the market for streaming that resulted from ever faster internet speeds. It took years for rivals such as Disney, HBO, Amazon Prime, and other providers to catch up, and all but Disney still trail. Consumers are the beneficiaries, with an embarrassment of riches to watch. The “binge” model was a great hook, even if some insiders didn’t quite understand it. When Lilyhammer star Steven Van Zandt complained that he’d spent months making the series in Norway only to have it dumped all at once, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos chuckled, “Yeah, just like an album.” And the biggest hit of 2021? Squid Game, the Korean show that, the authors convincingly argue, “could really have been launched by only one company: Netflix.”
A revealing, highly readable look at the making of the modern home-entertainment environment.