Weekly Roundup – March 4th, 2025

"Disney and ESPN have cooked up a plan to try to whet the sports appetite of Disney+ U.S. customers — who may not necessarily be the more voracious fans of sporting events.
ESPN is set to launch “SC+,” a new, daily “SportsCenter” show, exclusively on Disney+ on Monday, March 3. They’re calling it “SC+” but it’s a shorter, more streamlined offshoot of the 45-year-old sports highlights show that airs on ESPN. The shows will run at least 15 minutes but will vary in length.
“SC+” is described as a “fast-paced daily update” of top sports moments built around the SportsCenter Top 10 plays segment, featuring exclusive commentary and analysis from ESPN insiders and reporters. According to Disney, the show is designed for a more casual, entertainment-focused audience."

"Manfred has navigated several tough crises during his 10-year tenure as commissioner, including the Covid-19 pandemic, a bitter labor dispute and a cheating scandal that cast a pall over the 2017 World Series.
But the spectacle of ESPN sending MLB to the showers early, like a star pitcher being yanked from the big game, adds new urgency to what has become the most profound problem Manfred has faced: coping with the collapse of the TV economy that fueled the industry for decades.
The sport has already been grappling with the fallout from a rapidly changing consumer and technology landscape that is upending its longstanding economic model. Under the current system, the league sells the rights to nationally televised regular-season and playoff games—like the inventory ESPN is relinquishing—and divides the revenue among all 30 teams."

"YouTube is the most widely used of all the online platforms we’ve asked about in the United States. The video-based platform serves as a forum for entertainers, commentators, businesses and others, and Americans use it in a variety of ways, from getting the news to learning new skills."

"Media measurement company VideoAmp has unveiled VXP, a tool designed to help marketers reach and track audiences across linear TV, streaming and digital platforms, per a press release.
VXP, which stands for VideoAmp Cross Screen Planner, will include census-level streaming data from publishers, including Disney, Fox and Paramount, in addition to its previously announced integrations with Snap. In all, the cross-platform dataset will span more than 40 million homes and 65 million devices.
VideoAmp uses patented clean-room technology to ensure privacy while integrating the datasets so that advertisers can maximize their reach and effectively allocate their budget to their target audiences, according to the company."

"Beato says having a “physical representation of someone’s art, including the album cover and the credits, is a completely different experience than being able to make a playlist that doesn’t necessarily go together”.
“Things are not meant to be listened to in that way,” he says, referring to when album order was important, when artists would choose an A-side and a B-side of their record.
He goes on to provide an analogy about the flow of water. “I turned on the faucet and said, ‘This is basically Spotify.’ The water just keeps going on indefinitely. Every day, 100,000 new songs are added to Spotify and at any point you can interrupt the stream. I put a glass in there and said, ‘This could be Led Zeppelin’s entire catalogue right here in this glass.’ If you take an eye dropper this is Zeppelin III.”
Beato continues, “Music, in some ways, is too available. It’s too easy to obtain.” Rubin agrees, noting that the scarcity of music in history was the very thing that made it desirable. “You had to make an effort to get it, and because of that it had value,” he says."