Is ‘content king’? The Disney-Dish Network squabble provides insight.
By Kent R. Kroeger (October 7, 2022)
Though Microsoft founder Bill Gates is frequently given credit for popularizing the phrase ‘Content is King’ — the title of his 1996 essay about digital marketing where he argued that content would generate most of the money on the internet — this business trope had circulated decades earlier within the broadcasting and film industries
The late Sumner Redstone, a billionaire media magnate who got his start in the theater chain business, was perhaps the best known promoter of the ‘Content is King’ platitude as he often shared it with business associates and journalists when he noted that content (e.g., good movies) was more important than distribution mechanisms (e.g., theaters) when it came to the theater industry’s financial success.
Good food, comfortable seats, big screens, quality sound, and loyalty programs (etc.) are all important factors in attracting moviegoers, according to Redstone, but none of those factors match the importance of a movie’s appeal to audiences.
Of course, a movie that appeals to a large audience is not necessarily, by critical standards, a high-quality movie. No amount of persuasion will ever convince me 2015’s Furious 7 — starring the disputably talented Vin Diesel — was a good movie…
