Business Musings: Untapped (Part One) – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Television execs are acting on this. They're becoming platform agnostic (which raises its own problems) and they have learned, because of the pandemic, that people want to watch good television. They don't care if that program was produced in 1980. They will binge whatever appeals to them.

Which is why the upfronts were so odd this year. A few networks didn't even push their fall line-ups, which used to be essential for ad revenue. Now, these networks are pushing their platforms or even, at times, their older programming, trying to pair up the right ad with the right program in the right way so that consumers will see it all.

What I wrote in my blog was that, for publishers, IP should be the new frontlist. Rather than promoting the new books and titles at the expense of everything else, traditional publishers should be mining their backlist for items that will capture the moment.