About PARQOR

PARQOR is the handbook every media and technology executive needs to navigate the seismic shifts underway in the media business. Through in-depth analysis from a network of senior media and tech leaders, Andrew Rosen cuts through what's happening, highlights what it means and suggests where you should go next.  

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My monthly opinion piece for The Information is now live. It’s called “Wall Street’s Expectations for Legacy Media Companies Are Getting Weird” and it argues the shift from subscriber growth to revenue per user is a deceptively huge one. Media companies are being forced to get good at a whole new game—and not all of them will.

I built the piece around a favorite joke of mine from stand-up comic Mitch Hedberg about working in Hollywood. You can watch it here. The joke is about struggling in Hollywood, doing everything possible to be as best as one can be at their skillset, and then when the moment in the spotlight arrives, the talent being told they would be valuable if they could do something entirely different.

Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast is a creator who has successfully figured out successful direct-to-consumer media and commerce business models by doing something entirely different. He's bet on YouTube - his channel has over 17.4B lifetime views and he earned $54MM in gross revenues - and he also has launched successful direct-to-consumer businesses in fast food and chocolate.

He’s an archetype for the evolution that Wall Street correctly understands for the future of media. But he's also the archetype for what Wall Street and legacy media simply don't understand about hit-making in the era of YouTube and Netflix. 

Key Takeaway

Focusing on solving average revenue per user seems increasingly like a fool's errand when legacy media's hit-making machines have a path to evolving and succeeding, thanks to MrBeast.

Total words: 900

Total time reading: 4 minutes