Channels with Peter Kafka

There are all kinds of ways to measure the health of an economy. The one I rely on is ad spending. One reason for that is simple: I work in ad-supported businesses, so I want to know about things are...

30 Apr 202554min

Every day some 85 million people - most of them kids - show up to play, chat and spend money on Roblox. That’s a massive audience just about any tech or media company would like to have. But David Bas...

23 Apr 202544min

Some people don’t want to pay for media. But lots of people are paying Jake Sherman and his team at Punchbowl News: The 4-year-old startup is thriving by providing super-insidery news and data about w...

16 Apr 202540min

The New York Times faces the same challenges every other news organization faces in 2025. But it’s also in way better shape to take those challenges on: Thanks to a business model built on 11 millio...

9 Apr 20251h 5min

The Trump 2.0 era is less than three months old. But it’s already creating havoc for journalists and the companies they work for. In Washington, Trump and his team are demoting traditional media - or...

2 Apr 202546min

Call it symbiosis. Call it co-dependency. However you want to characterize it, there’s zero debate that Big TV and Big Sports are deeply intertwined. So if the TV business is shrinking, what happens t...

26 Mar 202543min

Anyone who makes things thinks they could do it better if they had more. More money, time, headcount, infrastructure. Some of us find there can be upsides to doing it with less, too. That's not exac...

19 Mar 20251h 5min

Back when I first started covering the internet, the idea of broadcasting yourself for hours on end seemed like a pipe dream for weirdos. Now it's how some people make a living. Twitch more or less cr...

12 Mar 20251h