Channels with Peter Kafka

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 Mars 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 Mars 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 Mars 20251h

We had to stop recording this one for a minute, because Matt Belloni got a text. More on that below. Big picture: Matt is a longtime Hollywood reporter - and lawyer before that - who now has the indus...

5 Mars 202539min

The most useful class I ever took in college was a media law class, where I learned two things: 1) Journalists in the U.S. (along every other American citizen) have enormous freedom to say and write w...

26 Feb 202553min

Everyone knows that video games are giant, fast-growing business that's going to swamp traditional media. Except that's not true: The games business is now in a prolonged and confusing funk. Investor ...

19 Feb 202538min

A decade ago BuzzFeed was the bleeding edge of digital media, and Serious People thought it was going to be a threat to the likes of the New York Times. Many rounds of layoffs and asset sales later, B...

12 Feb 202534min

It’s hard to remember now. But just a few years ago, sports betting was illegal in almost all of United States. And sports leagues and the media companies that worked with them wanted nothing to do wi...

5 Feb 202557min