Bieber is making the most popular music of his entire career, and it's getting him a new fan base: adult males.
His new dance-pop sound — a genre called "tropical house," which is a mix of electronic dance music and Caribbean vibes — has grown men that had never even heard of Bieber before falling in love with his music.
Story by Ian Phillips and editing by Jeremy Dreyfuss
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Now that music comes out on Fridays, and superstar artists are increasingly keeping their work off Spotify, it can be hard to know where to find the next great song. So Business Insider is helping you with this rundown of the best of what's new in the music world that you can listen to right now.
All songs available to stream on Spotify.
SEE ALSO: 10 epically failed TV spin-offs that should have worked
One of the rapper's most fiery performances since he came to mainstream attention on Kanye West's "Runaway."
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The climax of Coldplay's seventh studio album, "A Head Full of Dreams," is "Adventure of a Lifetime," with its classic-cool Coldplay melody that'll have any listener bobbing their head.
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The Screaming Eagle of Soul doing a stripped-down, soul-baring Black Sabbath cover is not quite as profound as Johnny Cash doing Nine Inch Nails— but it's close.
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Pandora has recently taken to blaming Spotify for the downfall of the music industry, but on Thursday its leadership picked a new target: Steve Jobs.
On an investor's call, Pandora CFO Mike Herring said the following, according to Billboard: "Steve Jobs eviscerated the music industry with the launch of iTunes and it's been downhill ever since. And the download was supposed to save it — that didn't happen."
Herring also took the time to take shots at Apple Music, saying that "no one subscribes" even though it lives on hundreds of millions of phones.
"Well, I guess a few million people do," he added. "But the reality is you want to get people to choose to do, that is a much bigger trick. You have to have a great product."
This attack against Apple represents a bit of a departure for Pandora, which has recently stuck to claiming that Spotify is burning down the industry by giving people access to free music on-demand — which Apple Music actually doesn't do. Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews has called this practice an unsustainable business model, and sees it as a crushing force in the industry.
McAndrews thinks on-demand music should only exist in a premium-streaming tier, something Herring also hinted on Thursday is Pandora's ultimate plan. Many artists, like Taylor Swift, agree with McAndrews' sentiment, and it does look like Spotify is looking at placing more limitations on its free tier.
Pandora does have some decent points about the fate of the music industry, but it also seems that its leadership is partially venting their frustrations about Pandora's rocky last few months in its criticism of its competitors.
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A Barclays media analyst thinks that the new "Star Wars" movie would not live up to the hype.
Next Saturday, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" will be released. And, Barclays' Kannan Venkateshwar says that given all the anticipation since we got the last "Star Wars" movie ten years ago, the new installment would likely disappoint.
From his client note on Friday:
"Given the strength of the Star Wars franchise, it is not surprising that Star Wars has had among the most successful box office track records among long running franchises. While we expect the movie to be very successful, we believe a global box office performance of ~$2bn is likely to be seen as an “in line” performance and anything below that is likely to be considered a disappointment based on our conversations with investors.
To put this into context, there are only 2 movies which have achieved a global box office higher than $2bn (Avatar & Titanic). Consequently, given the expectations already baked in, one of the best performances of all time could actually be perceived as a disappointment."
So essentially, the hype is so much that the bar to be cleared is very, very high.
As for indicators of box office performance in the upcoming weeks, Venkateshwar is getting mixed signals.
There's been a spike in interest based on Google search, but it's not as much as the surge when the last movie was released, despite heavy promotions this time.
Advance ticket sales have reached $50 million according to the Wall Street Journal, double the record that "The Dark Knight Rises" set in 2012. However, it doesn't follow that everyone who gets an advance ticket would actually go to see the movie.
Looking at 15 years of data, Venkateshwar found that very successful movies like "Avatar" and "Titanic" hit 85% of their total domestic box office sales within the first four weeks after release, when the release was in December. He thinks these two movies were exceptions to the general rule, and Star Wars would have to prove to be one, too.
The movie would also have to be a huge hit internationally. Domestic box office revenues made up only 34% of the worldwide total for the most successful movies of 2015, he says. And so, if "The Force Awakens" is to be one of the biggest movies of all time, it has to outperform internationally, especially in China, which has the biggest cinema audience outside the US, and where "Star Wars" is not as big a cultural phenomenon as it is in America, according to Venkateshwar.
"Even if these numbers are achieved, we believe the multiples today are already pricing in this outcome with a high degree of certainty which limits the upside to the stock."
Disney's stock has been slammed in recent months as investors became more concerned about the threat of cord-cutting to traditional media networks.
A regulatory filing last month indicated that ESPN lost seven million subscribers between 2013 and this year. Disney shares have fallen 8% since that filing, although it's rallied 15% year-to-date.
SEE ALSO: THE WORLD'S BIGGEST 'STAR WARS' FANS: Meet 17 people who have devoted their lives to the series
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Comedian Jon Stewart returned to "The Daily Show" on Monday night, but it wasn't to reminisce about his time as host.
Instead, Stewart was there to advocate yet again for one of the policies that he was notably outspoken about during his time hosting the show: securing premium healthcare for the first responders of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
"I have this issue. I care about it fairly deeply. And I want to get some attention paid to it but I was realizing that I don't have a show, and no one gives a s--- anymore," Stewart said to current host Trevor Noah.
In 2010, Stewart dedicated a notable block of his show to raising awareness about the health issues that firefighters, policemen, and others who suffered from working at the site of the World Trade Center immediately following the 20001 terror attack.
On Monday night, Stewart urged Congress to reauthorize the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which expired earlier this year. Stewart accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) of purposefully withholding the act as a legislative bargaining chip.
"Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky doesn't give a s--- about anything but politics," Stewart said.
Stewart's "The Daily Show" appearance was only the most recent of Stewart's public advocacy for the project. Last week, Stewart visited the US Capitol to personally lobby for the bill, ambushing lawmakers in the Senate corridors, and actually changing at least one Republican vote.
SEE ALSO: Jon Stewart goes on epic quest with a red balloon to prove Dick Cheney wrong on Iran
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Gene editing techniques like CRISPR have made it into Marvel's newest superhero TV show.
In "Jessica Jones," which debuted last month on Netflix, the series' main villain, Kilgrave, has everything to do with some form of gene editing.
(SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't watched the show through episode 10, this may give away some of the plot, but only around Kilgrave and his superpower.)
At one point, Jessica Jones — the superhero tasked with stopping Kilgrave — sees some scary video footage from a clip on a USB drive.
In it, Kilgrave's parents are taking samples of his spinal fluid and running tests on him, leading Jones to think they're evil. Unbeknownst to Jones, however, the parents are actually trying to save their son, who has a neurodegenerative disease which is causing his brain cells to decay.
"He would've been dead before he reached 12," his mom says on a later episode. "His only hope was an experimental study using a virus to repair his damaged DNA."
While it's a fictional show, the premise has some scientific grounding.
The 'experimental study she speaks of isn't far off from how actual gene editing has worked in the past. Gene therapy, for example, frequently involves using a virus to deliver a gene to the cells that scientists are targeting. In the US, no gene therapies have yet been approved for use, although scientists have been working with them for years and made some headway in a few promising cases.
Most of these experiments involve working with embryos, however, not with adults, as the show might suggest.
That's so that the tweaks that are made spread to the entire organism, rather than affecting only a small group of cells. In Kilgrave's case, for example, the gene therapy would need to be done extensively until all of his millions of affected cells were treated, something that's quite unlikely.
In the end, as we learn in "Jessica Jones" episode 9, the treatment worked, though it came with some serious side effects, namely superhero-level powers of compulsion.
That power to compel is transmitted through a virus that Kilgrave sheds. The virus infects the people around him, allowing him to tell them a specific command (example: If Kilgrave says "Follow me," you'd have to follow him regardless of whether you wanted to).
Although the show doesn't explicitly say it, the virus is likely linked to the virus used in Kilgrave's gene editing therapy.
Of course, while you could engineer people to be more persuasive, "there's no way to shoot out a virus and make people do what you want," NYU School of Medicine Director of Medical Ethics Arthur Caplan told Business Insider.
Caplan said the best bet for super powers through gene editing would be greater muscle strength, better memory, quicker reaction times, better night vision, and turning up receptors to experience things like alcohol, drugs, and sex more intensely.
Sorry, no powers of invisibility just yet.
FOR MORE ON GENE EDITING: Scientists may soon be able to 'cut and paste' DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies
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NOW WATCH: Why you shouldn’t freak out about the new FDA-approved ‘Frankenfish'
Veteran journalist Barbara Walters sat down with Donald Trump and challenged the Republican presidential front-runner on his proposal to suspend all Muslim immigration and tourist travel to the US.
In the Tuesday interview on ABC's "World News Tonight," Walters asked Trump, "Are you a bigot?"
Trump was unequivocal that he was not prejudiced against Muslims.
"Not at all. Probably the least of anybody you've ever met," Trump replied.
"Because?" Walters pressed.
"Because I'm not," Trump said. "I'm a person that has common sense. I'm a smart person. I know how to run things. I know how to make America great again. This is about making America great again."
Trump ignited a national firestorm on Monday when he announced a proposal for the "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the US until "hatred" in the religion is figured out. He later said that there would be some exceptions, such as US citizens and foreign leaders.
The real-estate mogul made the announcement in the aftermath of last week's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, and last month's terrorist attack in Paris, France. Both massacres were linked to ISIS, aka the Islamic State group.
Walters told Trump that some of the fierce critics of Trump's plan — including those in the Republican Party— said his hard-line proposal would inadvertently help the Islamic State by boosting its claim that its battle is part of a larger Islamic war against the West.
"There are many, even in your own party, who think that ISIS is going to like your rhetoric, that your words are putting us in greater danger," Walters said.
But Trump insisted that his rivals in the Republican primary were simply trying to boost their poll numbers.
"I'm the worst thing that's ever happened to ISIS," Trump said. "The people in my party fully understand that. They're running against me. For the most part, they have no poll numbers; I'm leading by a lot. They get it. They're trying to get publicity for themselves."
Trump also claimed that his Muslim friends support his proposal "100%."
"Somebody in this country has to say what's right. ... I have people that I have tremendous relationships with, they're Muslim, and Barbara, they agree with me 100%," he said. "It's short-term. Let the country get its act together. They knocked down the World Trade Center; they tried doing it twice. Other things have happened."
Trump added: "There are people who have tremendously bad intentions. We have to be tough. We have to be smart. And we have to be vigilant."
Watch the interview below:
Trump tells .@ABC's @BarbaraJWalters he is not a bigot, doesn't regret proposed "short term" ban on Muslims (VIDEO): https://t.co/j634OecXwR
— Van Scott (@vanscottABC) December 8, 2015SEE ALSO: THE WHITE HOUSE: Donald Trump disqualified himself from the presidency — and he has 'fake hair'
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The late-night world is full of new and new-ish players.
When you first check the internet in the morning, you might come across a clip of John Oliver picking apart a thorny topic in his dry comedic style on his HBO show. Or Stephen Colbert, who took over from David Letterman earlier this year, poking gleeful fun at Donald Trump. Or Jimmy Fallon playing a game with Adele. Soon "Daily Show" alum Samantha Bee will join the fray with her own show debuting next year.
But aside from the viral clips, which of these shows is actually worth your time? After giving some hosts time to settle into their new gigs and build a name against the veterans, Business Insider watched all the current major late-night shows on the air (focusing on the more comedy-based programs) and assessed the best and worst of the pack.
Here's what we found, ranked starting from the worst:
SEE ALSO: 9 TV shows you're not watching that you should be
Coming right after "The Daily Show," Wilmore's "Nightly Show" has an even more obvious liberal bent to its satire. Wilmore is willing to get vicious in attacking subjects, especially, of course, Republicans whenever they seem to misspeak. But he brings more authority and intelligence to this mockey than Noah, and deserves more ratings than he's getting. The big problem for "The Nightly Show" is the latter roundtable section, a complete misfire in which multiple guests compete for time and seem to reiterate what's already been said. With a little revamping, Wilmore's show could be much improved.
Carson Daly's very late offering, "Last Call," feels like the gig that best fits the former '90s MTV V.J. He's come out of his shell on "The Voice" and shows his chipper side in the morning for "Today's" Orange Room. But "Last Call" allows him to use strange camera angles, don his leather jacket, and give bands some exposure. From performances to interviews, the show plays with artsy technique and effects. It's not for everyone, but that's probably why it's at 1:35 a.m.
Seth Meyers went into the "Late Night" gig with the force of "Saturday Night Live" behind him. Lorne Michaels produces the talk show, too. If you believe that Meyers was the best news reader of recent "SNL" history, then you probably get a kick out of seeing him behind the desk for the show's first half. That said, Meyers isn't the smoothest interviewer. He tends to wind up way too much before pitching his guests a question. But he's quick as a whip when it comes to returning with a joke.
Real-estate mogul Donald Trump battled the media in a series of Tuesday-morning interviews in which he was challenged on his plan to bar all Muslim immigrants and tourists from entering the US.
ABC "Good Morning America" host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Trump if he was having any "second thoughts" about the idea.
One host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Mika Brzezinski, directly told Trump that the proposal scared her. The other host, Joe Scarborough, cut to commercial break to get Trump to stop interrupting him.
But Chris Cuomo, a host of CNN's "New Day," arguably most directly challenged Trump over his proposal.
"What you're doing, in the country that is known as a symbol of freedom, is saying, 'We're too afraid to be inclusive. We're going to reject the promise of America and ban an entire religion even though we need to do things on a case-by-case basis,'" the host said.
Cuomo added, "And it seems as though you're acting out of fear, not making us look strong."
Trump stressed that he was simply advocating for a "temporary situation so our countries' representatives can figure out what the hell is going on" within the Muslim community.
The Republican presidential front-runner then listed several terror attacks — including the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks and last week's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, which was linked to the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS.
"This isn't about being politically correct. This isn't about being politically correct," Cuomo told Trump. "I don't see the point of scaring people with the possible when the reality is we haven't had another World Trade Center [attack]. ... We haven't had those kinds of attacks. The security network has held up. And one of the reasons is our unity as a people."
Cuomo continued: "And I don't understand how you can see banning an entire religion as a way of saying anything other than, 'We are what ISIS says we are. We want a war against Islam. That's who America is.' And as you know — or you should know — that's not who America is, Mr. Trump."
Trump responded by arguing that the US is "at war" with jihadists.
"We are at war with radical Islam. We are at war with them. Chris, put through your head," Donald Trump said, blasting President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for not embracing the term "radical Islamic terrorism."
"They want the jihad. It's very simple: They want the jihad," Trump added.
After Cuomo chided Trump for throwing "out notions without any kind of checking of them," Trump then cited a questionable survey from the Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded by the anti-Islamic activist Frank Gaffney. The group's June poll purported to show that a large number of American Muslims embrace violence.
"Donald, we wouldn't even put the poll on the air. It's a hack organization with a guy who was dismissed from the conservative circles for conspiracy theories. You know that," Cuomo said.
Cuomo later told Trump that "people who are in the business of keeping us safe" say his Muslim-banning proposal is "stupid."
SEE ALSO: A fed up Joe Scarborough cut to commercial break to get Donald Trump to stop interrupting him
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NOW WATCH: A hair surgeon explains what's going on with Trump's hair
YouTube's Head of Trends and Culture Kevin Alloccca can still remember one of the first moments when realized how much YouTube culture had started to infiltrate the mainstream.
This was way back in 2009: A quirky video called JK Wedding Entrance Dance went so viral that the hit TV show "The Office" parodied it in one of its most popular episodes (you know, the one where Jim and Pam finally got married).
Since then, YouTube's relationship with mass media has completely changed.
"I think YouTube is increasingly understood to be the place where pop culture is kind of happening now," Allocca tells Business Insider. "The line between mainstream pop culture and web culture is starting to get blurred in many ways."
He cites a Variety study from earlier this year which showed that teens love the people they see on YouTube more than the traditional entertainment celebrities from Hollywood.
That's part of the reason YouTube launched a new "Trending" tab on mobile earlier this week: To let people be able to stay abreast of what videos everyone is buzzing about.
The videos in the tab update regularly, serving up "the hottest videos at any given moment."
So, what makes a video go ballistic?
Back in 2011 Allocca did a TED Talk where he highlighted three things that he said make a YouTube video go viral: tastemakers, unexpectedness, and participation.
We asked him how he'd update that explanation for today. YouTube just released its list of the ten trending videos of the year and they ranged from a Maryland police officer belting "Shake It Off" in his squad car to a clip of President Obama on Jimmy Kimmel's show, reading mean tweets people wrote about him.
"I think that if you look at this stuff, a lot of it is still very unexpected and unique," he says. "If you look at the pairing of a Dover police officer singing in his car to Taylor Swift — this is a very unusual thing that we love. I think that the 'unexpectedness' factor is still true."
Ditto with the participation element.
"I think the ability for us to have an entry point — whether that’s having something to say about a video or the desire to make our own version of it — is still important," he says. "Online video in 2015 is even more of an interactive experience. It’s more about your reaction to it than anything else."
What has changed slightly though is the "tastemaker" factor. At his TED talk, Allocca said that for a video to go crazy it usually had to be shared by a talk show or have a celebrity talking about it.
Not so anymore.
"You still need to have rapid distribution to a large group of people very quickly to be able to have something go viral. That used to be through celebrities or major media channels or sites like Reddit, but now a lot of these really big YouTube creators have actually built those audiences themselves," says.
For example, creator Roman Atwood has 8 million subscribers on his channel. The SloMo Guys have 6.5 million.
"I think that that sort of dynamic was very nascent at the time but it has evolved and been much more defining over the past couple of years," he says. "There are more people who are professionals — who use YouTube as their job and career. The idea of the influencer is a bit different now. The people who create are also the tastemakers."
For the last few years, YouTube has wrangled a big group of those creators to make a sum-up video. Watch this year's YouTube Rewind now:
SEE ALSO: The 'terrifying' moment in 2012 when YouTube changed its entire philosophy
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"The Talk" returned to New York City for its annual week of taped shows in New York City this week. And the CBS daytime show gave Business Insider a look into the crazy schedule.
"We come every year," executive producer John Redmann told BI. "It's an opportunity to expose ourselves to a new audience, our huge fan base on the East Coast. And we get access to different guests, like people doing Broadway. There's a different energy in New York."
The ladies arrived to the East Coast on a high. The week before, "The Talk" attracted its second-largest average weekly audience ever with 2.71 million viewers, slightly beating "The View's" 2.69 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
When are the women their most jovial? How long does it take to get ready for TV? What's the dirty secret to cooking segments? And what's the difference between shooting in LA and NYC?
Here's what happened on a day with "The Talk" in New York City.
SEE ALSO: 10 epically failed TV spinoffs that should have worked
MORE: RANKED: All 13 late-night shows from best to worst
"A highlight of our trip to New York is visiting 'CBS This Morning,'" host Sara Gilbert told Business Insider. "I hope they don't notice a couple of their Emmys went missing after the show."
"They like to do a shot of the Toyota green room," Julie Chen added. "So I saw the two Emmys and I said, 'Let's grab them and act like they're ours.' We are an Emmy-winning show, so it's not a total lie. But it's just us being naughty and joking."
Julie Chen did a game segment for "The Talk" with Gayle King called "What's on sale, Gayle?" The "CBS This Morning" host and Oprah Winfrey's best friend had to guess the prices of items collected from street vendors and flea markets. If King got six right in 60 seconds, the audience would get a prize. But she needed some help.
"She was horrible at it," Chen said. "But I cheated with her. She'd say, 'Five dollars.' And I'd say, 'Say ten.' And she'd say it. We don't want our audience to go home empty-handed. It was just in good fun."
A few hours before the show starts, executive producer John Redmann meets with the hosts about that day's topics and gets their feedback and a feel for what they want to say.
"What's funny about this meeting is that it's usually they're talking and gossiping and having fun," Redmann said. "We can't get them out of this meeting. Especially in New York, they all do different things the night before and want to catch up. They genuinely have a good friendship."
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is not a fan of Donald Trump's plan to no longer allow Muslim immigrants and tourists into the US.
During a Tuesday segment discussing Trump's proposal, Smith said that the Republican presidential front-runner "can't do this" and "he's crazy to even speak of it."
Smith made the comments during an interview with John Bussey, an editor at The Wall Street Journal.
Once Bussey pointed out that segments of the Republican-primary electorate have serious reservations about Islam, Smith further lit into Trump.
"A lot more need to be led by somebody, not to be dragged down the wormhole by some carnival huckster," Smith said of the public. "Somebody needs come up and remind them what this nation is and what we're about and how we dream, the way we were founded, and what our Constitution is. He's not representing any of that. He's representing the worst, darkest part of all that is America."
Later in the interview, Smith said that the Republican Party establishment needs Trump to go away in order to avoid backlash from the real-estate mogul's hard-line views.
"It's the worst-kept secret on Earth that the establishment needs him to go away," Smith said. "Because if he doesn't go away, there are great fears about what will become of this party as a national party."
Trump has dominated the discussion of the presidential race since Monday afternoon, when he proposed a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the US, including tourists and immigrants. He later clarified that some exceptions would exist for foreign leaders, US citizens, and athletes. But that did little to quell the firestorm.
The billionaire businessman argues that such a ban is necessary to combat the threat of terrorism, especially in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attack in Paris and last week's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Both incidents were linked to ISIS, aka the Islamic State group.
"Where the hatred comes from and why, we'll have to determine," Trump said of Muslims at a Monday-night rally. "We have to figure it out. We can't live like this. It's going to get worse and worse. You're going to have more World Trade Centers. It's going to get worse and worse, folks."
"We can be politically correct and we can be stupid," Trump added, "but it's going to get worse and worse."
Watch Smith and Bussey discuss Trump below:
Video courtesy of the left-leaning media-monitoring group Media Matters.
SEE ALSO: 'We have no choice': Donald Trump touts his plan to stop Muslims from entering the US
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NOW WATCH: A hair surgeon explains what's going on with Trump's hair
It's been a decade since Michael Eisner stepped down as CEO of the Walt Disney Company.
Today, with his privately held Tornante Company, he's fully immersed in new media, and has a lot to say about what makes quality content and why he wants to be the one to own it.
Henry Blodget: It’s been a while since Disney. What have you been up to?
Michael Eisner: Oh my god — everything. I decided that when I left Disney I would really leave. It’s a little bit like when you have a house and you say, “I can’t leave, and I could never sell it,” and then you sell it and you decide that’s that.
I’m happy with how well Disney’s done, and how well Bob Iger has done. I’m a big investor, so that all worked out well, and I’m connected with them and talk to them, but I really decided I would move on.
I decided the same thing when I left Paramount, I decided the same thing when I left ABC, I decided the same thing when I left New York.
With Tornante, we have a lot of investments in hopefully not bubble-related internet companies, but real internet companies. We have some television shows. We have one — "BoJack Horseman" — that’s doing incredibly well and is well-reviewed on Netflix.
Blodget: People have been predicting the death of television for 20 years now, and so far it’s been entirely wrong. But it does seem viewership habits are starting to change. Netflix has come out of nowhere, and is now this incredible business that nobody could have fathomed 10 years ago. Talk about that change, and where we’re headed.
Eisner: Well, there is no death in content. It’s one of the few immortal things around. There’s change. There’s always been change.
There were 80 million people who went to the movies in the 1930s, when the country was only 120 million people strong, and then when television came in, everybody thought that was the end of the movie business, which was not and is not.
When video came in, everybody thought that was another end, and then digital came in, and we had another end with Blu-ray or whatever. What happens is one and one adds up — in my opinion — to more than two.
Now, without content there is no platform. The content defines the platform, so whereas when I was working at ABC from '66 to '76, people said it was the “great wasteland.” It was the least-objectionable program that succeeded. It was, if you could get behind “All in the Family,” you were successful.
Michael Eisner tells Henry Blodget about being an NBC page and his favorite moments from his early career.
Arrogance follows distribution strength.
Distributors always go away, always have problems. They come back, they become nice, they try to acquire content. They do acquire content sometimes, so it’s just changing.
Now it’s great. I decided — so I could own it — to make a pilot of “BoJack Horseman.” I do own 100% of it. It is on Netflix. We sent it around to everybody. Television is like the movie business. It’s not the least-objectionable program — it’s the best program that gets positioned. Same in the movie business. It’s not just everything automatically gets done by the "in" crowd.
Netflix has been fantastic, and the show would not have been on traditional network, probably. I mean, it may have gotten on Fox if Fox owned it and it came out of that group, but it was hard. So it’s great. This is the golden age of television. Television is not hurting. Television is in fantastic shape. It’s just a golden age for other people.
Blodget: So what is it like working with Netflix as opposed to a traditional network?
Eisner: It’s no different in that if you have a hit, they are very, very nice, and I have not had a failure, so I don’t know how un-nice they get. They’re very supportive, because we’ve delivered. They may have been very supportive anyway.
Reed Hastings got very lucky in that he had Ted Sarandos— who knew that he had one of those golden guts — that he saw “House of Cards” had potential and took a big bet on that. I’d like to say he saw that “BoJack” had potential and “Orange Is the New Black” and so forth. So a lot things are the confluence of the right platform, but Netflix without their creative acquirers would be an ancillary market for content.
Blodget: With “BoJack,” you made the pilot first and then showed it to Netflix.
Eisner: We made a 12-minute pilot. We wrote two scripts, and then we combined them to make a 12-minute pilot, and then we sent it out. We said, “Look, if you have to own it, don’t look at it, but if you’re willing to let us own it, we’d love to be in business.” We’re owning things. The only way for us to have any place at the table as a content player is to actually finance the content ourselves. Otherwise, most of the distributors recognize the value of content, and they want to own it.
Blodget: You talked about how content never dies, more is better, distribution is broken down. We’ve now got into a situation where lots of people are saying there are only 24 hours in a day, there are screens with us 18 hours a day — there is going to be a limit with the number of high-quality shows that can be produced because they are expensive to do. Are we reaching that limit?
Eisner: Do you think Sophocles and Aristotle had this conversation that too much good is a bad thing? I think that argument is insane. First of all, it’s very hard to be good. It is self-destructive thinking to think that there is too much good. There’s too much bad. The worst is mediocre. Bad is easy. There’s high quality, there’s pornography, and then there’s bad. Pornography works to a degree, high quality works, bad is obvious. Nobody goes for bad. The terrible middle ground is the mediocre. That was kind of the essence, in a way, of broadcast television when there were only three channels.
But mediocre is there today and doesn’t survive, which is fantastic — just maybe not for the people who have invested in it. So the good raises the cream to the top — I guess cream doesn’t rise to the top anymore, but when it did, cream raised to the top — so I don’t think there is too much good. There’s not enough good.
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Blodget: You talked about making a 12-minute pilot. TV has always been regulated by half-hours and hours. In digital distribution, you have the ability to run any length of time. Will the shows stay in the format we are used to? The 22 minutes per half-hour, approximately hour-long documentaries? Or do you think a new length will evolve?
Eisner: I made a 12-minute pilot because I didn’t want to pay for a 22-minute pilot. I could show what it was in 12 minutes at half the cost. Otherwise I would have made a 22-minute pilot. There is a tradition of length that will survive.
Blodget: What do the economics look like when you own versus when Netflix owns or when Fox owns? Why is it important?
Eisner: I don’t know. Some people have made a fortune by being employed. Jerry Bruckheimer does not own his content. Warner Bros. owns his shows. They are on CBS, and he makes a fortune. That’s one way to go for an individual talent. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m of that view, having seen the enormous value of libraries that I’ve been involved with building at Paramount or at Disney.
When cable came in, I saw the value to our library at Paramount, because when that happened, it was unbelievable — selling packages to Germany and Italy and all over the world. When the DVD market or the Blu-ray market came in, the library yet again became valuable, because every distributor needs these libraries. To me, owning is better than not owning.
This sounds crazy, I know, but you can make a billion dollars — very few people do — but you can make a billion dollars on a product. It can be “Lion King,” it can be “Simpsons,” it can be “Family Guy,” who knows what it is. Or you can make zero. But you can’t make a billion dollars if you don’t own it.
But you can’t make a billion dollars if you don’t own it.
But you can’t own it unless you invest, and most individuals can’t invest, so I’m investing. I will never make a billion dollars on a show, unless “BoJack,” for instance, becomes a cultural phenomenon, and maybe it will. Maybe this very conversation will take it over the top.
Blodget: The other distribution piece of television is the network and as we look at how content is consumed now, ultimately it's show by show. It's not that folks are tuning into a particular network and just watching what's there all the time. Do networks come under pressure too?
Eisner: They do. They have an advantage of live sports, which is very important, and news — which, by the way, is less important, exemplified by what you're doing. People don't have to go to cable news or network news. Live sports is the one of many things that's kind of community television. There are a lot of people who still tune in to "Sunday Night Football" or "Thursday Night Football" the way they did before.
I think the water cooler is more important than ever. "Oh, did you hear that 'Inside Amy Schumer' is fabulous?" Where do you find it? It's on Netflix, it's on iTunes, it's on places nobody ever heard of five years ago. Pretty exciting.
You can actually survive, bubble up. In the era of networks only, I cannot tell you the number of shows that we don't know about that did not survive. They got canceled. But there are a few that survived by accident, because they didn't have anything else to do, and they stayed with it. "MASH" started off as a failure, Jerry Seinfeld started off as a failure, "Family Guy" started off as a failure, and they stayed with them long enough to succeed.
Now almost any show that has reviewers behind it, Rotten Tomatoes behind it, will find a way to survive, which is why this fall there was the longest lag in canceling shows in a long time. They're afraid that somebody in the over-the-top world is going to find it, put it on, and they're going to be embarrassed. So it's a totally new ball game.
Blodget asks Eisner: What's the key to excellent content? Are there just a few people who have the magic?
Eisner: There are more. But nobody believed that Netflix, something that could send video through the mail, was actually going to succeed in something else. Nobody thought that this group that was buying libraries would actually have an original program. Everybody thought paying $100 million for "House of Cards" was insane. So Amazon is there.
I didn't like a lot of their first shows. They did pilots and put them up and had the audience vote. I never thought that was the way to pick a show. And then they came out with "Transparent." It's a very funny, good show, and I think they're going to make it. Hulu didn't know what they were doing, because they had too many partners and nobody agreed, and now they see the light and now they're progressing in a lot of countries. Netflix is not going to be the only distributor.
Blodget: And do you think that some of the traditional networks will make the transition?
Eisner:Have to. Have to. That doesn't mean they're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I think I read that all of them are talking about going into some sort of digital over-the-top. Easier for Netflix, which had nothing to lose. You know, they didn't have a business. They weren't protecting their video business. They weren't protecting their theme parks, they weren't protecting their movies. They just were what they are, which is usually the way it happens. Same thing with HBO. Jerry Levin figured out that you could distribute by satellite all over the country. Before that you had to distribute by truck. It changed the world.
Blodget: And will HBO successfully become just another over-the-top provider?
Eisner: I don't know. HBO Now seems to be working. What they have at HBO and at Showtime and at the networks is a sophisticated development arrangement. They do see the creative, so they have a leg up, and they read and listen to blogs like this, and they know what's happening and they see their cable numbers decreasing. They're not going away. This is not the end of the wired world as we know it.
Business Insider's Dan Bobkoff joined the conversation with a few questions.
Dan Bobkoff: There are cable channels that started — if you're cynical — basically to get cable-subscriber fees, and they have very small audiences. Do you think there's going to be a reckoning of all these channels, like MTV Hits and Palladia that get a few cents per subscriber, but they're not putting out good content. Are we going to see the end of the 500-channel world?
Eisner: I hope so. I'm a little conflicted here, because I like ESPN being in 100 million homes. And I don't think you're really talking about ESPN, but if I were a Comcast shareholder I would feel, "God, why am I paying all this money for these channels that nobody watches?" So I do think as they get there, competing it with all these new forms, they are going to have to come to grips with this. There's always somebody who loves every one of these channels so somebody's going to be carrying a placard saying "I need my MTV Hits." But I think there's a slow atrophy going on.
Bobkoff: How slow?
Eisner: I don't know, because some things go slow forever. Some things go slow, slow, slow, and then — wham! — they're over. So I just don't know.
Some things go slow, slow, slow, and then — wham!— they're over.
Bobkoff: You're much more under the radar post-Disney. Do you prefer that?
Eisner: Oh God, yes. I was there 21 years. I think all but one year the stock went up, and the first 18 years we went up a ridiculous amount. So everybody was nice to me. But as soon as — I think it was after 9/11 or around then — when we were flat, a little bit down, it was as though I had murdered 700 people. You get much, much too much credit for things you have nothing to do with, and you have much too much blame for things you only have a little bit to do with. That's just the nature of what it is.
I was in a public company for 40 years of my life. Everything I have now is a private company. And even though a public company's a great thing, it's great for financing and all of the stuff you need to do. I'm not answering to anybody but my wife and my children and the people who work for me, and my partners. And the difference is, is I simply don't care. I shouldn't even say this, because my partners would not be happy: I don't care about quarter to quarter. I just don't care. I don't care if we put money in if I can see five years down the road it's going to work. That's refreshing.
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With over 80 screen credits to his name, Sam Rockwell has built a prolific career out of walking that fine line between character actor and leading man.
Some of his best work involves playing the strong supporting role in movies like "Galaxy Quest," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," and "Iron Man 2." But he's also fully capable of being the face of a film, in works like "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "The Winning Season," and "Moon."
With such a diverse filmography, we were curious what motivates Rockwell to take the parts he chooses. Here, he speaks candidly about three of them.
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In Rockwell's latest movie, "Don Verdean" (currently in theaters), he plays a biblical archaeologist who gets in over his head while trying to track down one of history's most notable artifacts. From the director of "Napoleon Dynamite," the brand of comedy could have allowed Rockwell to play the role in his usual outgoing style, but he settled on a more subdued feel. Partly because he had just lost one of his best friends.
"Phil had just passed away," Rockwell told Business Insider. Fellow actor and good friend Philip Seymour Hoffman died of an accidental drug overdose last year. "They had to push shooting about a week because I had to go to his funeral. He was on my mind a lot because he was a transformational actor and that was what I was going after with the part of Don Verdean."
One of Rockwell's most memorable roles to date was playing Sam Bell in Duncan Jones' sci-fi movie "Moon." But it took some stern words from Jones for Rockwell to finally come around to taking the role.
"I met Duncan for this movie where he wanted me to play a bad guy, and I didn't want to play a bad guy at the time," Rockwell said. "So we started talking about sic-fi movies and a year later, when I was making 'Frost/Nixon,' I get this call that I have to read his new script called 'Moon.' I didn't have time to read it but finally Duncan calls me and goes, 'Are you going to read my f-----g script or what? We wrote this part for you.' I told him to give me three days and he said okay but he has to move on because they were going to shoot it soon. And I said, 'If you were going to move on who would you cast? I'm just curious.' And he said, 'Paddy Considine.' And I was just thinking, man, that guy is really good. So I was like I have to read this f-----g thing. It's one of the more popular movies I've done. It's brought up more than I thought it would ever be."
Having already built up a healthy list of supporting and leading roles by the time he took the part of game-show host/purported hitman Chuck Barris in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," Rockwell still couldn't expect the national attention thrust on him, as the film was the directorial debut of George Clooney. What followed were bigger offers, like starring in the long-awaited screen adaptation of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," but the failure of that film and other indies stripped Rockwell of his leading-man status.
"I'd done lead roles up to that point, but they were films nobody saw," he said. "So it was good practice for me playing Chuck. I remember I watched a lot of 'Serpico' before we shot the movie. I think the paranoia angle. It was truly one of the highlights of my career. But it was strange, I was on the cover of GQ and I did 'Hitchhikers,' but I went back to doing character parts again. An acting career is interesting. There's ebbs and flows and movies that I feel are milestones in my mind — 'Snow Angles,' 'Conviction,' 'Choke' — not necessarily a lot of people have seen them. But what are you going to do? I didn't think anybody was going to see 'The Way Way Back' and that's the movie that's changed my career recently in the parts I'm offered."
YouTube just released its annual video mashup that pays tribute to all the biggest viral moments and people of 2015.
You'll see Left Shark, a handful of Shia Labeouf "Just do it" copycats, and cameos by people like Heaven King and Bethany Mota. And people well-versed in internet culture and YouTube stars will recognize dozens of in-jokes and references that will fly right by those who aren't.
YouTube culture exec Kevin Allocca tells Business Insider that shooting for the ~7 minute piece took 21 days across multiple cities around the US and the world.
"The sets have this fun party atmosphere," he said. "Some of these [YouTube creators] are pretty huge stars who are busy with crazy schedules, so to have them in the same place is really fun."
Watch the video now:
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CBS's "Big Brother" and "The Talk" host Julie Chen got a chance to revisit pop culture's biggest moments as a guest on Bravo's new show, "Then and Now With Andy Cohen."
"Andy Cohen will name a certain year and a certain event," Chen told Business Insider of the new Bravo's show's format. "And then I weigh in on it like Heidi Fleiss, O.J. Simpson."
Kelly Ripa, Connie Chung, Dr. Drew, Mariel Hemingway, Billy Eichner, Bethenny Frankel, and Margaret Cho also take part in the three-part series that will look at years 1989, 1994, and 2000.
"It wasn't just random headlines, he picked specific years," Chen said. "And one of them was 2000 and that was pivotal for me, because 'Big Brother' came on the air. So, some of it was big news stories and some lighter moments like fashion."
While Chen got to revisit joining "Big Brother" — something that would significantly open up her career after a decade of working in news — she also revisited the nickname she got from being on the show: Chenbot.
"Anyone who's a diehard 'Big Brother' fan of a certain age all know what Chenbot is," she said. "That was me, season 2, when a diehard fan strung together every episode of me saying, 'But First.' This viewer realized that Julie Chen was so stiff and robotic that she delivers that line deadpan the exact same way every episode down to which foot hits first as she's walking to the camera. The only thing was different was my outfit and my hairdo."
"I was trying to be a very serious news journalist, because I was doing a slightly trashy show," the 45-year-old said. "I love 'Big Brother,' but it's a little bit trashy. I was trying to hold on to my news cred. It was funny and I realized I am the Chenbot. Even if they were making fun of me, they had every right to because the person was dead-on."
Watch a compilation of Chen's "But Firsts" below:
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This time next week the box office will be in uncharted territory, as the opening of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on Friday plans to be historic. That anticipation may have led to a dip in movie ticket sales this weekend.
The top 20 releases at the multiplex had a 25% drop in tickets sold this weekend compared to last, according to Deadline. This is similar to the soft weekend before the release of "Avengers: Age of Ultron" over the summer.
Continuing its box office dominance was "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2," which took the top spot with an estimated $11.3 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter. This is the first time since the original "Hunger Games" that a film in the franchise has spent four straight weeks atop the box office.
It just edged past new release "In The Heart of the Sea." Ron Howard's Moby Dick tale starring Chris Hemsworth took in an estimated $11 million (an awful start for a movie budgeted at around $100 million).
The big winner of the weekend was the star-studded ensemble dramedy "The Big Short," which looked at the housing market crash that spurred a US recession in 2008. The perfectly crafted tone by director Adam McKay — and the talented cast that includes the likes of Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, and Brad Pitt — led this movie to earn the second-best opening theater average of the year.
Its average of $80,000 per the eight screens it was on has only been bested by "Steve Jobs," which did $130,000 in four theaters.
Good reviews certainly helped but having its limited release the weekend after the Golden Globes nominations were announced probably wasn't a bad idea, either. Carell, Bale, and McKay (for screenwriting) all received nominations. The movie opens in wide release December 23.
Yes, that's after "The Force Awakens" comes out.
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Actor Will Ferrell returned to "Saturday Night Live" this weekend in order to lampoon former President George W. Bush supposedly announcing a 2016 presidential campaign.
During the show's cold-open sketch, Ferrell went down the list of Republican front-runners in order to question their qualifications for the Oval Office.
But because he was impersonating Bush, Ferrell botched most of the criticism.
Ferrell cracked up over "knucklehead" Donald Trump's appearance and then attacked the real-estate mogul's plan to temporarily stop Muslims from entering the US.
"He says he wants to keep all the Muslims out. Yeah, that's a great idea," Ferrell said sarcastically. "That's impossible to implement and not what this country is about. Heck, that's like saying, 'Let's keep all the leprechauns out.'"
Ferrell also hit retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson's soft-spoken nature.
"Dr. Ben Carson, I can barely hear him when he talks. I'll tell you something: That's not going to work when you have to go to China or Azerbaijan, where you have to TALK LOUDLY SO THEY WILL UNDERSTAND," Ferrell said, mispronouncing "Azerbaijan."
Of former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Ferrell quipped, "She's not qualified in any way to be president. In many ways, she reminds me of me. But she isn't me. I am me."
Ferrell's final target was Bush's brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), whom he compared to broccoli.
"Jeb, oh boy. Poor Jeb. You've got to admit it's a pretty good plot twist that I turned out to be the smart one," the actor reflected, turning to the exclamation mark on Jeb Bush's campaign signs.
"Of course, I wish you would have asked me about the exclamation point on the end of his name," he continued. "Look, I don't like the taste of broccoli but it doesn't get any tastier if you call it BROCCOLI!"
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It can feel like just about everyone in the country has marked down December 18 as the day "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" comes out. Yet there are two studios that are brave enough to take it on.
Universal has the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler comedy “Sisters,” and 20th Century Fox has “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip,” both coming out the same weekend as "Star Wars."
You can’t get more counter-programming than that.
It’s safe to say both studios are looking more at the long game with these titles rather than any impressive box office their opening weekend. (Neither would comment for this story.)
But looking at history, there are some interesting motivations for why both of these companies are poking a stick at the giant.
Fox is the old distribution home of the “Star Wars” franchise, before George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 for over $4 billion. Fox might be thinking that, coming out a week before Christmas, "Alvin" can be the option for the kids market in that week going into the holiday (by then many schools are closed for the holiday).
Universal has a little more teeth in the game. The latest movie to star the extremely popular duo of Poehler and Fey, “Sisters” is the ultimate girls-night-out movie, as opposed to the fanboy-crazed “Force Awakens.” Universal might also be confident from the last time they went up against a testosterone-heavy actioner.
In mid-May, Universal's “Pitch Perfect 2” went up against Warner Brothers' “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the Bellas took the opening-weekend box office with $69.2 million.
Now, no one at Universal thinks they will prevail over "Star Wars," but there is confidence from people within the studio who talked to BI off the record that "Sisters" can do well after opening weekend.
Also going for "Sisters" is the fact that it's R-rated, which gives it a core audience that's older and historically skips over a film’s opening weekend.
“I could see ‘Sisters’ opening in the mid-teens against ‘The Force Awakens,' same for ‘Alvin,’” Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst at Exhibitor Relations, told Business Insider. “But it baffles my mind why any studio would attempt to cross paths with ‘The Force Awakens.’”
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Places like YouTube make it easy to see what resolution of video you're watching, but when you watch Netflix, it can be a bit of a mystery.
Is the episode you're watching really in full HD (1080p)?
Depending on how big your screen is, even a video quality snob can get fooled by a 720p resolution that seems like it could be full HD. It's like a fine wine, or great headphones — at a certain point can you even tell? Okay, we believe you, you can, but sometimes it can be tricky.
But one thing we know for sure is that if you were watching Netflix on Chrome or Firefox, you definitely weren't getting 1080p video, because it isn't possible.
As BGR first pointed out, this support page from Netflix's own site shows that depending on what browser you use, you won't get to stream in full HD:
Resolution: Stream in HD if your Internet connection supports 5 megabits per second or more.
- Google Chrome up to 720p
- Internet Explorer up to 1080p
- Microsoft Edge up to 1080p
- Mozilla Firefox up to 720p
- Opera up to 720p
- Safari up to 1080p on Mac OS X 10.10.3 or later
Now, if you are watching Netflix on most laptops, there won't be much of a difference between 720p and 1080p. But if you have a big slick monitor, or have connected your laptop to your TV, you won't be getting the crisp video you could have been.
Luckily, there are other web browsers out there that do support full HD streaming on Netflix, so you can always just use one of them instead.
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