A Book Event Hosted by TPI
Traditional network television programming has been upended by services that allow consumers to “binge-watch” whenever they want on many devices. These innovative video services would not have ordered entire seasons of shows without being relatively certain that subscribers would actually view them. Companies expected shows to be popular because of data they had collected on user preferences.

In Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment, Michael Smith and Rahul Telang, experts on entertainment analytics, show how new video services are changing the rules not just in distribution, but in other entertainment industries as well. Pricing, production, distribution, and piracy are all affected in this period of unprecedented technological disruption. To survive and succeed, businesses have to adapt rapidly and creatively. How can they discover who their customers are, what they want, and how much they are willing to pay? The bottom line: follow the data.

Please join us for a discussion of the book with co-authors Smith, TPI Adjunct Fellow and Professor of Information Technology and Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, and Telang, Professor of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College. Smith and Telang will discuss niche products and the long tail, product differentiation, price discrimination, and incentives for users not to steal content. The event will be moderated by Eriq Gardner, Senior Editor at The Hollywood Reporter and author at the THR Esq. blog.