Thursday, August 13, 2020

Optimisation begets imitation

This blog has been following the career of Brit-in-New-York Sarah Barnett at BBC America since 2014.

Sarah has now announced her departure from the mothership of AMC Networks, co-owner of BBC America's cable offering, just as her 'baby', Killing Eve moves to the 2020 Emmy Awards with eight nominations.  She leaves in three week's time, after her recent 18 months as President of the group. 

It looks like either she's uncomfortable with AMC's increasing emphasis on streaming services, or they don't think she's right to lead on that front. AMC's latest quarterly financial report focussed on SVOD offerings such as Acorn, featuring archive British TV, and Shudder, a back catalogue of horror stuff on-demand. 

Back in January, Sarah feared for the future quality of tv in general. “The streaming wars have exploded and I often get asked how AMC will compete against our massively bulked up competitors and their data driven might. We think that in an industry led by volume and data-led decision making, it will hurt the quality and diversity of television and we stand to counter to that. Optimization begets imitation. If something needs to work as well in India as in America, then everything starts to look the same. If you try to talk to everyone you’re not going to be able to say much meaningful to anyone."



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