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.
Henry BlodgetThere's too much bad. The worst is mediocre. Bad is easy. There's high quality, there's pornography, and then there's bad.
Henry BlodgetThe 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.
Henry BlodgetAlmost any show that has reviewers behind it, Rotten Tomatoes behind it, will find a way to survive.
Henry BlodgetSome 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.
Henry BlodgetI 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.
Henry BlodgetWe have more information than ever before, and it is harder to avoid actually seeing what the other side is saying. Yes, we in Business insider focus on publications that we feel speak to us, but that is the same way it was 20 or 100 years ago. In the US, two million people have subscribed to the New York Times and many more millions think it is a terrible, liberal paper they would never read. We can choose to put ourselves in a bubble of only people who agree with us, but in the digital world there are many more ways of saying "Hey, here is something you might want to consider".
Henry Blodget