Angel

1.5 million people are greenlighting films. Not studios. Angel Studios is rewriting the rules of entertainment by putting power directly in the hands of its community. In this interview with Payam Zamani, CEO Neal Harmon shares how their model is reshaping the industry through: • fair pay for creators  • community ownership  • stories that reflect shared human values It’s a movement changing entertainment for the better, proving that audiences – not executives – can define  the future of storytelling. 🎥 Watch the full conversation from the One Planet Summit: https://lnkd.in/gpkm_pg2 #OnePlanetSummit #Entertainment #Media #SpiritualCapitalism #SpiritualEnterprise

At 9:30a ET today, Angel Studios goes public. Just now, BEFORE the #IPO goes live, we dropped the first-ever, in-depth interview with all three Angle founders - Neal Harmon, Jordan Harmon & Jeffrey Harmon - on The Media Odyssey Podcast - before the market opens! Angel’s is the most game-changing model in Media. There is literally nothing like it. But there needs to be. As I’ve written about here, Angel execs DON’T greenlight their films, their Fans do. Those fans also invest their hard earned money IN THE COMPANY. But Angel’s model is even more innovative - and tech forward - than that. In the purely home-grown Angel CTV app (seen in the video below) members can vote on films, get first access to new projects, AND they can order their tickets and pick specific seats to see the movies in theaters - then get the tickets sent directly to their phones. Angel’s C-Suite did not approve those features before they went live. The engineering team built them and deployed them - as part of Angel’s test & learn culture of radical org chart equality. There is nothing else like this in entertainment. Period. As I’ve profiled Angel this week, I’ve gotten some substantial pushback. “Well this is just for religious content and the people who love it.” Nope. This model is, without question, entirely transferable to any other genre with an obsessed fandom - horror, anime, manga, comedy, SPORTS!, true crime! See The Green Bay Packers. See Podcasters on Patreon. Others have pushed back because Angel had legal issues with the creator of The Chosen, or because the character at the center of their huge hit, Sound of Freedom, is based on a seriously toxic dude. These are fair criticisms. However, every significant enterprise in Hollywood has faced legal complications from business partners (Disney and Bones) and/or made movies about seemingly good people who turned out to be problematic figures (The Blind Side, A Beautiful Mind, The Greatest Showman). To be clear, neither Marion nor I own any shares of Angel. Neither of us is being paid by Angel. Only time will tell if Angel is worth their target $1.6 bil market cap. BUT, I’ve studied every major Media business on the planet. I have been a part of strategic planning at key content platforms and publishers across the Media Universe. I can confidently say (no matter how you feel about the company or its content) that Angel’s data-first, Fandom-focused, audience-empowered, team-empowered, test and learn model IS the future of Media - regardless of the kind of content you create. IMO, this #podcast episode is a masterclass on how to build a modern Media company for The Affinity Economy. But don’t take my word for it. See or hear for yourself. And always invest with your eyes, and mind, wide open. To watch or listen or see all the data behind my opinion, visit the link in my bio.

The NYSE welcomes Angel by celebrating more than 1.5 million Angel Guild members around the world who are championing films and TV shows that amplify light. (NYSE: ANGX)

Move The Goalposts John Malone invented EBITDA in the ‘70s to obscure expense in his business, to make it appear more profitable, and to reap bigger bonuses & richer share prices. Not for nothing, the Gordon Gekkos of the ‘80s adopted this and other BS metrics for destructive leveraged buyouts. In related news, Malone recently admitted he “didn’t do enough diligence” before his Discovery Inc bought Warner Media, setting $45 bil on fire and destroying thousands of careers. EBITDA is one of myriad examples (MAUs, CTRs, Reach, Scale) of industry leaders using a convoluted language of vanity metrics, specifically intended to fool Wall St. into pumping up stocks & convince boards to raise C-Suite Pay. (See David Zaslav’s entire career.) The pathological dedication to the useless talismans of this tower of blather, is a chief reason why the Media - so long run by these frat bros with eyes wide shut - is in such deep shit right now. Resistance to how we speak about and measure our businesses, in the face of massive generational change and technological disruption, is the greatest threat to the Media ecosystem. My #1 goal in the year ahead is to put an end to this BS: To change the language, the metrics, and the game so they truly reflect the time we are in, rather than a time gone by. In the user-centric era, we MUST adopt new metrics, focused FANDOM - we must measure the LOVE audiences show for our content. If you think “dear boy, you can’t measure love,” you’re WRONG boomer. Not only CAN we measure love, in an era where consumers - not execs - control the Media, when artists have intense direct connection with their fans; PASSION is the ONLY metric that matters. So, what does THAT look like? Like Angel Studios: The indie film studio dedicated to values-based content, home of the enormous hit Sound Of Freedom. In the last 3 years, Angel has realized fewer theatrical films than most other major indies. Yet, they are second ONLY to A24 (who had 5X more releases) in total B.O. More impressively, Angel has THE HIGHEST per release B.O. average of ANY indie studio on earth - 3X that of A24; 15X NEON. Is Angel just better at choosing movies? NO! In fact the execs at Angel DO NOT pick the movies they make - their FANS do. If Angel’s 1.5 million Guild Members do not greenlight a film, Angel DOES NOT make it. (That sound you hear is executive butts clenching all over Hollywood.) Angel’s fans LOVE Angel - not JUST their movies. So much so they invest their OWN MONEY in the studio. Through a Reg A+ offering last month. Angel raised $55 MILLION in 18 DAYS from 47K REAL PEOPLE (aka non-accredited investors). AND THAT, specifically, is HOW you measure PASSION. THAT is a new model for this new era. THAT is the future of Media. To dig into the Angel model and learn how to measure passion, see the link at the top of this post. #movies #film #fandom