The inaugural ALZA Festival takes place in New York City today through Sunday, bringing together creators, studios, platforms, and industry leaders for three days of premieres, screenings, panels, and conversations about the future of the format.

The first year of any festival is unpredictable, but the lineup looks interesting and if I were located in NYC I would probably try and catch some of the screenings.

I’m trying to cover more of what’s going on in the vertical and microdrama markets. But because it’s relatively new and the cost to entry is relatively low, the quality is all over the map. The biggest challenge I face is trying to determine what is worth covering and what doesn’t quite hit the mark.

The other challenge in the vertical market is the business model. Everyone I talk to agrees that it’s the biggest issue facing the industry and that no one has successfully dialed it in yet. But everyone seems confident that will happen.

One thing any serious business major will tell you is that innovation is hard. Successful businesses rarely reinvent themselves, especially if it requires blowing up their current business model. It's an economic theory known as the "Innovator's Dilemma" and it was popularized in a 1997 book by Harvard professor and businessman Clayton Christensen:

"The Innovator’s Dilemma comes from the paradox created by success. The decision-making process and the allocation of resources that lead to success can be limiting when it comes to embracing innovation. When confronted by disruptive technology, companies often fall into comfortable boxes. They talk to their customers, who tell them there’s no need to change."

Christensen also talks about "disruptive technologies" and how wildly successful companies can seemingly do everything right and still lose market share:

"...large incumbent companies lose market share by listening to their customers and providing what appears to be the highest-value products, but new companies that serve low-value customers with poorly developed technology can improve that technology incrementally until it is good enough to quickly take market share from established business. Christensen recommends that large companies maintain small, nimble divisions that attempt to replicate this phenomenon internally to avoid being blindsided and overtaken by startup competitors."

I've thought a lot about that idea over the past couple of weeks, as Netflix announced an aggressive round of layoffs as well as substantial changes in the executive ranks.

The press coverage has tended to frame the decisions as acts of desperation, and/or as efforts to put the blame on departing executives as a primary reason for the ongoing problems at the network.

To be clear, Netflix is facing some challenging headwinds right now. Some of them specific to the streamer. And some of the other challenges - dips in subscriber engagement, competition from YouTube, social media, TikTok and everything else - are no different than what every SVOD is facing right now. But none of that matters, because Netflix is the market leader and there’s an argument to be made that if Netflix can’t figure it out, then everyone in the industry is screwed.

When I originally broke the news that Netflix was planning layoffs, I spoke with some people there on background and this point jumped out at me even then:

I think it's fair to say that Netflix executives have recognized that if you want to be the default home entertainment choice, then you need to listen to the audience and the changing marketplace instead of trying to lead it. This is a different challenge than the one faced by Netflix when it walked away from its DVD business or the one it faced in 2022, after the pandemic and increased competition for eyeballs meant the streamer had to pivot on the direction of their content mix.

The question in 2026 has become "is it necessary to damage your core businesses and predictable revenue streams to get to where the audience wants you to be?"

Which brings us back to the "innovator's dilemma." Go look at those two passages from the book that I highlighted above again and ask yourself if they apply to the streaming business in 2026. Because it certainly did twenty or so years ago when Blockbuster was facing competition from a young but rapidly growing Netflix.

It wasn't that Blockbuster executives didn't understand the potential of Netflix when they had a chance to purchase the company early on. It's that they didn't believe it would ever overtake their legacy video rental business. And on some level, they understood that in order to succeed in streaming they would have to blow up a large part of their current revenue stream, which they could not comprehend doing willingly.

And so Blockbuster went out of business and Netflix is now...well, Netflix.

I have no idea whether Netflix can successfully disrupt their business and invent whatever mix of SVOD, gaming, and creator-driven content that will be the benchmark for home screen entertainment in 2030 or 2035.

What I do know is that looking at the layoffs at Netflix and what is going on at the company through the lens of a traditional media business is a mistake. It’s not as big a mistake as David Ellison’s decision to load up Skydance with a massive in hopes of chasing a success via scale strategy that is ten years out of date. But that is for another day.

Speaking with executives at Netflix this week - mostly off the record - I was struck by their willingness to blow up the company if it means they can put it back together in a way that positions them to continue to dominate the next twenty years of streaming entertainment.

Can they do it? Well, that question is what makes writing this newsletter so interesting.

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DIRECTV just launched what it describes as the “Build Your Own Multiview” experience. 

Now fans can now create their own two-, three- or four-view lineup by mixing and matching eligible channels like ESPN, FS1, NFL Network, NBA TV, MLB Network and the SEC, Big Ten and ACC Networks. Participating local broadcast channels also join the lineup when they're carrying live games. 

Here are more details from DirecTV:

The feature is available now on Roku and DIRECTV Gemini devices, with Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, Samsung, LG and VIZIO to follow.

Predictive market companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket have obscene amounts of money to throw at independent journalists. And while I have decided that having them as a sponsor isn’t something I am comfortable with, I know all too well how challenging it is to build a revenue stream for any type of journalism. So I am not going to criticize anyone who makes a different decision.

But for me, I didn’t feel comfortable taking money in a way that would make it appear as if I were endorsing or even worse - encouraging people to use prediction markets. It is no different than ESPN taking money from a gambling site. Even if you successfully keep an editorial wall between the reporting and the advertising, closely integrating the two leads to the perception you’re encouraging your viewers to dive in.

And then there is the next level of brand integration, which startled me when I first saw it yesterday on the weekly video election podcast done by Chris Cillizza and former NBC journalist Chuck Todd.

The point of this week’s podcast was to discuss the upcoming midterms and tout their expertise about what is most likely to happen in less than three weeks. But halfway through the discussion, they start looking at various scenarios through the eyes of what users of Kalshi are betting on. Which felt….I think the scientific term is “icky.”

While that is bad enough - I certainly am less interested in their opinion when they spend ten minutes or more using Kalshi “predictions” to frame their opinions on various races. But I bailed on the video completely after Todd went on a long spiel explaining how “if I was going to use Kalshi to make money,” he would do it on election night, using his knowledge to bet the spread between the Kalshi market prediction on various races vs what he believed would be the results as the polls closed.

Cillizza and Todd have deep knowledge of politics and even though I don’t agree with many of their core beliefs, I respect the work they’ve put into their craft. Which is why it’s sad to see them willingly turn themselves into digital carnival barkers, hawking prediction markets in a way that diminishes their real value.

Here is a rundown of other stories recently posted on TooMuchTV.com and Forbes:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16TH, 2026:
Kate Berlant: Parmesan (HBO)
Katseye: Wild Hearts (Disney+/Hulu)
Money Trap: The Karun Treasure Series Premiere (Netflix)
Norm: The Tale Of Norm Macdonald (Netflix)
Sacrifice (Netflix)
Tenzing (Apple TV)
The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable (Hulu)
The Rainmaker Season Two Premiere (Netflix)
What Black Men Say vs. What Black Women Hear With Iyanla Vanzant (OWN)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17TH, 2026:
Carla’s Hall-Oween Spooktacular (Chewed Up)
Holiday Touchdown: A Bears Love Story (Hallmark)
Silver Bells At Christmas (Great American Family)
Sins Of An Amish Husband (Lifetime)
Super Scam Me (NatGeo)