Entertainment

To survive the rapid transition to a direct-to-consumer future, companies across the E&M sector need an effective fan-centric strategy — or risk decline and irrelevance. A few recent, seemingly disparate, events illuminate the seismic shifts occurring in entertainment and media (E&M). When basketball superstar Kobe Bryant announced his retirement from the NBA on November 29, 2015, it occurred not on a major sports network but via social media and the  Players’ Tribune,  an athlete-centric digital publisher. That same month, CBS — which like NBC, FOX, and ABC is trying to grow viewership outside of traditional pay-TV — announced plans to revive  Star Trek,  one of its best-known franchises, exclusively on CBS All Access, its new subscription video on-demand service. Fox declared it will no longer track same-day TV ratings; rather, it will report on program viewership occurring after three and seven days, responding to the prevalence of on-demand viewing...