Monday Media Watch: The Queen stars with Paddington whilst Apple leaks abound

Every Monday RedShark co-founder and CEO, Matt Gregory looks at key announcements, appointments and updates from the media and entertainment industry.

Streaming: The power of Netflix is still a (Stranger) thing! Anyone that has been gripped by Stranger Things season 4 like me will be walking around today with Kate Bush, ‘Running Up That Hill’ in their heads all day. Streams are up an astonishing 8700% and as of Sunday June 5th, in the Top 10 of 34 countries - reaching No1 on iTunes in the USA. This story about how the show’s music coordinator, Nora Felder convinced Kate Bush (who is famous in the industry for being extremely reluctant to licence her music) and her team to allow Netflix the rights to the song is fascinating! Turns out Kate is a huge fan of the show, but the story and how this song in particular relates to it was what really got her onboard here.

Events: Without wishing to be too UK centric (here at RedShark we are very aware the vast majority of you reading this are not on our tiny Island in the North Atlantic) Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee ceremony was the TV event of the week, with 13.3m/ 74% audience share making it the most watched non sports event in the past 2 years. However, along with a whole load of memes thanks to the facial expressions of young Louie, the thing trending around the world on Sunday was “Paddington” thanks to a short piece featuring the Queen herself with Paddington Bear. This was produced by the BBC, StudioCanal and HeyDay Films with the post handled by animation specialists, Framestore. Despite being set in Buckingham Palace the shoot took place in Windsor Castle at the request of the Queen’s team, sometimes you just gotta go with the whims of the talent right?

Industry news

• WWDC/ Apple. It's that time again when RedShark readers go to war in our comments sections: Mac vs PC continues to be as polarising as US Politics! Looks like B&H helped spread rumours of a new M2 Macbook Air thanks to a (not very well) hidden page on their site, however B&H have denied that so we will have to wait and see. What is true is at the time or writing this the Apple Store is down for the first time in years! Always interesting to see what is announced and also to see how the worldwide supply chain issues have or haven’t affected Apple. The markets remain pretty unmoved for now, no change on their share price (see below for more of that).
• ARRI. So about an hour after I finished last week’s industry roundup ARRI announced its new ALEXA 35 featuring an incredible 17 stops of dynamic range. It was interesting to me and probably many of the other 78k people that follow Jarred Land on Instagram that had been teased a few days before with an 8K S35 RED RAPTOR! Anyway, back to the ARRI as it looks absolutely gorgeous and it's great to see S35 back in the game at the top end after the recent focus on larger sensors. Lets see what the rental houses say about it over the next few weeks/ months.

Share Prices (price correct as of 2pm BST Monday June 6th):

• Adobe: 428.56 (up 1.8% week on week)
• AMD 106.30 (+6.1%)
• Apple: $145.38 (-0.6%)
• AVID: $28.86 (+0.4%)
• DELL: $51.02 (+1.5%)
• Disney: $108.67 (+1.7%)
• Microsoft: $270.01 (+0.1%)
• Netflix: $198.98 (+1.3%)
• NVidea: $192.30 (+1.4%)
• Vivendum/ Vitec Group: £1290 (+0%)

If you have news to share or want to get in touch, please email matt.gregory@redsharknews.com.