Course Materials
Syllabus Final Project GuidelinesAssignments, review material, and other course documents will be posted here as the semester progresses.
Readings
Read everything listed before the class it is assigned to. Two students are picked at random each day to summarize. Media industries move faster than a syllabus, so readings may be swapped as the semester goes — check here rather than relying on a printout.
Foundations
Class 2 — Cost Structure: Fixed vs. Marginal Cost
Fri Sep 11- How Much Does It Cost to Make a Hit Song? (Planet Money podcast)
- The Costs of Recording an Album — and How to Pay for It
Class 3 — Demand, Supply, and Elasticity: The Advertising Market
Tue Sep 15Class 4 — Market Power and Barriers to Entry
Fri Sep 18- Mavericks, Monopolies and Beer (Planet Money podcast)
- Tech’s Broader Barriers to Entry (PDF)
Class 5 — Market Structure: The Four Models
Fri Sep 25- The Last Mile (Planet Money podcast)
- Streaming Stops Feeling Infinite
Class 6 — The Music Industry Today
Tue Sep 29- Streaming Growth, Vinyl Dominance Highlight Luminate’s 2025 Report
- 106,000-a-Day Deluge: 88% of Tracks Starve for Streams
Assignment 1 — due Class 7 (Tue Oct 6). One page on the barriers to entry facing new firms in social media. Using the vocabulary from Classes 4–6, explain how those barriers shape the product offering consumers end up with. Be specific about which barriers are cost-side, which are demand-side, and which are legal.
Firm Strategy
Class 7 — Product Differentiation and the Cinema Industry
Tue Oct 6- Chisholm, McMillan & Norman, “Product Differentiation and Film Programming Choice” (NBER WP 12646 — intro and conclusion only)
- Movie Theaters Rebound: Inside the Box Office Comeback
- A Surprisingly Strong Summer Box Office
Assignment 1 due today.
Class 8 — Vertical and Horizontal Integration
Fri Oct 9- Paramount-WBD Merger Wins Approval From DOJ
- A Media M&A Chill: The Paramount-WBD Antitrust Challenge
- Streamer Subscription Prices and Tiers (skim — know who owns what)
Assignment 2 — due Classes 9–10 (Tue Oct 20). One page on the vertical and horizontal integration Disney has pursued over the last fifty years. On a separate page, a graphical representation of those integrations — a value-chain diagram showing what Disney acquired, when, and whether each move was vertical or horizontal.
Classes 9–10 — Mergers, Product Variety, and Antitrust
Fri Oct 16- Do Mergers Increase Product Variety? Evidence from Radio Broadcasting (PDF — intro and conclusion only)
- Paramount and State AGs Settle Lawsuit, Allowing Warner Bros. Merger to Proceed
- 2025: The Year Google Lost in Court and Won Anyway
- Search Remedies Can Work Even if the Company Stays on Top
Assignment 2 due 10/20.
Class 11 — First Midterm
Tue Oct 20