The Future of In-Home Video Entertainment

The UC Davis Center for Analytics and Technology in Society kicks off its Luminare Series with "The Future of In-Home Video Entertainment," bringing together top executives and industry experts to explore the fundamental shifts occurring in the business of in-home video entertainment caused by technological and social trends as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.

With seismic shifts of late in the U.S. and global entertainment industries:

• Who will dominate the making and distribution of movies and TV shows? 
• Does Hollywood need Bollywood? 
• Who will derive a competitive advantage from advanced technology and data analytics? 
• What role will theatrical exhibition play in the business of direct streaming to home? 

Join Professor Hemant Bhargava and the Center for Analytics and Technology in Society to explore these and other questions with our panel of luminaries.

Panelists

We're bringing together four luminaries to explore the fundamental shifts occurring in the business of in-home video entertainment, caused by technological and social trends, and COVID-19.

Moderator: Hemant Bhargava
Professor and Suran Chair in Technology Management
Faculty Director, UC Davis Center for Analytics and Technology

Professor Hemant Bhargava's research covers economic and strategic underpinnings underlying the business of entertainment, especially focusing on the role of variety in consumer demand, the strategic role of bundles in product offerings, of vertical integration, and of mergers and consolidation in the content production and distribution layers. He also studies the economics of technology, analytics, and platforms, and hopes to apply his research in important verticals of business and society. 

Alex Grimwade
Sr. Vice President and CIO at Disney Television Studios,
Walt Disney Television

Alex Grimwade joined Twentieth Century Fox Television as head of Technology in 2005, overseeing corporate technology for television production and operations, Consumer Products, and Fox Mobile Entertainment. Prior to joining TCFTV, Alex worked for Fox Filmed Entertainment, Fox Entertainment Group, and consulted for Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution. She has focused on Media and Entertainment business systems strategy and development since 1993, including work at Sony Pictures, Universal, and Warner Bros. She specializes in the development of television production, distribution and intellectual property management systems. Alex graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed the Information Systems program at UCLA, as well as the Executive Program in Technology Governance at MIT Sloan.

Ben Fritz
West Coast Bureau Chief for U.S. News, Wall Street Journal;
Longtime Hollywood journalist.

Ben Fritz is an experienced journalist who oversees U.S. News coverage in the West for one of the nation's largest and most respected newspapers. Previously, he covered the entertainment industry for more than a decade. Among these were Walt Disney Co, the nation's largest entertainment company, and the film industry, including major and independent Hollywood studios.

He is the author of the Los Angeles Times best-seller "The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies," which is about the dramatic shake-up of Hollywood this century that has made super-heroes, sequels and toy franchises inescapable and original movies for adults an endangered species.

Tejaswini Ganti
Associate Professor at New York University; media anthropologist, specializing in Bollywood, mass media and culture studies.

Tejaswini Ganti is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and core faculty in the Program in Culture & Media at New York University. 

A cultural and visual anthropologist specializing in South Asia, her research and teaching interests include anthropology of media, Indian cinema, media industries, production cultures, visual culture, and globalization. She has been conducting ethnographic research about the social world and filmmaking practices of the Hindi film industry since 1996 and is the author of Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Duke University Press 2012) and Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge 2004; 2nd edition 2013). 

Her current research examines the politics of language and translation within the Bombay film industry; the dubbing of Hollywood films into Hindi; the formalization and professionalization of film training through film schools in India; and a social history of Indian cinema in the U.S.  

David Grant
Digital Media and Video Entrepreneur;
Founder and Ex-President of Fox TV Studios

David Grant, a UC Davis School of Law alumnus, currently advises and helps startups and emerging companies in various areas such as online strategy, marketing, partnerships under the company Grant Group Media Inc.

He led PopSugar Studios, which develops, produces, and distributes PopSugar-branded digital video content, television, and film for a monthly U.S. audience of 40 million people. He conceived of and launched Fox TV Studios from scratch, growing the studio to a major global television supplier that has produced thousands of hours of scripted, reality, and documentary television in over 25 countries. During Grant's time as president, the studio produced numerous Emmy, Golden Globe, and Peabody-winning series.