Education
Should You Invest In The Entertainment Industry?
The entertainment industry: a worthy investment?
As a species, there are three things we cannot do without – food, water, and entertainment. Entertainment is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world and it’s multifaceted too. Films, music, books and video games, these are the pillars, the building blocks, the cornerstones of the entertainment industry. Everything is contained within these four defining attributes. Our fascination with being entertained is as old as we are as a species. Oral tradition became print, print transitioned to reels and reels are now digital. There’s a common argument that in today’s digital world economy, that print is dead. This is not true, print has simply adapted and evolved. There’s an argument to be made that music is dead. Also untrue. Like print, it’s simply had to adapt and also evolve to the technology of the times. In fact, music is still in a transitional phase with regards to artist royalties, something that remains murky in these digital times. Cinema it could be argued is dead, and right now it is, but that’s out of everyone’s hand. Once we return to normalcy, it will come back with a vengeance. However, cinema is part of filmed entertainment and on the whole, filmed entertainment has been swallowed up by the streaming giants. The point is that the entertainment industry is evolving and as usual, there’s profit to be had.
Why should you invest?
There’s no way to sugar-coat this; investing is risky, regardless. You can do your research, follow the latest entertainment trend reports by CityIndex, and yes, a product or service can showcase incredible potential, but you won’t know until the dust has settled and this is especially true in the entertainment industry – one that is almost entirely reliant on the taste of the consumer. Hollywood is littered with the corpses of box office bombs, but it’s also filled to the brim with box office gold. If you’re going to invest in entertainment, you’ll have to run the gauntlet of an unpredictable public, critical reviews and of course, studio interference. A prime example would be the extent to which Warner Bros. hacked up major DC movies such as Justice League and paid the price. However, if the film or the intellectual property becomes a hit such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has proven with constant returns, then the risk of investing almost completely and utterly fades away. The same is true for music, theatre, books and video games. If the public positively receives these ventures, then you’re going to profit from the good reception.
Range and sustained returns.
It’s easy to buy into the idea that only large investors can be a party to the entertainment industry. With massive budgets and lots at stake, it’s easy to see yourself as a bit player. However, you don’t have to invest in something big. You could take a stab at an independent film production, a small theatre production, or you could invest in a musical artist who’s just starting their career. In addition to this, you could also opt for online trading. Brokers in this industry allow you to partake in speculation or spread betting. For instance, if you wanted to invest in Warner Bros., whose parent company is AT&T, then you could simply bet and estimate on the movement of AT&T’s share price without buying the actual stock. And then of course there are the ones that offer sustained returns. Imagine you had invested in Marvel Studios back in the early 2000s? Whether it’s a film franchise, a book that spawns a series like Harry Potter, a music artist who churns out hit after hit or a play that becomes a staple on Broadway, there’s always the chance you might be investing in something with sustained returns.
Education
Abhishek Singh appointed director general of National Testing Agency
Technocrat with deep roots in India’s digital infrastructure push takes charge of the exam body that has faced intense scrutiny
NEW DELHI: India’s beleaguered examination authority has a new boss. Abhishek Singh, currently director general of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), has been appointed director general of the National Testing Agency (NTA), which sits under the Ministry of Education. In a signal of just how seriously the government is treating the role, the post has been temporarily upgraded to the rank and pay of secretary to the government of India.
Singh is not your typical bureaucrat shuffled sideways into a troubled institution. At the NIC, he also held additional charge as additional secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), overseeing artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and the Digital India Bhashini division, while simultaneously serving as chief executive of the India AI Mission. That is a formidable technology portfolio by any measure.
His CV reads like a guided tour of India’s digital public infrastructure. He served as president and chief executive of the National e-Governance Division, managing director and chief executive of Digital India Corporation, chief executive of Karmayogi Bharat, and chief executive of MyGov between 2019 and 2024. Before that, from 2014 to 2017, he was executive director at the Food Corporation of India, where he handled information technology, engineering, storage and, additionally, the North Zone operations and the role of chief vigilance officer.
His field credentials are equally robust. Singh has served in both Nagaland and Uttar Pradesh across multiple tenures, navigating law and order, floods, droughts and communal tensions with equal measure. As principal secretary to the chief minister of Nagaland between 2017 and 2019, he also held charge of urban development, personnel and administrative reforms, and, in 2018, home commissioner. At the grassroots, he built roads, irrigation systems, schools and hospitals, and drove welfare programmes focused on poverty alleviation, education and healthcare.
Singh has also worked alongside international agencies including DFID, UNICEF and WHO, contributing to the Child’s Environment Project in Budaun and the Pulse Polio Eradication Programme in Uttar Pradesh. He has conducted elections at the parliamentary, state assembly and local body levels.
Academically, he is no slouch either. Singh holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Mason Fellow, and completed his B.Tech and M.Tech from IIT Kanpur.
Meanwhile, the broader bureaucratic reshuffle sees Bihar cadre IAS officer Chanchal Kumar named the new secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Rohit Kansal of the UT cadre moves to the Rural Development Ministry as special secretary, while IAS officer Vikram Yadav has been appointed director general of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The outgoing I&B secretary has been reassigned as secretary in the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region.
The NTA needed someone who could rewire both its credibility and its systems. Singh has spent a career doing exactly that.
