Entertainment Audience Research Association
Best practice is behind us.
Next Practice is an association for entertainment researchers working the questions that don’t have answers yet. AI in the workflow, fraud in the data, what a report even is now. Worked out together, ahead of the industry, instead of alone inside it.
The field is rebuilding itself one company at a time.
Every research team in entertainment is confronting the same questions this year, separately. The same tools piloted, the same failures hit, the same legal fights fought, and none of the results compared. The methods that carried this profession for forty years are being rewritten right now, and mostly in isolation.
Which tools hold up in real research work and which fell apart in week three, and what it took to get legal and leadership comfortable. Failures discussed as openly as wins. That’s the half nobody publishes, and the half that saves you a quarter.
In parallel, at five companies, and none of them know about the other four. Seeing how five researchers approached the same open question is worth more than any single answer to it.
What one member figures out in March is what another member needs in October. A field that compares its results moves faster than a thousand teams that don’t.
The questions on the table.
No settled answers. That’s why they’re on the table. When one gets settled, it comes off.
Fraud is an industry now: brokered identities, device farms, completes resold between panels. What does a defensible sample look like when the other side is a business?
Your sample source changed three times this year and your tracker did not. When is a break in the trend the data, and when is it the world?
Synthetic respondents are cheap, fast, and confident. When are they right, and how would you tell?
Your team can build its own research tools now, and building turns out to be the easy part. Who maintains the tool, who fixes it when it breaks, and what keeps legal, privacy, and procurement comfortable once it’s live?
Playtests and communities now run on servers your company owns. Everyone moderates differently and no two runs compare. What should a standard run look like?
Good respondents get scarcer and more expensive every year. What replaces the survey when the survey stops paying for itself?
Your team is expected to cover more ground with fewer people. What work should stop?
Your CMO just asked why they need a research team when they have GPT. What’s the answer?
If at least two of these are live at your company, you already belong here.
What this is, and what it isn’t.
The second list is why the first one works. People say what’s actually happening because they know what can’t happen here.
- Researchers in film, TV, streaming, music, and games, working the open problems of the profession together
- Real experience with new tools and methods, including the ones that didn’t work
- Practical help navigating privacy, legal review, and internal approval
- A record of what the field has tried, so nobody relearns it from zero
- A standing group that moves with you through job changes
- A place to exchange competitive or confidential information
- A vendor showcase or a lead-generation channel
- A forum where anyone speaks for their employer
- A training course, a keynote, or a standards committee: nothing here is doctrine, and no one audits your methods
- A research site: nothing here is citable, even anonymized
Four places this happens.
The monthly call is the spine. The rest is what makes it a field rather than a meeting.
The monthly session
Virtual session, poll results, one prepared topic, then open floor.
The rules, restated in thirty seconds. Every time.
Sent five days ahead, anonymous, reported in aggregate. We open on the surprises.
One open question, one member who’s been inside it, twenty-five minutes: what was tried, what held, what broke.
Unstructured, and the reason the rest exists. Nothing recorded, no AI notetakers.
Whatever needs more time carries into Discord, where it stays.
A different city each time
Attached to conferences you’re already attending, so it costs you a dinner rather than a flight. The quarter’s in-person replaces that month’s call.
Between the sessions
Where the day-to-day help actually happens: a question at 4pm on a Tuesday, a link, a warning about a tool. History stays put, so what the group works out stays searchable months later.
The quarterly field report
One open question a quarter: what’s been tried across the membership, what held up, what didn’t, published under the association’s name. Versioned, and expected to be revised, because the answers move. Take it into the room where the decision gets made and let it make the case for you.
The roster will be public. As roles, not names.
Once the founding cohort is seated, this page will show who’s in the room: discipline, segment, level, years. Never names, never employers. Right now the seats are being filled.
You join. Not your company.
Membership is individual and portable. It moves with you between jobs, and you keep it while you’re looking for the next one.
Who can join
Open to individuals whose primary work is research, insights, or analytics in entertainment: film, television, streaming, music, or games. Academics and educators in the field are welcome, at every level and every level of AI experience.
One hard rule. If any part of your pay depends on winning or keeping client accounts, you can’t be a member. A room stops being useful the moment someone in it is selling, and how you get paid is the only reliable test.
Vendor-side people in non-revenue roles are admitted case by case. Board seats are disclosed individually.
Sign in with LinkedIn
Confirms you’re a real person with a real career. Five short questions after that.
By the board
Two questions: do you do this work, and are you free to speak without selling.
Sign, then the invite
You sign the member agreement and your Discord invite follows when the cohort seats.
What every member agrees to.
The rules are what make honesty cheap. People report what actually happened, including what failed, because nothing here follows them out of the room.
Four commitments, covering the calls, the in-person meetings, and the server. The signed member agreement carries the same commitments with the enforcement details.
On the Discord archive. Live conversation leaves no trace on purpose. That’s what lets people speak freely in the moment. Writing is different: you know it persists as you type it. So Discord history is kept, because what the group works out in March is worth more in October. What’s restricted is where it travels, not whether it’s kept.
Member-led, accountable by name.
The board sets the calendar, reviews applications, and safeguards the rules. Every seat publishes its name, affiliation, and conflict disclosures before public applications open, and admissions are decided by a non-vendor majority.
Next Practice is a program of the Entertainment Audience Research Association.
The founding cohort is forming.
Applying puts you on the interest list, ahead of the first session on 12 November. Reviewed by the board within a week.
Start with LinkedIn
Signing in confirms you’re a real person with a real career, and saves you retyping your name and email. We read your name, email, and photo, nothing else, and we never post.
- 1Sign in, about ten seconds
- 2Five questions, roughly a minute
- 3Board reviews within a week, then your Discord invite
The founding cohort sets the first year’s questions.
to open the application