After the abrupt collapse of the Paramount/Skydance merger earlier this week, Puck News’ Matt Belloni interviewed LightShed’s Rich Greenfield on The Town Podcast. They discussed why Shari Redstone/National Amusements’ likely walked away from the Skydance transaction, how the Presidential Election could enable far more buyers for all or parts of Paramount, who could be Paramount’s…
Yesterday, moments before the Paramount special committee of independent board members was set to vote to approve the Skydance transaction, Shari Redstone, who controls National Amusements and in turn, Paramount, called in to say she was terminating discussions with Skydance. Immediately, we heard industry execs and investors calling her crazy and many other unspeakables for…
The pace at which companies have integrated AI into applications and devices has been impressive and only scratches the surface of what is possible. AI is showing up everywhere. It has become table stakes in the connected device market and an obvious output of market competition. Apple joined that club yesterday, not necessarily wowing us,…
We reduced our Cogent price target to $45 from $60 and maintain our Sell rating. We do not believe it can hit its 2028 EBITDA target of $500 million. We believe Cogent’s long-term revenue growth is 5%. This is at the low-end of the company’s 5-7% long-term growth target. Interestingly, we are not below consensus in…
Since late April (link), Skydance and its affiliates have agreed to increase the secondary cash component of their proposed merger transaction with Paramount from ~$2 billion to ~$4 billion. Paramount Class B shareholders will be able to elect for cash at $15/share vs. new stock, up to cash cap of $4 billion, which equates to…
As multiple media outlets have reported (SBJ, link), official bids for NBA media rights are expected to be made in the coming days by Disney/ESPN, Comcast/NBC and Amazon, with the AAV of the deals rising from $2.7 billion to $7.3 billion (nearly 3x). The NBA Board of Governors must then vote to formally approve the…
In the linear TV world, bundling TV networks together enabled consumers to have a one-stop destination for all genres of content, with the MVPD/vMVPD user interface enabling a single access point and interface for all forms of content and, over time, enabled search that spanned all available content (not to mention a single destination/UI for…
Last week, Snap hosted its first ever Direct Response Summit, for performance marketers who are using or looking to use Snap. While we only have a short clip of what was said (see the video in the tweet embedded to the right), it is notable that Snap hosted the event in the first place and…
In the midst of last week’s TV upfronts, where the excitement has shifted from linear TV to streaming TV (most notably YouTube, Amazon and Netflix), Puck News’ Matt Belloni interviewed LightShed’s Rich Greenfield. We discussed who “won” upfront week, took a deep dive into Netflix’s rapidly growing advertising ambitions, why Comcast wants to overpay to…
We expect Skydance’s exclusive negotiating window with Paramount to expire tonight without an agreement. While Skydance could come back later in 2024 or next year, we sense National Amusements sees too many legal headaches with proceeding, given the special committee’s view of the proposed transaction. While investors will immediately expect National Amusements/Paramount to embrace the…
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