For years we have been speculating about the Vince McMahon succession plan. When it finally did come last summer, it was neatly packaged. Despite the circumstances surrounding Vince’s departure, the company would remain a (public) family business. Stephanie McMahon would take over as the chairperson of the board and as co-CEO. Her husband, Paul Levesque,…
Happy New Year. We are kicking off LightShed’s TMT coverage in the new year by laying out our top predictions and events to watch for in 2023 – what we call our #Top23for23. To see what we got right and wrong in last year’s Top 22 list for 2022, click here. As we made our predictions for 2022, we…
As usual, our most read post of the year was the first post of the year: the LightShed Team’s predictions for the year ahead. Topics that drove the most interest included whether it was a mistake for legacy media to enter into the streaming wars vs. remaining arms dealers, the dramatic slowdown in sub growth…
Not much can surprise us anymore in American politics. However, we have been taken aback by the Biden administration’s antitrust tact over the past several weeks. Both the DOJ and FTC have cast a cloud of regulatory uncertainty around current (and completed) deals that defy US precedent (and look more like a European approach). In…
The departure of Verizon Consumer Group CEO, Manon Brouillette, buys some time for CEO Hans Vestberg to find more revenue growth. However, it’s hard to see how more market segmentation, new promotions, fixed wireless or even price increases will be enough to reach Vestberg’s long-term revenue growth targets. Verizon’s stock is down 30% this year,…
Warner Bros. Discovery announced (link) an agreement between HBO Max and Amazon’s Prime Video Channels yesterday: “Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon today announced that HBO Max is once again available on Prime Video Channels in the U.S.” Later in the day, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took to Twitter to express his enthusiasm for HBO Max’s return to Amazon Prime Video Channels. Technically, both public statements are incorrect. HBO Max has never been on Amazon Prime Video Channels. In turn…
At the September 2022 Code Conference, we asked Bob Iger, then-former Disney CEO, what legacy media companies can do as the broadcast and cable network businesses enter secular decline. He responded: “That’s [the cable networks and broadcast business entering secular decline] why everybody’s anxious. That’s why I call it the age of great anxiety because…
We asked Liberty’s Dr. John Malone at Liberty’s 2022 Investor Day yesterday, why he remains confident in Warner Bros. Discovery given investor fear it is effectively an LBO gone bad, as the legacy media sector faces the double-whammy of secular (affiliate fee) headwinds and a cyclical economic (advertising) downturn. Malone responded stating: “Well, I think…
Netflix’s ad tier went live in the US at noon EST yesterday, with the announcement on Netflix’s Twitter account embedded to the right. The Netflix homepage updated at the same time (as shown in the screenshot embedded at the top of this post), with the new wording: “Plans now start at $6.99.” When you click to sign up, you are presented with…
Everything Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ create flows to their direct-to-consumer streaming services, with the only question being whether movies have a short stop in theaters before streaming. None sell content to third parties. Disney is similar to their tech peers in keeping everything for internal exploitation, albeit with the additional complexity of deciding…
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