With summer 2022 now in the rearview mirror, we thought it would be useful to lay out the 11 topics/issues we are thinking about. From the collapse of linear TV to why Comcast is so desperate to buy something, is Disney+ pricing aggressive or a bundling ploy, how Netflix and Disney’s advertising plans differ, Zuckerberg’s…
There was a lot of news yesterday from Apple, T-Mobile, Cogent and Kabletown. Here’s an attempt at some quick takes. iPhone promotions eSIM only First Band 70 Device Satellite Connectivity As expected, Apple added satellite connectivity to the iPhone. Its functionality is more limited than we thought as an emergency only service. This is different…
With media attention that only Elon Musk can attract, T-Mobile and SpaceX announced “a plan” to deploy a sliver of T-Mobile’s spectrum on future launches of Generation 2 Starlink satellites. If approved by the FCC, it might initially “provide near complete coverage in most places in the US” every 30 minutes. We discuss some implications.…
The more things change in legacy media, the more they stay the same. After HBO Now launched under Jeff Bewkes’ reign atop Time Warner, he was forced to make strategic trade-offs to bolster EBITDA in hopes of selling the company before the core cable network business entered secular decline (it worked). HBO Now transformed into…
“Houston we have a problem” from the Apollo 13 successful failed mission in 1970 (and the 1995 movie) reminds us that NASA astronauts are trained and prepare extensively for worst case scenarios, whereas legacy media executives have not even acknowledged the dangerous situation they are entering, let alone operationally prepared to take evasive action as…
I know the LightShed mantra is to not publish Earnings previews or reviews, but the move in AT&T’s stock today compelled us to provide our views on the free cash flow debate. We believe AT&T’s stock was down today primarily on bad forecasting of its working capital. Yes, we needed to cut our estimates on…
Here are our 12 key questions for Netflix management on tonight’s Q2 2022 earnings interview (our Q1 2022 questions can be found here). 1) Does Netflix have a content quality control issue? Kim Masters recently wrote an article (link) that shed light on the internal tension between content quality control and driving content scale. Do you…
Last week, Puck News’ Matt Belloni interviewed us on The Town podcast to discuss the state of the streaming wars as investors appear to have given up on the entire sector, the importance of time spent vs. subs as advertising grows in importance (see today’s time spent blog post, link), why Microsoft makes sense as an ad partner for Netflix, whether legacy media will slow streaming investment in a recession, why Disney should sell Hulu to Comcast, the SkyDance threat to Disney’s animation prowess and what happens if Apple TV+ wins Sunday Ticket.
In the linear TV world, consumers were essentially stuck in a walled-garden of broadcast and cable networks. Channel surfing led to consumers stumbling on programming and getting lost in the world of linear TV. At its peak, over 100 million households were subscribing to a multichannel bundle of TV channels and watching 5+ hours/day/person, generating…
For most of its life, HBO was a wholesaler, offering its content to MVPDs, who then sold it in packages or a la carte to consumers as a premium add-on to their multichannel bundle. HBO also monetized its library by selling/renting its original content directly to consumers via DVDs. In late 2014, HBO struck a…
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