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…
Earlier this week, a podcast interview of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was released. The podcast was recorded in mid-September 2022. Key highlights from the 50-minute interview are included below with timestamps followed by our reaction to each (entire podcast is embedded below). Listening to the interview it is hard not to walk away…
Here are our 10 key questions for Netflix management on tonight’s Q3 2022 earnings interview (our Q2 2022 questions can be found here). 1) Is Your Approach to Advertising Primitive on Purpose? Your advertising announcement feels like a scale play similar to broadcast TV, with targeting limited to genre and location. Prior to launching your advertising…
This past Monday, Elon Musk sent Twitter a letter (link) offering to buy the company at $54.20/share, which is the exact same price he originally offered in April 2022. As we detailed back in September (link), Musk’s bot-controversy was never a material event that enabled him to get out of his original acquisition agreement with…
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