Earlier today, Sinclair announced it had reached a new affiliation agreement with YouTube TV (link to press release), but the agreement is the most unusual agreement we have ever seen. After YouTube TV threatened to drop all of the Sinclair Diamond Sports Group RSNs last week (link), today’s agreement leaves off the RSNs in New…
T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint provides it with the mid-band spectrum it needs to become the 5G leader in the United States. We believe T-Mobile will ultimately execute on this opportunity, but the integration of Sprint, clean-up of the 2.5 GHz spectrum, and changing management team could create a bumpy ride over the next six months.…
UPDATED ON MARCH 24, 2020 to include the period from March 4-March 23 (new section added at bottom of this blog) If you spend time listening to legacy media executives, one would believe that most of the content being consumed on Netflix is high-profile, legacy media-owned library content and as they reclaim that content for…
AT&T has rolled out AT&T TV nationwide, an IP-delivered multichannel video service, vMVPD, that requires proprietary hardware (link). At first glance, you might think AT&T TV is AT&T’s version of Comcast’s Flex product, but it is actually quite different. Flex is effectively a streaming box for cord-cutters within Comcast’s wired footprint that Comcast recently stated…
Activist investor Elliott Management is seeking the removal of Jack Dorsey as CEO of Twitter with the nomination of four new directors to the Board. Twitter has three directors up for re-election (including Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani, along with board members Ngozo Okonjo-Iweala and Bret Taylor) and lost one director mid-last year with the departure…
Earlier this week, an RSN owner, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, finally admitted publicly what we already knew: the ONLY viable RSN economic model is to force everyone who takes multichannel television to pay an exorbitant price/sub/month to subsidize the TINY minority of fans that want to watch the channel; essentially forcing subscribers to subsidize how…
We were wrong (watch CNBC clip), as we believed Kevin Mayer would succeed Disney Chairman and CEO, Bob Iger, and instead Bob Chapek was elevated to CEO yesterday. There is no disputing that Chapek is an extremely talented operator who has proven his ability to execute across three of Disney’s complex global business units (Parks,…
Back in January 2019, just after Viacom acquired Pluto TV, we published The Rise of Free TV aka Cable TV Without The Bills, where we stated: “While trying to compete head-on with Netflix in SVOD is a fool’s errand, the shift to Internet-delivered television creates another opportunity to reach consumers: AVOD or advertising-supported video-on-demand. While the value…
We recently read Professor Scott Galloway‘s take on the streaming wars called, “Bezosland,” which you can read here. After reading Galloway’s thought piece and conclusions, we conclude he does not really understand the streaming media world he wrote about. Honestly, it feels like he is working too hard to find a narrative to force regulators…
We are initiating on Live Nation with a BUY rating and a $100 Price Target based on 19.5x 2021 AOI of $1.3bn. TMT investing is becoming more treacherous by the day, whether from rapidly changing consumer behavior, rising competition and/or increased regulatory scrutiny. However, Live Nation has become a safe haven, which has years of…
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