The Sprint/T-Mobile merger agreement will expire on November 1st unless the companies agree to extend the date. We believe T-Mobile should use the expiration of the merger agreement to renegotiate terms with Sprint rather than extend it. T-Mobile already incurred costly concessions to obtain DOJ approval and Sprint’s business is eroding faster than expected. Now…
Week one of the Fall 2019 TV season demonstrated that the concept of linear, live TV for entertainment programming is fading at an alarming rate (link to premiere week ratings drops), with the scariest line in Variety’s recap of week one’s winners and losers (link): Loser: All the new shows Note: Fox was the only…
Last Friday, Netflix Founder and CEO, Reed Hastings, was interviewed at the RTS Cambridge Convention (entire 30-minute interview embedded below with key highlights and timestamps). Press reports out of the event spooked Netflix investors, particularly after disappointing Q2 2019 subscriber results. Hastings talked to “a whole new world” of competition starting in November 2019 (Disney+…
Clay Travis (@claytravis) from OutKicktheCoverage invited us to join him on his podcast, Wins & Losses, yesterday to discuss the future of media, with a focus on where sports media is headed. The 70-minute podcast is embedded below and you can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or the podcast platform of your choice. Our wide-ranging discussion…
Promotional activity by wireless operators plays an important role in smartphone sales. Unfortunately for Apple, operators have spent the last eight years tightening upgrade policies and pulling back on device promotions, which we believe has contributed to the lengthening of the smartphone replacement cycle. However, this year, there are some early signs that operator promotions…
Fostering creativity is one of the most important aspects of building a successful entertainment company. Whenever we think about fostering a creative culture, we think of the following wisdom from former HBO CEO Richard Plepler: Create an environment where the painters want to paint While there is no arguing that Plepler was amazing at fostering…
A few years ago, Comcast executives were openly talking about video subscriber “growth” benefiting from their investment in the industry-leading X1 platform/technology (link). By 2018, the strategy had shifted to a focus on “profitable” video subscribers (link), calling themselves a connectivity company and fully integrating third-party video apps such as Netflix into their set-top boxes…
Summer 2019 is over and team LightShed has emerged from our two-month hiatus (read about our transition, here). We have had plenty of time to take a step back and reevaluate the state of the TMT world. We are excited to finally share some of our thoughts. We look at the broad TMT landscape using…
Welcome to LightShed Partners. While today is day one for our new venture (press release, link), you will find that not much has changed. Our founding team has been largely together for well over a decade. You know each of our partner’s personalities well – from Rich’s colorful “dog on a bone” persona, to Walt’s…
Technology, Media and Telecom Analysts Richard Greenfield, Walter Piecyk and Brandon Ross Join Together to Form Independent Research Firm, LightShed Partners NEW YORK, September 10, 2019 — LightShed Partners (“LightShed”), a new technology, media and telecommunications (“TMT”) independent research firm, today launches a tiered subscription research business to bring institutional investors thought-leading, thematic research analyzing…
You must be logged in to post a comment.