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Media Companies Are Ready to Sell. Does Anyone Want to Buy?
- Thread starter davideduardo
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Most mergers are not monstrousities and regulatory nightmares like the ones proposed in that THR story.
It's also not my problem if she's f***ed. She brought these problems on herself.
But wouldn't buying/merging other tech companies be considered growing the tech company? Facebook acquired something like 91 companies and rolled them all under Meta(tm). Most notable are: Instagram, Friendfeed, Threadsy, WhatsApp, TheFind, and Twistedpixel Games.
But how did WB manage to avoid that?
Meta even launched Threads using the Instagram infrastructure!
Oh, well, this is only the third time I've had to say this, so I'll call it a win---they cut costs.
How Warner Bros. Discovery’s Cost-Cutting Will Affect its Content Strategy | 3Vision
In this insight, we take a look at how Warner Bros. Discovery have adjusted their strategy and what their activity looks like now including their stable but expected reduction in commissions, investment in reliable IP, and shifting approach to...
www.3vision.tv
They didn't. AT&T mismanagement grossly overspent on streaming product with little to no return on investment.
I guess that makes sense. I was thinking CBS in 2019 wanted to re-merge with Viacom to launch a streaming platform with the content, since everyone else was. Perhaps they thought their linear assets would be more of treasure.Oh, well, this is only the third time I've had to say this, so I'll call it a win---they cut costs.
How Warner Bros. Discovery’s Cost-Cutting Will Affect its Content Strategy | 3Vision
In this insight, we take a look at how Warner Bros. Discovery have adjusted their strategy and what their activity looks like now including their stable but expected reduction in commissions, investment in reliable IP, and shifting approach to...
CBS and Viacom are merging... but they’re still not big enough to compete with Netflix, Apple, or Disney
Combining TV programming like NCIS, The Daily Show, and Billions under one company isn’t enough in 2019 to compete with other big media companies.
www.vox.com
"But that’s not enough in 2019. The next step for Redstone, according to people who work for her: trying to find other companies to merge with her newly merged company...while a combined CBS and Viacom is bigger, it won’t be nearly big enough to compete with the really big video companies. "
So apparently, she was trying to merge with someone else again and even in 2019 acknowledged it would not be big enough to compete.
Heard this on the radio this morning. Subscription cancellations at various video streaming services increased.
www.yahoo.com
More people are canceling their streaming services as companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Disney hike prices
Streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video have been hiking prices. And subscription cancelations are also on the rise.
Pretty much from day one, larger publicly traded companies are always keeping their eye on potential acquisitions or merger opportunities whether they eat, or are eaten. Most of the scanning and potential discussions are purely informational or informal and likely never come to fruition.
That's just the way business works.
Heard this on the radio this morning. Subscription cancellations at various video streaming services increased.
More people are canceling their streaming services as companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Disney hike prices
Streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video have been hiking prices. And subscription cancelations are also on the rise.
Yeah, but a 6.3% churn rate isn't epic. Stand the figure on its head---93.7% of streaming customers stayed put in November.
And it's important to note that unlike, say, SiriusXM, where a cancellation usually is a cancellation ("I don't need this"), a chunk of these cancellations are people like me starting to be a bit wiser with our bucks and only paying for the streamers we're actively watching---open to and in some cases expecting to re-subscribe when the next seasons of the shows we care about drop.
Exactly.
In fact, attaining scale through mergers and acquisitions before diving into the streaming pool would have been the better move for Paramount, NBCUniversal, Warners, Disney and Apple (if Apple wanted to be a major rather than a boutique---which early on, they signaled they did).
They were going up against already-established Amazon, Netflix and Hulu (and Hulu, by that point, was either going to be wholly-owned by FOX or Disney---the only question was which).
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Okay, but it's still a 6.3% loss of customers, and it apparently is increasing. And the article stated that 24% of customers cancelled at least two services over the past year. That's a lot of streaming consumers ditching a service.
Maybe the churn is built into the business plan. But if streaming services are beginning to struggle with profitability, I can't see how an average 6.3% loss of customers is a positive, especially when the 'churn' seems to be increasing.
I always find those types of articles interesting. A few times I saw pieces like the one Boombox posted - That had a headline about how all the streaming services across the board have or are raising their prices, that they're all having a tough go of it, or having to merge or package with other streamers or dropping their streaming services completely, or experiencing a mass exodus of customers, etc. While some of those articles were interesting and solidly written and I have sometimes posted them on Radio Discussions as I thought they'd be of interest here, in most cases I found that the headline didn't represent the facts and information in the actual article, that the headline and in some cases the article was sensationalism rather than well-researched and objectively written, or it was so slanted or subjective that it couldn't really be taken seriously.
What the article doesn't tell you is whether it's a net loss of customers or made up for with new subscribers. It's just a cancellation rate minus context.
But not any one service---all of them, at different points over the year, with no accounting as to how many came back.
I contributed to that statistic. Hell, I probably skewed it high. Last year, I cancelled:
- Disney+ (grandkids moved 2,500 miles away---I got it when they premiered "Hamilton" and kept it because I figured the kids would be at our house a lot.)
- Hulu (finished Season 5 of "What We Do In The Shadows". We'll be back when Season 6 drops.)
- Peacock (finished Season 1 of "Poker Face". We'll be back when Season 2 drops.)
- Paramount+ (finished Season 2 of "Yellowjackets". We'll be back when Season 3 drops.)
- AMC+ (finished Season 1 of "Cooper's Bar", which is moving to another platform. "Better Call Saul" ended. Will renew for "Dark Winds", but after we finish some stuff on other platforms.)
- Starz (finished Season 2 of "Shining Vale" and they've cancelled it and removed it from the platform. That would land them on my FTG list, but "Party Down" Season 4 will probably drop this fall and I'll be back.)
That's six platforms. Disney+ is the only one I wouldn't be likely to renew, except it and Hulu are going to be one platform this year, and I'll go back to Hulu.
We're actively watching shows on Netflix, Amazon and Max. As long as we are, I'll keep those subscriptions. Even if we weren't actively watching anything on Amazon, it comes with our Prime membership).
We're not actively watching anything on Apple+ at the moment, but my Apple One bundle (Music, TV and storage) makes it make sense to keep while waiting for new seasons of "The Morning Show", "Severance" and "Schmigadoon!". There's also a rumored new season of "Big Little Lies".
Streaming services aren't "beginning" to struggle with profitability. Amazon, Netflix and Hulu are all profitable and have been. Every other major has been in the red since day one and only Max has fixed that and become profitable via some very aggressive cuts.
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What you're witnessing is the free market at work. Want to sign up for Peacock for a few months for Big Ten football and cancel thereafter? Or Paramount+ to binge watch one specific Star Trek show for one month? Or Disney+ just to watch Loki and then cancel after a month? Now you can!Heard this on the radio this morning. Subscription cancellations at various video streaming services increased.
More people are canceling their streaming services as companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Disney hike prices
Streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video have been hiking prices. And subscription cancelations are also on the rise.
Unless streamers remove the option of cancelling after one month, which is ridiculously counterproductive, the churn issue will never go away and be just a fact of life. Oddly enough, that chart I shared way earlier in this thread showed that Max, Discovery+ and Starz have comically high churn rates while Disney+, Hulu and Paramount+ are quite stable.
That's a great point as compared with the days of cable and satellite plans, whether basic or premium services like HBO, Showtime, etc. Consumers who are paying attention can binge-watch a particular series or pay ala carte for a streaming service, then cancel and sign up again when the next season of a series resumes. You can't do that with cable or satellite. Usually, it's a minimum one or two year commitment to get a lower rate.
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