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Media Companies Are Ready to Sell. Does Anyone Want to Buy?

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What are these media companies doing that costs so much?

Storytelling isn't as complicated as it might seem:
www.bbc.com

Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots

Researchers analysed over 1700 novels to reveal six story types – but can they be applied to our most-loved tales? Miriam Quick takes a look.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

The media companies tell "new" stories, maintain an archive of their older stories (movie and TV [actual] film), videotape etc. and make their stories available as movies, linear TV (maybe also as part of a video game) and/or on streaming services.

How can they get in so much debt?


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
What are these media companies doing that costs so much?

Storytelling isn't as complicated as it might seem:
www.bbc.com

Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots

Researchers analysed over 1700 novels to reveal six story types – but can they be applied to our most-loved tales? Miriam Quick takes a look.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

The media companies tell "new" stories, maintain an archive of their older stories (movie and TV [actual] film), videotape etc. and make their stories available as movies, linear TV (maybe also as part of a video game) and/or on streaming services.

How can they get in so much debt?


Kirk Bayne
Click to expand...
Losing a billion dollars a year for three or four years straight on their streaming platform is a significant factor.
 
kfbkfb said:
What are these media companies doing that costs so much?

Storytelling isn't as complicated as it might seem:
www.bbc.com

Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots

Researchers analysed over 1700 novels to reveal six story types – but can they be applied to our most-loved tales? Miriam Quick takes a look.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
Click to expand...

Paramount spent $291 million just to make the latest "Mission: Impossible" movie. When it underperformed at the box office this summer, the estimated loss was $100 million.

For one movie.

Put that together with quarter-billion dollar losses from Paramount+ every quarter for three years, and sooner or later you're talking real money.
 
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michael hagerty said:
Paramount spent $291 million just to make the latest "Mission: Impossible" movie. When it underperformed at the box office this summer, the estimated loss was $100 million.

For one movie.

Put that together with quarter-billion dollar losses from Paramount+ every quarter for three years, and sooner or later you're talking real money.
Click to expand...
That the only "solution" supposedly being considered is to merge into another massive blob of a conglomerate guilty of doing the same thing (when they don't just kill projects outright and lock away completed movies for insurance payouts) is the height of lunacy.
 
Nathan Obral said:
That the only "solution" supposedly being considered is to merge into another massive blob of a conglomerate guilty of doing the same thing (when they don't just kill projects outright and lock away completed movies for insurance payouts) is the height of lunacy.
Click to expand...

Except "merge" is the wrong word here. It's the polite term, but this would be WBD swallowing Paramount. And those moves at WBD now have Max in the black (Under David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Streaming Profit Is Surging).

So Paramount+, a dead streamer walking, gets absorbed, Warners gets the not-insignificant Paramount film library and franchises (Theatrical Library | Paramount Pictures) as well as its film and television production resources and if CBS is part of the deal, there's the synergy between CBS News and CNN.
 
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michael hagerty said:
Except "merge" is the wrong word here. It's the polite term, but this would be WBD swallowing Paramount. And those moves at WBD now have Max in the black. So Paramount+, a dead streamer walking, gets absorbed, Warners gets the not-insignificant Paramount film library and franchises (Theatrical Library | Paramount Pictures) and if CBS is part of the deal, there's the synergy between CBS News and CNN.
Click to expand...
Any defense of David Zaslav, who is overtly anti-creator, anti-consumer and helped to prolong the labor stoppages with his anti-union rhetoric, just rings hollow. Plus they are still drowning in debt and have a flagging stock price just like Paramount, so what good did that really do?

Removing another motion picture studio from the scene** and massive bloodletting at CBS News is itself a massive turn-off. This doesn't benefit the consumer at all, in fact, it benefits no one but Zaslav's already bloated salary and golden parachute.

**Or selling Paramount to Skydance because Zaslav can't keep his own rumors he engineered to Axios and his friends at THR and Variety and everywhere else straight.
 
Nathan Obral said:
Any defense of David Zaslav, who is overtly anti-creator, anti-consumer and helped to prolong the labor stoppages with his anti-union rhetoric, just rings hollow. Plus they are still drowning in debt and have a flagging stock price.
Click to expand...

Not defending him. Facts are facts. It's profitable. A lot of terrible people have been very successful in business.

Nathan Obral said:
Removing another motion picture studio from the scene** and massive bloodletting at CBS News is itself a massive turn-off. This doesn't benefit the consumer at all, in fact, it benefits no one but Zaslav's already bloated salary and golden parachute.

**Or selling Paramount to Skydance because Zaslav can't keep his own rumors he engineered to Axios and his friends at THR straight.
Click to expand...

One of the key elements in being factual (and thus, not embarrassed later) is to keep personal antipathies out of writing.

Skydance surfaced as a possiblity more than a week ago (the article was posted in this thread), with that talk coming from inside Paramount, not WBD.
 
michael hagerty said:
Not defending him. Facts are facts. It's profitable. A lot of terrible people have been very successful in business.
Click to expand...
Max is profitable but, along with Discovery+ (which still exists for some unknown reason) has one of the worst churn rates in the entire industry outside of Starz:
1703169665602.png
Zaslav was lucky. If it wasn't for the Barbie movie (inherited largely from AT&T), the year overall would have been disastrous for WBD, highlighted by unprecedented dual strikes and Ezra Miller's Flash bombing (making less than $270M against a $200M~ budget).
michael hagerty said:
Skydance surfaced as a possiblity more than a week ago (the article was posted in this thread), with that talk coming from inside Paramount, not WBD.
Click to expand...
The problem with Skydance is that they don't want anything but the movie studio. WBD wants Paramount Global but they obviously can't keep the namesake property. And with this current regulatory environment and lack of any real reason why this benefits the consumer, CBS will likely be ordered to be spun off (for sake of discussion, let's say to Nexstar, which has been interested in one of the Big Four).

I fail to see how WBD keeps anything but ... Paramount's cable channels? In a cord-cutting environment?
 
TheBigA said:
It happens. Occupational hazard.
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What part of killing off CBS News and merging it into CNN benefits the consumer? These two companies need to lay out an actual argument for such a merger, and there's nothing but two buns and no beef in-between. Thus, it is doomed from the get-go.
 
Nathan Obral said:
What part of killing off CBS News and merging it into CNN benefits the consumer? These two companies need to lay out an actual argument for such a merger, and there's nothing but two buns and no beef in-between. Thus, it is doomed from the get-go.
Click to expand...

One could say the same thing about ABC Sports and ESPN. There's been an agreement between CBS News and CNN for years. It's how you see Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. News is expensive, and the only way for profit-making companies to continue to cover stories with independence is to find economies where they can. You can't force a company to lose money. The alternative is it simply goes out of business. How does that benefit the consumer?
 
TheBigA said:
One could say the same thing about ABC Sports and ESPN. There's been an agreement between CBS News and CNN for years. It's how you see Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. News is expensive, and the only way for profit-making companies to continue to cover stories with independence is to find economies where they can.
Click to expand...
So fewer resources, fewer employees on fewer platforms while Zaslav's massive and undeserved salary is unchanged? Again, how the consumer benefit here?
TheBigA said:
You can't force a company to lose money. The alternative is it simply goes out of business. How does that benefit the consumer?
Click to expand...
CBS is still very valuable on its own and would be snapped up by Nexstar in a heartbeat. It is no secret that Nexstar wants a second network to add to the CW and bolster their existing profile. That the alternative to a bad deal like this is "going out of business" strains the imagination.
 
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