DIS Shareholders and Stock Info ONLY

[wabbott]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside...the-future-of-hulu-96a7aae6?mod=djemalertNEWS

Inside Disney and Comcast’s Fight Over the Future of Hulu
Parent companies are in final phase of battle marked by legal threats, broken promises and secret arbitration
By Jessica Toonkel and Amol Sharma
May 25, 2023 8:00 am EDT


Late last year, top executives from Disney and Comcast, the co-owners of Hulu, visited a New York law office to give depositions in a dispute over the streaming service, people familiar with the situation said. At issue is Comcast’s claim that Disney, the majority owner, injured Hulu by failing to launch it outside the U.S.

The arbitration case, which the companies haven’t discussed publicly, is part of a larger, multiyear battle between Disney and Comcast over one of the streaming industry’s biggest players, and how to divvy up the spoils of its rise. It has featured claims of broken promises, legal threats and dueling valuations.

Now, the companies must overcome that baggage to strike a deal that would lead to Comcast’s exit from the business. Under an agreement between the companies, starting in 2024, Comcast can require Disney, which owns two-thirds of Hulu, to buy its one-third stake, or Disney can require Comcast to sell.

Both sides want to do a deal, but when each has assessed Hulu’s value in recent years, they have been tens of billions of dollars apart, the people familiar with the situation said. Hulu can be valued no lower than $27.5 billion under the pact between the companies.

Hulu's Ownership Saga​

Control of the streaming pioneer has been complicated since its founding

• 2007​

  Hulu launches, letting cord-cutters stream popular TV

• 2013​

  Hulu’s owners scrap plan to sell company

• 2019​

  Disney gains two-thirds control of Hulu after it acquires Fox assets; an agreement lays out path for Disney to eventually acquire Comcast’s Hulu stake

• 2020​

  Disney opts to use Star brand for international streaming, not Hulu

• 2022​

  Top Comcast and Disney executives are deposed in arbitration case

• 2023​

  Disney CEO Robert Iger says talks to buy out Comcast’s Hulu stake are cordial

Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger said on an earnings call this month that the companies have had cordial discussions and signaled his desire to give consumers a single streaming offering that includes Hulu content. “How that ultimately unfolds is, to some extent, in the hands of Comcast,” he said.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told investors at a conference days later that the “majority case” is that Disney will buy Comcast’s stake. Hulu’s value, he said, should be based on the hypothetical idea that it would be put up for sale in an auction for anyone—including any major media or tech company—to buy it. “The job is to then give us one-third of that value,” he said. “So I think we have a very valuable position.”

In early 2024, each company will do an assessment of Hulu’s value again, and if they are still very far apart, an independent third party will be enlisted to make a determination, people familiar with the matter said.

“These two companies have a long-term, intricate dance of a relationship, and there are a ton of levers that can be pulled to get to a deal,” said Bernard Gershon, a media consultant and former Disney executive.

Each company has its separate streaming ambitions beyond Hulu. Disney launched its flagship service Disney+ in 2019, while Comcast launched its Peacock service in 2020.

As their fight over Hulu plays out, Comcast has stopped funding Hulu, people familiar with Hulu’s finances said. Disney has provided the equivalent of a bridge loan, so that the streamer gets needed cash, they said.

If Comcast and Disney reach a deal on overall ownership of Hulu, they would settle up on the past payments and could resolve the arbitration as part of a wider transaction, the people said.

Even without a deal, Iger is already taking steps to integrate Hulu with a plan to fold its content into Disney+ in the U.S. by the end of the year—by adding a Hulu “tile”—while maintaining a stand-alone Hulu app. The initiative was known within Disney as “Project Hulk,” and has been under way for more than a year, but came as a surprise to top Comcast executives, people familiar with the situation said.

Hulu launched in 2007, and quickly became known for letting cable cord-cutters stream network TV shows the day after they aired on TV. That was possible because it was owned by several big media companies, including the parents of NBC, Fox and ABC.

Today, it streams such shows as ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and Fox’s “The Masked Singer,” original programs including “Only Murders in the Building” and a deep library of TV and movie classics. The service had about 48 million subscribers as of April and is one of the few streaming services to generate a profit in the past few years.

Comcast, which became one of Hulu’s owners when it acquired control of NBCUniversal in 2011, has sometimes differed with the other owners over strategy. In 2013, Hulu considered a sale but scrapped the effort. One reason was that Comcast’s Roberts had assured the other owners, Disney and Fox, that he could make Hulu the nationwide streaming platform for the cable TV industry, which would boost its growth.

Discussions bogged down, and the Comcast partnership never happened. Iger and his team were said to be furious, according to people close to the discussions. In Comcast’s view, a sale of Hulu didn’t make sense at the time because the offers it was fetching were too low, another person familiar with the situation said.

Hulu added subscribers briskly for years but also lost a lot of money—upward of $1.5 billion in fiscal 2018 alone, according to an estimate from SVB MoffettNathanson. That is partly because of how the owners were paid for putting their own content on Hulu. As Hulu grew, the parent companies got larger revenue-sharing payments, according to people familiar with the situation, so they profited at Hulu’s expense. Hulu eventually established a cap on the total amount of revenue that could be shared with owners, the people familiar with Hulu’s finances said.

Fox deal

A key moment in the Disney-Comcast feud came after Disney’s late 2017 announcement that it had agreed to acquire Fox entertainment assets including its one-third Hulu stake. Up until then, when Hulu did major deals to purchase content from any of its owners, it required unanimous approval from voting stakeholders—a way to avoid self-dealing.

On the eve of that merger announcement, Disney and Fox quietly changed Hulu’s governing rules, making it impossible for their minority partner, Comcast, to block major decisions, according to people familiar with the matter. Comcast wasn’t privy to the change because it had agreed to be a silent, nonactive partner in Hulu to secure the U.S. government’s approval of its NBCUniversal acquisition.

For the next few months, Comcast tried to break up the Disney-Fox deal, making its own unsolicited run for the Fox assets. Disney prevailed with a $71.3 billion acquisition deal in June 2018, but the bidding war drove up the cost.

Comcast only learned of the Hulu rule change in September of that year, when the restriction making it a silent partner ended, the people familiar with the matter said. When Comcast found out, it threatened legal action, the people said.

Partly to avoid that potential legal brawl, the companies started talking about how to rework their relationship, at the direction of Roberts and Iger. NBCUniversal’s chief at the time, Jeff Shell, sat down for lunch in Burbank, Calif., with Kevin Mayer, who was then Disney’s top streaming executive, and hashed out the beginnings of a truce, said people familiar with the situation. The eventual agreement, reached in 2019, gave Disney operating control of Hulu and set up the possible sale of Comcast’s stake in 2024.

Comcast agreed to go along with the new governing rules for Hulu with the understanding that Disney would keep aggressively expanding the streaming service, including in international markets, to make it as valuable as possible, said a person familiar with the discussions. Disney’s view is that it never promised that Hulu would launch internationally, people close to the situation said.

In 2020, by which time Bob Chapek had taken over as CEO from Iger, Disney instead decided to use its Star brand—which originated in Asia—for its general-entertainment streaming endeavors overseas, instead of Hulu. Star became a tile within the Disney+ app in certain markets.

That was the genesis of the arbitration dispute. Comcast executives who testified in the matter, including Roberts, Shell and strategy executive Bob Eatroff, argued that Disney hurt Hulu and its value with that decision, people familiar with the arbitration proceedings said. Comcast is seeking damages, some of the people said.

Disney made the case that the company was within its rights to change course, and that launching Hulu’s brand in foreign markets would be too costly, the people said. Mayer and Chapek were among the representatives from Disney’s side.

Mayer left Disney in 2020, while Chapek departed last fall when Iger returned. Shell left NBCUniversal in April.

Peacock’s pull​

Comcast decided to enter the streaming wars on its own, launching the Peacock service in July 2020, as the pandemic was fueling at-home entertainment consumption. Last year, as expanding that service became a bigger priority, Comcast opted to pull NBCUniversal content off Hulu and put it on Peacock, including such popular shows as “The Voice” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Peacock is still small, with 22 million paid subscribers as of the first quarter, compared with 157.8 million for Disney+ and more than 232.5 million for Netflix. It has been adding subscribers at a solid clip, but has also piled up losses, including over $700 million in the most recent quarter.

Comcast contemplated buying Disney out of Hulu instead of the other way around, but a significant concern was whether Comcast would have rights to all of Hulu’s content, much of which is owned by Disney, people close to the company said.

Comcast’s sale of its stake is more likely. In 2021, when all of the major streaming services were still seeing huge subscriber growth, NBCUniversal executives pegged Hulu’s valuation at north of $70 billion, people close to the company said. Disney’s valuation has been tens of billions of dollars lower, they said.

Iger’s plan to add a Hulu tile in Disney+ could further complicate the calculation of Hulu’s value, said some people familiar with the situation.

“There seems to be real value in having general entertainment combined with Disney+,” Iger said on the recent earnings call. “And if, ultimately, Hulu is that solution…we’re bullish about that.”

 

[RivShore]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside...the-future-of-hulu-96a7aae6?mod=djemalertNEWS

Inside Disney and Comcast’s Fight Over the Future of Hulu
Parent companies are in final phase of battle marked by legal threats, broken promises and secret arbitration
By Jessica Toonkel and Amol Sharma
May 25, 2023 8:00 am EDT


Late last year, top executives from Disney and Comcast, the co-owners of Hulu, visited a New York law office to give depositions in a dispute over the streaming service, people familiar with the situation said. At issue is Comcast’s claim that Disney, the majority owner, injured Hulu by failing to launch it outside the U.S.

The arbitration case, which the companies haven’t discussed publicly, is part of a larger, multiyear battle between Disney and Comcast over one of the streaming industry’s biggest players, and how to divvy up the spoils of its rise. It has featured claims of broken promises, legal threats and dueling valuations.

Now, the companies must overcome that baggage to strike a deal that would lead to Comcast’s exit from the business. Under an agreement between the companies, starting in 2024, Comcast can require Disney, which owns two-thirds of Hulu, to buy its one-third stake, or Disney can require Comcast to sell.

Both sides want to do a deal, but when each has assessed Hulu’s value in recent years, they have been tens of billions of dollars apart, the people familiar with the situation said. Hulu can be valued no lower than $27.5 billion under the pact between the companies.

Hulu's Ownership Saga​

Control of the streaming pioneer has been complicated since its founding

• 2007​

  Hulu launches, letting cord-cutters stream popular TV

• 2013​

  Hulu’s owners scrap plan to sell company

• 2019​

  Disney gains two-thirds control of Hulu after it acquires Fox assets; an agreement lays out path for Disney to eventually acquire Comcast’s Hulu stake

• 2020​

  Disney opts to use Star brand for international streaming, not Hulu

• 2022​

  Top Comcast and Disney executives are deposed in arbitration case

• 2023​

  Disney CEO Robert Iger says talks to buy out Comcast’s Hulu stake are cordial

Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger said on an earnings call this month that the companies have had cordial discussions and signaled his desire to give consumers a single streaming offering that includes Hulu content. “How that ultimately unfolds is, to some extent, in the hands of Comcast,” he said.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told investors at a conference days later that the “majority case” is that Disney will buy Comcast’s stake. Hulu’s value, he said, should be based on the hypothetical idea that it would be put up for sale in an auction for anyone—including any major media or tech company—to buy it. “The job is to then give us one-third of that value,” he said. “So I think we have a very valuable position.”

In early 2024, each company will do an assessment of Hulu’s value again, and if they are still very far apart, an independent third party will be enlisted to make a determination, people familiar with the matter said.

“These two companies have a long-term, intricate dance of a relationship, and there are a ton of levers that can be pulled to get to a deal,” said Bernard Gershon, a media consultant and former Disney executive.

Each company has its separate streaming ambitions beyond Hulu. Disney launched its flagship service Disney+ in 2019, while Comcast launched its Peacock service in 2020.

As their fight over Hulu plays out, Comcast has stopped funding Hulu, people familiar with Hulu’s finances said. Disney has provided the equivalent of a bridge loan, so that the streamer gets needed cash, they said.

If Comcast and Disney reach a deal on overall ownership of Hulu, they would settle up on the past payments and could resolve the arbitration as part of a wider transaction, the people said.

Even without a deal, Iger is already taking steps to integrate Hulu with a plan to fold its content into Disney+ in the U.S. by the end of the year—by adding a Hulu “tile”—while maintaining a stand-alone Hulu app. The initiative was known within Disney as “Project Hulk,” and has been under way for more than a year, but came as a surprise to top Comcast executives, people familiar with the situation said.

Hulu launched in 2007, and quickly became known for letting cable cord-cutters stream network TV shows the day after they aired on TV. That was possible because it was owned by several big media companies, including the parents of NBC, Fox and ABC.

Today, it streams such shows as ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and Fox’s “The Masked Singer,” original programs including “Only Murders in the Building” and a deep library of TV and movie classics. The service had about 48 million subscribers as of April and is one of the few streaming services to generate a profit in the past few years.

Comcast, which became one of Hulu’s owners when it acquired control of NBCUniversal in 2011, has sometimes differed with the other owners over strategy. In 2013, Hulu considered a sale but scrapped the effort. One reason was that Comcast’s Roberts had assured the other owners, Disney and Fox, that he could make Hulu the nationwide streaming platform for the cable TV industry, which would boost its growth.

Discussions bogged down, and the Comcast partnership never happened. Iger and his team were said to be furious, according to people close to the discussions. In Comcast’s view, a sale of Hulu didn’t make sense at the time because the offers it was fetching were too low, another person familiar with the situation said.

Hulu added subscribers briskly for years but also lost a lot of money—upward of $1.5 billion in fiscal 2018 alone, according to an estimate from SVB MoffettNathanson. That is partly because of how the owners were paid for putting their own content on Hulu. As Hulu grew, the parent companies got larger revenue-sharing payments, according to people familiar with the situation, so they profited at Hulu’s expense. Hulu eventually established a cap on the total amount of revenue that could be shared with owners, the people familiar with Hulu’s finances said.

Fox deal

A key moment in the Disney-Comcast feud came after Disney’s late 2017 announcement that it had agreed to acquire Fox entertainment assets including its one-third Hulu stake. Up until then, when Hulu did major deals to purchase content from any of its owners, it required unanimous approval from voting stakeholders—a way to avoid self-dealing.

On the eve of that merger announcement, Disney and Fox quietly changed Hulu’s governing rules, making it impossible for their minority partner, Comcast, to block major decisions, according to people familiar with the matter. Comcast wasn’t privy to the change because it had agreed to be a silent, nonactive partner in Hulu to secure the U.S. government’s approval of its NBCUniversal acquisition.

For the next few months, Comcast tried to break up the Disney-Fox deal, making its own unsolicited run for the Fox assets. Disney prevailed with a $71.3 billion acquisition deal in June 2018, but the bidding war drove up the cost.

Comcast only learned of the Hulu rule change in September of that year, when the restriction making it a silent partner ended, the people familiar with the matter said. When Comcast found out, it threatened legal action, the people said.

Partly to avoid that potential legal brawl, the companies started talking about how to rework their relationship, at the direction of Roberts and Iger. NBCUniversal’s chief at the time, Jeff Shell, sat down for lunch in Burbank, Calif., with Kevin Mayer, who was then Disney’s top streaming executive, and hashed out the beginnings of a truce, said people familiar with the situation. The eventual agreement, reached in 2019, gave Disney operating control of Hulu and set up the possible sale of Comcast’s stake in 2024.

Comcast agreed to go along with the new governing rules for Hulu with the understanding that Disney would keep aggressively expanding the streaming service, including in international markets, to make it as valuable as possible, said a person familiar with the discussions. Disney’s view is that it never promised that Hulu would launch internationally, people close to the situation said.

In 2020, by which time Bob Chapek had taken over as CEO from Iger, Disney instead decided to use its Star brand—which originated in Asia—for its general-entertainment streaming endeavors overseas, instead of Hulu. Star became a tile within the Disney+ app in certain markets.

That was the genesis of the arbitration dispute. Comcast executives who testified in the matter, including Roberts, Shell and strategy executive Bob Eatroff, argued that Disney hurt Hulu and its value with that decision, people familiar with the arbitration proceedings said. Comcast is seeking damages, some of the people said.

Disney made the case that the company was within its rights to change course, and that launching Hulu’s brand in foreign markets would be too costly, the people said. Mayer and Chapek were among the representatives from Disney’s side.

Mayer left Disney in 2020, while Chapek departed last fall when Iger returned. Shell left NBCUniversal in April.

Peacock’s pull​

Comcast decided to enter the streaming wars on its own, launching the Peacock service in July 2020, as the pandemic was fueling at-home entertainment consumption. Last year, as expanding that service became a bigger priority, Comcast opted to pull NBCUniversal content off Hulu and put it on Peacock, including such popular shows as “The Voice” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Peacock is still small, with 22 million paid subscribers as of the first quarter, compared with 157.8 million for Disney+ and more than 232.5 million for Netflix. It has been adding subscribers at a solid clip, but has also piled up losses, including over $700 million in the most recent quarter.

Comcast contemplated buying Disney out of Hulu instead of the other way around, but a significant concern was whether Comcast would have rights to all of Hulu’s content, much of which is owned by Disney, people close to the company said.

Comcast’s sale of its stake is more likely. In 2021, when all of the major streaming services were still seeing huge subscriber growth, NBCUniversal executives pegged Hulu’s valuation at north of $70 billion, people close to the company said. Disney’s valuation has been tens of billions of dollars lower, they said.

Iger’s plan to add a Hulu tile in Disney+ could further complicate the calculation of Hulu’s value, said some people familiar with the situation.

“There seems to be real value in having general entertainment combined with Disney+,” Iger said on the recent earnings call. “And if, ultimately, Hulu is that solution…we’re bullish about that.”

Wow, our fearless leader left quite a few messes in his wake before his first retirement, even more surprised he came back to try to clean it up. LOL

We all knew Star going international was Disney's way of not inflating Hulu's value so not surprised there's some court action on that.

But the quandary is and has always been what is Hulu worth without the content? Comcast admits this:

Comcast contemplated buying Disney out of Hulu instead of the other way around, but a significant concern was whether Comcast would have rights to all of Hulu’s content, much of which is owned by Disney, people close to the company said.

I would think it ain't worth much without the content so I would assume a valuation close to the floor, in the end.

 

[clarker99]

I don't see a situation where Disney doesn't end up with Hulu. I mean, it is valued to high to sell off and Disney is obliged if comcast walks away.

 

[clarker99]

Wow, our fearless leader left quite a few messes in his wake before his first retirement, even more surprised he came back to try to clean it up. LOL

No one ever thought that Hulu would be shrapnel from the Fox deal. Streaming was going to the moon in everyone's mind (I thought so).

You just know there was one guy in accounting that was like, 'Mr. Iger, Hulu is gonna come back and bite us if we don't sell it off right now'. and then everyone in the room laughed manically except the guy in accounting.

 

[RivShore]

I don't see a situation where Disney doesn't end up with Hulu. I mean, it is valued to high to sell off and Disney is obliged if comcast walks away.

Yes, they must buy if Comcast walks, but at what price? Comcast thinks it would be worth a ton more, if put out to bid. Disney thinks it's barely worth the floor of $30B. There is a wide gulf between them.

 

[Jrb1979]

Yes, they must buy if Comcast walks, but at what price? Comcast thinks it would be worth a ton more, if put out to bid. Disney thinks it's barely worth the floor of $30B. There is a wide gulf between them.

Sounds a lot like the Fox deal. Maybe Comcast drives up the price on Disney again

 

[RivShore]

No one ever thought that Hulu would be shrapnel from the Fox deal. Streaming was going to the moon in everyone's mind (I thought so).

You just know there was one guy in accounting that was like, 'Mr. Iger, Hulu is gonna come back and bite us if we don't sell it off right now'. and then everyone in the room laughed manically except the guy in accounting.

I could have definitely seen a person or two pushing to sell, at what looked like the top of a frothy market, and being shouted down by the "we are going to the moon" people. Sadly those finance guys probably just got laid off while the others...

 

[RivShore]

Sounds a lot like the Fox deal. Maybe Comcast drives up the price on Disney again

Now that you mention it, it does!
At least in this case, I think an arbitrator has the final price determination, instead of the "free" market.
I really fail to see much value in Hulu without the content so I think a neutral person would lean towards a lower valuation.

 

[clarker99]

I could have definitely seen a person or two pushing to sell, at what looked like the top of a frothy market, and being shouted down by the "we are going to the moon" people. Sadly those finance guys probably just got laid off while the others...

They wanted the customer base and wanted the R-rated content to appeal to more people. Chasing subscribers.

In terms buying out Comcast, Iger was probably thinking to himself... I will be long retired and it will not be my problem. Lol

 

[Jrb1979]

They wanted the customer base and wanted the R-rated content to appeal to more people. Chasing subscribers.

In terms buying out Comcast, Iger was probably thinking to himself... I will be long retired and it will not be my problem. Lol

Wouldn't be the first time he ran away when times get tough. IMO Iger is a better PR person than Chapek but that's about it. He still doesn't understand the parks and neither does the board.

 

[wabbott]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/m...ittle-mermaid-box-office-previews-1235501627/

Box Office: ‘The Little Mermaid’ Earns $10.3M in Previews
Disney's live-action remake of the popular animated film is expected to dominate the Memorial Day weekend box office.
By Pamela McClintock
May 26, 2023 8:01am

The Little Mermaid grossed $10.3 million in previews at the North American box office as the long Memorial Day weekend commenced.

That’s one of the best showings ever for screenings before the holiday weekend. Little Mermaid‘s tally includes $850,000 in grosses from special screenings Wednesday; the rest is from traditional Thursday evening screenings.

Overall, Little Mermaid ranks No. 7 on the list of top preview grosses for pics rated G or PG.

Rob Marshall directs the live-action remake of Disney’s beloved animated film. The new Little Mermaid stars Halle Bailey as Ariel, the spirited young mermaid who makes a dangerous deal with the evil sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) in order to experience life on land and meet the dashing Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King). The pact, however, poses great risk to her father’s watery kingdom.

The cast also includes Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, Javier Bardem, Jacob Tremblay, Noma Dumezweni and Art Malik.

Bailey’s performance as Ariel has drawn praise from critics amid a racist backlash from social media commenters protesting the casting of a Black actress in the title role. Disney insiders don’t expect these protestations to hurt the film in North America, but are waiting to see how the movie plays in certain overseas markets.

The Little Mermaid is pacing to earn as much as $120 million for the four-day holiday. That would mark the fifth biggest domestic start for Memorial Day weekend, a ranking currently occupied by Disney’s live-action Aladdin, which opened to $116.8 million over the four-day holiday after grossing $7 million in previews.

The movie’s four-day haul is expected to include a three-day gross of $100 million. Presales are pacing ahead of Aladdin, but behind fellow live-action remakes Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.

Overseas, the movie is tracking for an $80 million opening through Sunday.

Interest is being driven by girls, moms and other females, similar to Beauty and the Beast, whose audience was 70 percent female.

The movie features a score from multiple Oscar winner Alan Menken, as well as new songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Legendary’s action-comedy The Machine and Robert De Niro comedy About My Father also open nationwide but aren’t expected to clear more than $5 million or $6 million in their domestic debuts.

The Machine, from Screen Gems, stars Bert Kreischer and is inspired by the comedian’s stand-up act of the same name. Mark Hamill co-stars.

 

[RivShore]

Wouldn't be the first time he ran away when times get tough. IMO Iger is a better PR person than Chapek but that's about it. He still doesn't understand the parks and neither does the board.

Yes, the original Bob is much better at PR and relationship building. None of Iger's big buys (Pixar, Marvel, Lucas, Fox) would have happened under Chapek, or Eisner for that matter. All those buys required real relationship building between the CEO's, and his predecessor and successor just didn't have it in them. It's been said here before that the best times for the parks, and maybe the company as a whole, was when Eisner and Wells were in their prime. That appears to still be the case.

 

[wabbott]

Yes, the original Bob is much better at PR and relationship building. None of Iger's big buys (Pixar, Marvel, Lucas, Fox) would have happened under Chapek, or Eisner for that matter. All those buys required real relationship building between the CEO's, and his predecessor and successor just didn't have it in them. It's been said here before that the best times for the parks, and maybe the company as a whole, was when Eisner and Wells were in their prime. That appears to still be the case.

You also had Roy Edward still very involved at that time. He was a catalyst in implementing CGI, since the costs for cell drawn animation was getting to be prohibitive.

In my opinion he was key in saving animation altogether. Early on, Eisner and his minions seriously explored killing it, and also talked about getting rid of Imagineering and contracting for that service.

Steve Jobs and Eisner became estranged, and Iger saved that deal when he took over.

 

[Cfabar1]

To me, Walt was the best leader. He created the company. Eisner made it the company it is today - a true global entertainment giant. Iger helped continue that path when Eisner was no longer the right personality to accomplish those ends.

A lot of people were opposed to Iger’s appointment initially, but he proved them wrong. And, while he didn’t open any new domestic parks, unlike Eisner, he oversaw investments in the parks in a significant way, leveraging relationships and enhancing the guest experience.

 

[Jrb1979]

To me, Walt was the best leader. He created the company. Eisner made it the company it is today - a true global entertainment giant. Iger helped continue that path when Eisner was no longer the right personality to accomplish those ends.

A lot of people were opposed to Iger’s appointment initially, but he proved them wrong. And, while he didn’t open any new domestic parks, unlike Eisner, he oversaw investments in the parks in a significant way, leveraging relationships and enhancing the guest experience.

I agree that Iger has done well with a lot of the media side of things. I disagree with investments in the parks. The domestic parks needed more capacity yesterday. Instead of adding more significant capacity he's charged more for less. IMO Genie+ is paying to ride rides twice.

 

[wabbott]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/m...little-mermaid-box-office-opening-1235502303/

Box Office: ‘The Little Mermaid’ Sprinting to $125M-Plus Memorial Day Debut

Disney's live-action remake, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel, is headed for the holiday weekend's fourth or fifth best opening of all time after earning $38 million on Friday.

By Pamela McClintock
May 27, 2023 8:13am PDT

The Little Mermaid is doing laps around the competition at the Memorial Day weekend box office after earning $38 million on Friday.

Disney’s live-action remake of the iconic animated film is sprinting to a better-than-expected $125 million-plus debut, the holidays’ fourth-biggest opening of all time, not adjusted for inflation. Some even show the movie earning more than $130 million, but Disney is remaining cautious and saying a range of $120 million to $130 million.

The Little Mermaid, which earned a promising A CinemaScore, is the first 2023 summer tenptole to target females, who made up 68 percent of Friday ticket buyers.

Rob Marshall directs the live-action remake of Disney’s beloved animated film. The new Little Mermaid stars Halle Bailey as Ariel, the spirited young mermaid who makes a dangerous deal with the evil sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) in order to experience life on land and meet the dashing Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King). The pact, however, poses great risk to her father’s watery kingdom.

The cast also includes Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, Javier Bardem, Jacob Tremblay, Noma Dumezweni and Art Malik.

Bailey’s performance as Ariel has drawn praise from critics amid a racist backlash from social media commenters protesting the casting of a Black actress in the title role. Disney insiders don’t expect these protestations to hurt the film in North America but are waiting to see how the movie plays in certain overseas markets.

Heading into the weekend, The Little Mermaid was tracking to earn $120 million for the four-day holiday.

Last year’s Top Gun: Maverick scored the biggest Memorial Day opening of all time with $160.5 million, followed by 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ($153 million) and 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($152 million). The Little Mermaid should wrest fourth place from 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand ($122 million). In fifth place currently is 2013’s Fast & Furious 6 ($117 million).

Overseas, Little Mermaid is tracking for an $80 million opening through Sunday.

Universal’s Fast X will easily come in No. 2 as it crosses the $500 million mark at the global box office in its first 12 days of release.

Legendary and Screen Gems’ action-comedy The Machine and Robert De Niro comedy About My Father are also
opening nationwide but aren’t expected to be big earners.

The Machine, from Screen Gems, stars Bert Kreischer and is inspired by the comedian’s stand-up act of the same name. Mark Hamill co-stars in the film, which is pacing for a $6 million-$7 million four-day opening and a fifth-place finish.
About My Father looks to come in at No. 6 with a $5.5 million opening.

 

[wabbott]

https://vidostream.com/en/news/tech...lan-to-win-over-anyone-watching-tv-19577.html

The CEO of YouTube Has a Plan to Win Over Anyone Watching TV
Neal Mohan goofs around with creators and woos advertisers to the platform’s short videos and TV
Saturday - 27/05/2023 06:28 EDT
Source: WSJ:

Neal Mohan, a 50-year-old veteran of the advertising-technology industry, had to learn some new skills when he became head of YouTube in February.

In a short video with YouTube prankster Eric Decker, who goes by Airrack, Mohan and Decker wore matching T-shirts, ate pizza and went on a piggyback ride across the grounds of the Coachella music festival this April. Mohan provided the lift.

Google-owned YouTube has become a hub for everything from music videos to news broadcasts to live-streamed National Football League games. But for the bulk of the video inventory sold to advertisers, YouTube still relies on footage uploaded by thousands of independent video producers.

Mohan has been making a public show of his early efforts to meet those celebrities, the internet-age equivalent of walking the factory floors. It is a new role for the father of three, who until now has been a quiet operator responsible for building some of Google’s most widely used products.

One afternoon at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., Mohan and the creator Safiya Nygaard competed in a bubble-tea-tasting competition for a live audience of company employees.

They each guessed different ingredients in a flavor combining mango and durian. “You complete me,” Nygaard said of Mohan.

Creators such as Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, and the five former roommates behind Dude Perfect have helped make YouTube the most popular outlet for online videos. They have also caused some of the site’s biggest controversies and protested its frequent policy changes.

One of Mohan’s challenges now will be wooing creators, advertisers and viewers in an increasingly fragmented video marketplace. The fast rise of TikTok, in particular, has hooked a new generation on scrolling, 60-second mobile videos.

Mohan told major TV advertisers during an annual presentation at New York City’s Lincoln Center this month that YouTube is in the middle of a generational shift in video creation and consumption. More people are making short videos on smartphones; artificial intelligence is making it easy to instantly edit those clips; and young TV watchers are increasingly tuning in to YouTube videos, he said.

“YouTube is a place where all formats should thrive,” Mohan said in one of two interviews with The Wall Street Journal.
“We are not going to be about one format or the other.”

Known for its powerful video recommendation algorithm, YouTube competes with digital media giants as diverse as Amazon, TikTok and Spotify. People watch more hours of YouTube on televisions than any other streaming service, including Netflix.

Mohan said during an analyst conference this month YouTube made $40 billion in total revenue during the 12 months ending in March, a figure that includes subscription services such as the online cable bundle YouTube TV. Google parent Alphabet doesn’t report YouTube’s costs, and Mohan declined to comment on the service’s profitability.

YouTube still commands lower ad rates than competing streaming and television providers, whose shows tend to attract viewers with more spending power, analysts said. Its Shorts service, which competes with TikTok, has gained viewership but has been slow to win over advertisers. YouTube’s total ad revenue has fallen for three consecutive quarters, the first such decline on record.

Mohan said TikTok, one of the quickest apps to reach more than 1 billion monthly users, was a formidable and innovative competitor. The debate about banning the app rarely came up in his conversations, he added.

Born in Indiana, Mohan was raised in Michigan for some years after which he moved with his family to the city of Lucknow, India, before the start of high school, where peers remembered him as quiet and brainy. He returned to the U.S. to attend Stanford University, graduating in 1996 with an electrical-engineering degree.

Current and former Google executives described Mohan as a keen strategist who speaks sparingly during meetings. He prefers to ask questions and save remarks until the end. Mohan is “one of the best small-room operators in the business,” skilled at finding agreement across different company factions, said a former co-worker.

“Neal is the most unruffled person you will ever meet,” said Jennifer Flannery O’Connor, a YouTube vice president who was previously Mohan’s chief of staff.

A self-described media and sports junkie, Mohan wore a Golden State Warriors T-shirt and matching pair of socks to an interview in Menlo Park, Calif., last month.

Mohan and his two brothers were raised on G.I. Joe, Transformers and Star Wars growing up in Michigan, he said. His favorite YouTube video is a 10-minute clip of former Warriors star Kevin Durant, an acquaintance of Mohan’s, playing in a pickup game at New York’s Rucker Park during the 2011 National Basketball Association lockout.

Of his trip to Coachella, a three-day event in Southern California headlined by musicians such as Bad Bunny, Mohan described the festival as “like the best of YouTube.” The site hosted a live stream of all six festival stages for the first time this year.

“If you walk around Coachella, that’s like a physical representation of what happens on YouTube every single day,” Mohan said, likening the service to a stage for video creators. Many of the festival’s biggest performers were also popular on YouTube, he added.

Excited by the possibilities of the internet after graduating from Stanford, Mohan joined DoubleClick, an early entrant in online advertising that helped businesses track their marketing campaigns. By 2005, he was head of strategy and product management, bringing organizational and technical skills that outweighed his inexperience, said former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt.

“He also has just a great sense for the small number of things—sometimes the only thing—that matter in a given situation,” Rosenblatt said. “In a very competitive, kind of noisy market like ad technology, that skill is really worthwhile.”

Mohan oversaw a turnaround of the business, preparing a roughly 500-page presentation that outlined a vision of DoubleClick facilitating all steps of the online advertising process.

In 2007, Mohan and Rosenblatt crossed the country on red-eye flights fielding competing bids from Google, Microsoft, Time Warner and Yahoo to buy the business. Google won, agreeing to pay $3.1 billion.

Mohan became longtime Google executive Susan Wojcicki’s top deputy in the advertising product organization, overseeing Google’s expansion as a broker of ads across the internet. Revenue in Mr. Mohan’s division reached $14 billion in 2014, more than double the total six years earlier.

The Justice Department sued Google this year, seeking to break up the ad-tech business built on top of Mohan’s work at DoubleClick, a lawsuit the search giant has said lacks merit.

After moving to YouTube, Mohan devised a plan to push for advertising dollars that traditionally went to TV broadcasters, introducing an app in 2017 called YouTube TV that packaged live-streamed broadcast and cable channels.

The product was divisive within Google, which had until then resisted paying for content rights. Mohan and Wojcicki, who became YouTube CEO in 2014, pushed back against skeptics, arguing it would give YouTube an important toehold in the video-streaming industry, said people familiar with the discussions.

Mohan has doubled down in recent years, often repeating that TV is YouTube’s fastest-growing medium. In December, he announced YouTube had secured residential broadcast rights for the NFL Sunday Ticket package, beating out Apple and other bidders.

Mohan advocated forcefully for the Sunday Ticket deal internally, said former YouTube chief business officer Robert Kyncl. YouTube is paying about $2 billion a year for the rights, the Journal reported, a price that some analysts have said will make it difficult to turn a profit.

“He was supportive of being aggressive and getting it done,” Kyncl said.

Mohan’s promotion to chief executive followed a nearly nine-year period of steady growth under Wojcicki, who has been credited with bulking up YouTube’s advertising and subscription businesses while seeking to crack down on dangerous and misleading videos that threatened to derail relationships with major businesses.

YouTube still has some blind spots in policing its platform, researchers said, and its algorithms can push viewers toward dangerous videos. Mohan said trust and safety efforts were the service’s top priority.

Wojcicki said in an interview that the pair have spoken every week since he took over the role. “We have a very comfortable, open relationship where we can talk about all the challenges that he’s facing,” she said. “We think in a similar way about a lot of those issues.”

In February, YouTube began sharing 45% of advertising sales from Shorts with select creators, an arrangement Mohan promoted as a first for short-form videos. So far, creators have said the revenue is minimal compared with their income from traditional YouTube videos.

“If you really want to focus on long-term success of advertisers, you better focus on the long-term success of creators and viewers,” Mohan said.

 

[clarker99]

https://deadline.com/2023/05/nba-nh...y-disney-espn-advertising-ratings-1235378329/

Lopsided NBA And NHL Playoff Series Point To Lost Advertising Opportunities For Disney And Warner Bros Despite Overall Ratings Surge
By Dade Hayes
Business Editor
May 24, 2023 4:29pm PDT

After waving their sports flags proudly last week at their upfronts pitches to ad buyers, Disney and Warner Bros Discovery are confronting a head-scratching situation with the NBA and NHL playoffs.

The conference finals in both basketball and hockey — broadcast by WBD’s TNT and Disney’s ESPN and ABC — have been remarkably lopsided. Until Tuesday night’s victory by the Boston Celtics in the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals (on TNT), all four best-of-seven series were threatening to be 4-0 sweeps. The Denver Nuggets completed a sweep of the LA Lakers on Monday night, and the Las Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers are each up 3-0 in the NHL.

Such uneven results are never good for broadcasters in multi-game series and will leave them with lighter-than-expected ad revenue despite plenty of ratings momentum. Last year, ad revenue from the NBA playoffs alone reached $842.4 million. “They could lose tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue depending on how many games are not played,” media consultant Brad Adgate told Deadline. “It’s pretty much a nightmare scenario, at least for this round.”

Disney declined to comment on the development and a WBD rep did not immediately respond to a sweep inquiry.

The ad shortfall has materialized even as viewership has been healthy. Heading into the conference finals, the NBA playoffs had delivered their biggest overall viewership since 2011 and the NHL had posted double-digit increases over last year’s levels. TNT for the first time is slated to carry the NHL Stanley Cup Final in an alternating-year arrangement with Disney.

Boston’s win on Tuesday averted what would have been the first dual sweeps in the conference finals since the East/West league structure was established in the 1970-71 season. In the NHL, the last time both conference finals have been decided in four straight games was 1992, with that year’s Cup final also a sweep. The Panthers are looking to eliminate the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday in the Eastern Conference Finals.

While many ad slots in the NBA and NHL playoffs are bought well in advance during the upfronts, a significant amount of inventory is transacted in the scatter market. A person familiar with Disney’s sales process said the robust viewership story has helped offset some of the downside of not having as many games. While entertainment programming, in part due to the ongoing WGA strike, has continued to struggle, live sports has continued to be a bright spot.

No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in an NBA playoff series and just three teams in that kind of hole have ever forced a Game 7. If Boston extends the Eastern Conference Finals, WBD would be the beneficiary, as TNT is airing the series after ESPN and ABC carried the Lakers-Nuggets series.

The flurry of wins by one side could lead to an odd lull in the sports calendar. The NBA has set June 1 as the firm starting date for the NBA Finals, with ABC and ESPN running a significant marketing campaign aimed at capturing casual viewers. Boston and Miami play Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Thursday. The NHL has marked June 3 as the beginning of the Stanley Cup Final, though the league could move it up if both finalists are set this week.

As far as the NBA Finals, Adgate is among those who sees plenty of upside for Disney in a Nuggets-Heat matchup. “I could see it getting to more than 20 million viewers,” he said. Denver, which was one of four ABA teams to continue on after its merger with the NBA, has never before been to the Finals. Miami, while lacking in household-name talent, has become a novel attraction this year as a No. 8 seed knocking off heavily favored opponents, plus it plays in a good-sized home market. The opposite outcome from the conference championships, though, would have been guaranteed box office. “Lakers-Celtics is like Dodgers-Yankees,” Adgate said. “They’ve faced each other 12 times before and it’s always been a major draw.”

Well, this article aged like warm milk.

 

[RivShore]

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/29/streaming-services-remove-movies-shows-heres-why.html

This is not what we expected but here we are...will DVD's will be back, just like vinyl?:
“My main takeaway is that nothing is guaranteed to remain on streaming forever. You are paying for a convenient way to watch content, but it is not a replacement for buying a movie or TV show on home video,” Cartelli said.

 

[wabbott]

I'm posting the entire article, just in case CNBC decides to disappear it.​

​

Streaming services are removing tons of movies and shows — it’s not personal, it’s strictly business​

Published Mon, May 29 20238:00 AM EDT
Sarah Whitten@sarahwhit10
Lillian Rizzo@Lilliannnn

Key Points

• Consumers thought streaming would be forever, but library content is disappearing as studios seek to cut costs.
• Wall Street has turned up the heat on media companies, now focusing on if and when streaming will be profitable versus if they’re putting up big subscriber numbers.
• Removing content from streaming platforms is a way for streamers to avoid residual payments and licensing fees.

Streaming was supposed to be forever.

That was the promise of a digital library of movies and TV shows.

Consumers got used to Netflix cycling through titles, aware that as Hollywood studios launched their own streaming services, proprietary content would transition to a new platform.

Even when Warner Bros. Discovery pulled content as part of planned tax write-offs tied to its merger, consumers seemed to accept the move as the cost of doing business.

However, as Disney is set to yank dozens of shows and films from Disney+ and Hulu, including “Willow,” “The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers” and “The Mysterious Benedict Society,” subscribers are suddenly faced with a new reality.
“At first I expected any show that was on a streaming platform would stay on that platform,” said Conrad Burton, 35, an account manager at a transportation company in Raleigh, North Carolina. “But then I started noticing things expiring.”

What’s the deal?​

After the initial bloom of new platforms and subscriber growth, aided by pandemic lockdowns and a surge of fresh content, the digital streaming industry has cooled. And Wall Street has turned up the heat on media companies, now focusing on if and when streaming will be profitable versus if those providers are putting up big subscriber numbers. The change came last year after Netflix reported its first subscriber loss in a decade.

“What is hitting their income statements is the amortization of content that’s already been made and released,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson. “Warner Bros. Discovery was the first one to figure this out, so we have to give credit where it’s due. They said they need to get their earnings up, so they started taking shows off the app. Disney is now doing that and we should expect Paramount to follow suit. And one day Netflix may even do the same thing.”

It’s been difficult for consumers to understand why content made specifically for streaming platforms has been removed, especially when Netflix originals remain untouched in its library.

“From a consumer standpoint, what they want is they want to be able to always have access to their content,” said Dan Rayburn, a media and streaming analyst.

“The part that really confuses consumers is because they don’t understand how content is licensed,” he said. “They do get confused when one day content is on a service and then disappears or the content is still in the service, but it’s only X number of seasons.”

Removing content from platforms is a way for streamers to avoid residual payments and licensing fees.

“Much like syndication of Hollywood’s yesteryear, streaming services must pay for the right to host a title,” explained Brandon Katz, an industry strategist at Parrot Analytics.

He noted that if a title is not owned by the streamer, then a licensing fee must be paid to the studio that owns that content. For example, Hulu licenses “The Handmaid’s Tale” from MGM Television.

Even titles that are owned in-house must be licensed. That’s why NBCUniversal had to pay itself $500 million to stream Universal TV’s “The Office” on Peacock and Warner Bros. Discovery paid $425 million for the streaming rights to the WBTV-produced “Friends.”

“The balance sheet must reflect that,” Katz said.

By removing the content specifically made for streaming rather than licensed shows and movies, Warner Bros.
Discovery and Disney can immediately cut expenses. Warner Bros. Discovery saved “tens of millions of dollars” after eliminating content, CNBC previously reported.

The studio’s removal of movies and TV shows began last summer, initially with titles such as the “Sesame Street”
spinoff “The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo” and teen drama “Generation.”

But in the ensuing months, more and more original HBO and Max content was removed. Most notably, the sci-fi dramas “Westworld” and “Raised By Wolves” disappeared.

“In my opinion, it discourages subscribers from checking out future original content,” said Matt Cartelli, 33, from New York state’s Hudson Valley. “Streaming used to be seen as a safe haven for consumers who were sick and tired of seeing shows canceled on traditional TV. Now streamers are following suit by canceling their own underperformers.”

Cartelli was especially disappointed when he learned Disney+ initially planned to remove “Howard,” about a songwriter whose work was heard in Disney films such as the animated “The Little Mermaid.” Disney reversed its decision about that title after facing backlash on social media.

And streamers have a fine line to walk.

“The risk is with the writers’ strike,” Nathanson said. “If it continues for awhile, then they will rely on library content. If there’s nothing on there, churn will only get worse.”

Should it stay or should it go?​

Streaming services are being strategic about what sticks around and what leaves their platforms. Major hits such as Max’s “Peacemaker” or Disney’s “The Mandalorian” are unlikely to be pulled from their respective apps.
Meanwhile, underperforming shows and films could be on the chopping block.

In the first quarter of the year, the demand for the dozens of shows and movies being cut from Disney+ represented only 1.9% of the total Disney+ catalog, according to data from Parrot Analytics. For comparison, “The Mandalorian” accounted for 1.3% of total demand during the same period.

Similarly, the removed titles for Hulu accounted for just 0.4% of demand on the streaming service.

And these titles aren’t lost forever.

Soon after cutting programs from Max, Warner Bros. Discovery began licensing the content to Fox Corp
.’s Tubi and Roku, which are free, ad-supported streaming television platforms — also known as FAST — allowing it to bring in a new source of revenue for the content.

As media companies have been desperate to make streaming profitable, the businesses have been turning more and more to new advertising strategies, from cheaper, ad-supported offerings to putting content on FAST channels.

“My main takeaway is that nothing is guaranteed to remain on streaming forever. You are paying for a convenient way to watch content, but it is not a replacement for buying a movie or TV show on home video,” Cartelli said.