It’s “shakeout” time as losses of Netflix rivals top $5 billion

[butterscotch]

Netflix is showing itself out to be the winner in the streaming wars. I’m surprised. They were struggling not long ago to be profitable.

Evidently, there’s so much proliferation of streaming services shows, people are not going to the more niche ones. Paramount+, Disney+, Max/Discovery+ and Comcast are all struggling and contemplating scale backs and consolidations, according to this article.

All of these companies have raised their prices in the last year, probably forcing customers to make choices about which they’ll pay for. In the past, a lot of people could afford Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, the only streaming services at the time. Now that there are so many, people have to choose which ones they buy, so there’s less money for each.

The world’s largest traditional entertainment companies face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5 billion in the past year from the streaming services they built to compete with Netflix.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast and Paramount—US entertainment conglomerates that have been growing ever larger for decades—are facing pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses from their digital platforms.

Shari Redstone, Paramount’s billionaire controlling shareholder, has effectively put the company on the block in recent weeks. She has held talks about selling the Hollywood studio to Skydance, the production company behind Top Gun: Maverick, people familiar with the matter say.

Paramount chief executive Bob Bakish also discussed a possible combination over lunch with Warner CEO David Zaslav in mid-December. In both cases the discussions were said to be at an early stage and people familiar with the talks cautioned that a deal might not materialize.

Beyond their streaming losses, the traditional media groups are facing a weak advertising market, declining television revenues and higher production costs following the Hollywood strikes.

Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners, said Paramount’s deal discussions were a reflection of the “complete and utter panic” in the industry.

“TV advertising is falling far short, cord-cutting is continuing to accelerate, sports costs are going up and the movie business is not performing,” he said. “Everything is going wrong that can go wrong. The only thing [the companies] know how to do to survive is try to merge and cut costs.”

But as the traditional media owners struggle, Netflix, the tech group that pioneered the streaming model over a decade ago, has emerged as the winner of the battle to reshape video distribution.

‘Shakeout has begun’ after $5bn streaming loss for Netflix rivals

[Psmith]

Disney will be OK,they’ve got Dr Who now.They will be able to exterminate the opposition.

[butterscotch]

Not where I am, although you did get me to look. Max still holds Dr. Who in the US. Disney+ added some Dr. Who specials but that’s about it.

Max lost a ton of subscribers when it merged its content with Discovery+. They’re trying to cannibalize their own customer base. They raised the price of Discovery+ which led to a huge loss of subscribers. Max rationalized this by saying that many of them went to Max. But before they did that, they had both subscriber bases.