NeoNoireWerewolf t1_j9tvvgq wrote on February 24, 2023 at 3:06 PM

Reply to comment by 52ndstreet in Warner Bros. Discovery Sees $2.1 Billion Loss in Q4 After Big Writedown; Ad Sales Tumble by Neo2199

All the trade outlets for the industry have been reporting on how the studios are cooling on streaming and looking at new ways to try and make money on it. Netflix is the only streamer that isn’t setting fire to mountains of cash right now, with Amazon and Apple being the others that look sustainable solely because their movie/TV divisions are small investments offset by their lucrative retail and tech businesses. All of the traditional studios, though? They’re hurting, and everybody in the industry is lost as to what the hell the future looks like. With all the guilds prepping for a possible strike to negotiate for a bigger cut of streaming this year, as well, there’s a crazy amount of uncertainty within the business about the future. Cable is in its twilight years, physical media is now exclusively for a niche audience, movie theaters are struggling to draw audiences, and streaming is unsustainable for most studios. It’s bad news on every front.

SupervillainEyebrows t1_j9wnuia wrote on February 25, 2023 at 2:21 AM

Do you think this is going to cause more monopolisation?

Massive companies like Amazon that can afford to run at a loss because of other revenue streams buying up all the media companies who are floundering?

Brainiac7777777 t1_j9u9yzq wrote on February 24, 2023 at 4:38 PM

I’m confused wouldn’t Warner Bros be a small investment for AT&T since it’s a really big company like Apple and Amazon

NeoNoireWerewolf t1_j9um5j3 wrote on February 24, 2023 at 5:55 PM

AT&T doesn’t own Warner Media anymore; Discovery does. That’s why Warner is in so much debt; AT&T has been a horribly run company for years and had amassed an insane amount of debt. They decided to redistribute a huge chunk of that debt (~$50 billion) to Warner Media when spinning the company off to Discovery. That’s why there’s been a bloodbath at Warner under the new boss Zaslav - the company is going under if they don’t shed a shit ton of debt in the coming years. AT&T was pumping out tons of content in an effort to make HBO Max a Netflix competitor, but the problem is HBO Max hasn’t really grown much since launching three years ago. AT&T also gutted things like DC Comics, pondered selling off the entire video game division at one point (which Zaslav rightfully sees as a huge potential moneymaker and wants more funding to go towards), and managed to weaken major IP like Harry Potter and DC. That’s not getting into AT&T’s comical business blunders like buying DirecTV while cable is dying. They may be a big company, but AT&T is absolutely inept when compared to major players like Amazon and Apple. If Discovery can’t pay off it’s debts and Warner Media folds with them, then the death of one of the legacy studios is on AT&T’s hands, not Discovery’s. I’m not convinced the company is necessarily going to be in better hands with Discovery, but at this point it has a chance of surviving, at least.