The far-left Hollywood Reporter thinks it’s doing journalism with this hilarious story about how all the major entertainment multinationals are freaking out over the fact that cord-cutting is accelerating, and streaming revenue is failing to make up for that shortfall.
Here’s what’s happening…
About 3.5 million people are canceling their cable/satellite packages per year. That is a massive loss of revenue for entertainment outlets. Why? Well, as I have been explaining for 15 years now, merit has nothing to do with cable TV profits.
Whether you watch the Disney Grooming Channel, MTV, CNNLOL, TBS, TCM, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, or all those other well-known networks, the providers/studios that own those networks all get a piece of your monthly bill. For example, just because you (like the rest of America) do not watch CNN, because it is still part of your cable package, you are subsidizing CNN. Every month, something like a dollar of your cable bill goes to CNN’s parent company. Same with all the other networks you don’t watch. Now do the math. Twelve dollars a month times 100 million households equals $1.2 billion for CNN per year, even though no one watches CNN.
The whole cable game is rigged.
Do the new math…
Twelve dollars a year times 3.5 million cancellations per year…. Except it’s not $12 a year, because these major entertainment outlets have up to a dozen or more channels earning those fees. At one point ESPN alone was earning around $5 a month. That’s $60 a year from 100 million households.
As I’ve been predicting (and championing) for more than a decade, streaming would not only eventually kill the cable TV cash cow, streaming would force these entertainment outlets to do something they did not have to do with a rigged cable: provide news and entertainment people actually want to watch. Why? Because we will not subscribe to their lousy streaming service without good content. In other words, the studios are now forced to make money based on — gasp! — merit!
Well, take a look at how these leftist entertainment outlets are doing now that their money has to be made honestly — you know, by producing stuff people actually want to watch…
The Hollywood Reporter explains [emphasis and “bwahahas” mine]:
AMC Networks laid out this case explicitly in its Nov. 29 memo, in which executive chairman James Dolan explained the need for “a large-scale layoff as well as cuts to every operating area” at the company. “It was our belief that cord-cutting losses would be offset by gains in streaming. This has not been the case,” [bwahahahahaha!!!] Dolan wrote.
…
Many pure-play entertainment companies are facing an “existential threat,” says Peter Csathy, chairman of Creative Media, largely because the pivot toward streaming has yet to be fully realized. “The economics just don’t work,” Csathy adds. “In this streaming-first world, the content budgets are too high. The revenues that come in are too low in a hyper-competitive world where everybody’s chasing the same streaming dollar.”
…
And even while subscriber growth has ticked up at streamers, analytics company Antenna found an increasing level of churn among the top premium streaming services (including Netflix, HBO Max and Disney+), potentially a sign of consumers cutting back amid rising inflation. There were more than 32 million cancellations among those 10 premium services in the third quarter of 2022, compared to 28 million in the prior two quarters.
Nowhere in that gajillion-word article does the useless Hollywood Reporter (THR) point out the obvious…
- Thanks to the rigged cable game, studios made a fortune no matter how lousy the product was.
- Without the rigged cable game, studios must attract streaming subscribers with great content.
- Streaming providers are spending tens of billions to produce woke garbage.
- Streamers are losing tens of millions of customers.
THR and these bubbled studios want to blame the economy, this factor, that factor, demographics, blah, blah, bladeeblah, blah…
Your content sucks!
That’s it. That’s your whole problem.
Disney has turned its once magical studio into a child-grooming factory. No decent parent would dare leave their child alone with Disney+. Disney wants to mutilate your kids and then have sex with their damaged psyches.
I would cancel Amazon Prime in a heartbeat were it not for the free shipping. Amazon Prime is a garbage pile of woke. It also has the worst menu in all of streaming.
The only reason I still subscribe to Netflix is that my wife loves their superhero shows like Arrow and I love my wife. But whenever I go to Netflix to see what’s on, it’s a $5 billion pile of woke and mediocrity. Sure, there are exceptions like The Crown, but it’s absolutely stunning to me that one outlet can produce so many terrible movies and TV shows. The run of Expensive Awful at Netflix is mind-bending. Only Netflix could blow the true crime genre. What Forensic Files makes thrilling and addictive in 20 minutes, Netflix turns into a marathon of awful.
Here’s what I think is happening…
People are watching everything they want on Netflix (which doesn’t take long), then canceling Netflix, and then subscribing to Amazon. Then they spend a few minutes watching what’s good on Amazon, cancel Amazon, and on and on it goes…
I also think people are discovering that there’s all kinds of amazing content available for free on the Roku Channel Pluto TV, etc. If you’re willing to put up with some ads (a lot fewer ads than you get with cable TV), there’s a ton of great stuff to stream that will not cost you a penny.
The real bombshell in this report is this… “Disney+ and Netflix have already announced their [ad-supported tiers], and Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav has said there’s one planned at his company,” reports THR. “Furthermore, by the end of 2024, Deloitte predicts that half of all streaming video on-demand providers will have a free, ad-supported option, similar to Paramount’s Pluto TV.
That’s exactly what these groomers are going to have to do… provide their garbage for free and try to make money off the ad revenue.
What choice do these leftists have when people are refusing to pay for their garbage?
Maybe AMC would have more than a pathetic 11.1 million subscribers had they not turned their once-wildly popular Walking Dead franchise into the Woking Dead.
Maybe Disney would be making a profit if they weren’t trying to destroy the innocence of children.
To make money, these outlets are going to have to come to terms with two facts: 1) They are going to have to produce original, compelling, and nonpartisan content that appeals to the wider population, and 2) they cannot afford to make content that only appeals to their circle of elite friends.
For example: Harry & Meghan, really?
Netflix paid $100 million for an emasculated former royal and his scheming, grasping, mercenary, aging TV star of a wife?
Netflix could have made 20 Death Wish movies with that money.
It is so fun watching it all come apart.
The emperor didn’t need clothes when cable TV rigged the game. Streaming, however, requires merit, and soon these smug elites (and the media outlets who shield them) will have no choice but to confront their nakedness.
Let me repeat…
Your content sucks.
That’s your problem.
That’s your only problem.
You’re welcome.
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