CNN’s new streaming service CNN+ is under review by incoming corporate parent Warner Bros. Discovery as it looks to cut costs and reorganize the company, sources say. Warner Bros. Discovery, which formed last week out of the merger between Discovery and WarnerMedia, is in the process of shoring up at least $3 billion in cost savings in 2023, and it’s focusing on CNN+.
Netflix Shares Drop 25% After Service Loses 200K Subscribers
The company’s customer base fell by 200,000 subscribers during the January-March period, according to its quarterly earnings report released Tuesday It’s the first time that Netflix’s subscribers have fallen since the streaming service became available throughout most of the world outside of China six years ago. The drop this year stemmed in part from Netflix’s decision to withdraw from Russia to protest the war against Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 700,000 subscribers.
Disney+ subscribers binging series from the streamer’s library on Monday discovered that a number of episodes were not available. Affected titles are said to include Duck Tales, Agent Carter, X-Men, Lizzie McGuire, Owl House and Rocket & Groot.
Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios.
Veteran digital marketing executive Dennis Cook will lead all marketing for company’s digital division, with a special focus on accelerating the company’s advertising sales business.
Exclusives
Executives at the top streaming services, chasing ever bigger subscription numbers, are having a change of heart about commercials.
The penetration of streaming in U.S. households has expanded to 80% in the first quarter from 79% in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a new report from MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson. A year ago, in the first quarter of 2021, streaming penetration was 74%, according to data Nathanson uses from a monthly survey by HarrisX.
Apollo Global Management Inc. is considering participating in a bid for Twitter Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, after Elon Musk’s $43 billion bid put the social-media company in play. Apollo, one of the world’s largest buyout firms, has held discussions about backing a possible deal for Twitter and could provide Musk or another bidder like private-equity firm Thoma Bravo LP with equity or debt to support an offer, the people said.
Apple is about to take a, well, something out of the NFL’s rights portfolio. The tech behemoth reportedly has emerged as the favorite to land the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package, according to Matthew Belloni of PUCK.news, via Sports Business Journal. An unnamed source told Belloni that the deal is actually done, and that it’s being kept under wraps at Apple’s request.
Executives from E.W. Scripps, Graham, Nexstar and Dentsu X will look at how buyers and sellers can work around the challenges to creating multimedia campaigns across linear TV, streaming, mobile and digital in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar on May 19. Register here.
Facebook parent Meta is urging a federal appellate court to intervene in a lawsuit brought by advertisers suing the company over allegedly inflated metrics. In papers filed this week with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Facebook seeks permission to immediately appeal U.S. District Court Judge James Donato’s decision granting class-action status to the companies DZ Reserve (an e-commerce store operator) and Max Martialis (which sells weapons accessories).
Affiliated TV stations said they are suffering a double retransmission-consent hit from their networks driven by the move to streaming video. The chairs of the Big 4 network affiliate associations have been pressing the FCC to start applying retransmission consent rules to virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) so non-network owned stations can negotiate directly with streamers for payment.
Far-right wing website InfoWars on Sunday filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in the face of multiple defamation lawsuits. Alex Jones, founder of InfoWars, was found liable for damages in a trio of lawsuits last year filed after he falsely claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.
Britons are abandoning streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ to save money as they suffer the biggest cut to their disposable incomes since the 1950s. Streaming services boomed during the pandemic as people were forced to spend more time at home. With lockdown restrictions lifted, Britons canceled about 1.5 million subscriptions in the first three months of 2022, up by around 500,000 from the previous quarter. More than a third did so to save money, according to a new report by media consultancy Kantar.
Despite price increases and trouble in Russia putting pressure on Netflix’s first quarter subscriber count, analyst Steven Cahall of Wells Fargo has raised his estimate for how many customers Netflix will add when it reports its vital statistics on Tuesday. Based on data on downloads, monthly active users and daily active users, Cahall expects Netflix to add more than 2.9 million subscribers in the quarter, up from his previous estimate of 2.5 million.
Major League Soccer and Apple may soon be finalizing an agreement to bring the top domestic soccer league to Apple TV+, according to a report from Sam Stejskal, who broke the story on Twitter.
The move would allow existing Twitter shareholders to buy additional shares at a discount, thereby diluting Elon Musk’s stake in the company and making it harder for the Tesla CEO to corral a majority of shareholder votes in favor of the acquisition. Twitter’s plan would take effect if Musk’s roughly 9% stake grows to 15% or more.
As the industry continues to try to solve the increasingly complicated measurement problem, YouTube and Nielsen have partnered to add co-viewing metrics to account for multiple viewers watching YouTube TV and YouTube on connected TV.
The FCC has issued its “Equity Action Plan,” which it said was “pursuant to the president’s executive order on advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government.” The plan is primarily an outline of efforts already underway through a variety of legislative funding initiatives tied to COVID-19 and infrastructure upgrades, all of which have implications for closing the digital equity divide.
The Disney+ film Turning Red took the No.1 spot on both the Top 10 Streaming Programs and Top 10 Streaming Movies charts with 1.7 billion viewing minutes, according to Nielsen’s Weekly Streaming Top 10 report for the week of March 14. The coming-of-age animated film was only down 2% in viewing from the previous week. The Adam Project came in at No. 2 with 1.34 billion minutes, edging out The Last Kingdom with 1.32 billion viewing minutes.
Advertisers have long been nervous about interacting on the site, new management could shake it up even more.
