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Here's a good write-up on the situation as it currently stands from the WSJ today: A Media Heiress’s Bid to Sell Sets Off Mayhem Inside Paramount

Agreed. To my mind, "cord-cutting" means ditching linear channel pay TV, i.e. MVPDs. Getting a "virtual MVPD" like YouTube TV isn't cord-cutting any more than switching from, say, Charter Spectrum TV to Dish satellite. It's all essentially the same product, just delivered using different...

Of course it can't on its own. But M&A deals work differently than regular operating expenses, such as renewing NBA rights. WBD would either raise money for a CBS acquisition by issuing more debt (bonds) or and/or they would issue more shares of stock (thereby diluting existing shareholders'...

If Warner can't land the NBA again, it's going to put that much more pressure on Zaslav to find a way to acquire or merge with CBS, who has 50% of Sunday afternoon NFL games + playoffs, along with Big 10 football, NCAA basketball (including the rest of March Madness that Warner doesn't have)...

They actually quietly introduced a new version, called Fios TV+, that's distributed as managed IPTV, not traditional QAM like regular Fios TV. It comes with a customized Android TV box. Verizon's long-term plan is reportedly to completely phase out QAM and go all-IP (as Comcast, Charter and Cox...

Welp, looks like Shari is shoving Bob out the window of the CEO suite this weekend: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/27/paramount-ceo-bob-bakish-could-be-out-as-soon-as-monday-as-skydance-merger-talks-continue.html She's not going to chance having a Skydance-merger-opponent like Bob at the helm...

More or less agree with your list, except replace "Paramount+" with "Showtime". Paramount+ lost another 1.66 billion-with-a-B bucks last year. Showtime, although perhaps a declining asset, has been profitable for decades (or at least was until it got dragged into the Paramount+ money hole). I...

Yes. In the industry it's called "reverse comp," whereby the networks take about 50% of the retransmission fee revenue that their local affiliates collect from MVPDs. (And of course in those major markets where the affiliate is a network O&O, they're getting all of it.) That whole gravy train...

LOL, Paramount is now threatening to sh!tcan their CEO, Bob Bakish. https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/ceo-bob-bakish-replaced-paramount-deal-talks-board-1235983730/ You know what this comes down to? Bakish is rumored to be against the Skydance deal. Which makes sense. His 2023 compensation...

...hit the market (to the dismay of certain MVPDs like Fubo, DirecTV, etc.) And fall '25 will see the advent of standalone ESPN as a DTC app. ESPN is *the* original killer app of the basic cable bundle. Once that thing goes DTC, it's every man for himself. But, as I keep saying, if these...

...so they're monetizing it via fixed 5G. At some point they'll have to stop taking new subs (or build out more capacity) because they don't have *endless* excess capacity. I noticed that just this month they announced that fixed 5G users may see their speeds throttled (de-prioritized) if they...

T-Mobile has expanded out into rural/small town areas a lot the past few years. I think a decent chunk of their fixed wireless subs are rural folks who had no other option (aside from maybe DSL, as you say). Some of those are getting T-Mo's fixed 4G and some are lucky enough to get their fixed 5G.

Yeah, this pretty much jibes with what I'm reading too. I always figured that whoever buys Paramount would keep Nickelodeon, which has a valuable content library (kids love to rewatch shows and it's perpetually "new" content to every kid just turning 3 years-old) as well as IP that can fuel...

You mean PlayStation Vue? Yeah, that was a virtual cable TV service, similar to YouTube TV. Folks who tried it tended to love it. Lots of folks thought it's biggest problem was its branding, which gave the impression that it had something to do with video games or that you needed a PlayStation...

Yeah, a lot of folks leaving cable broadband are switching to fixed 5G, although many to fiber too. Just this week, Comcast announced a new low-end value-priced option, designed to compete with 5G, I'm sure. It's called NOW Internet. It's prepaid, no contract, no credit check, no add-on fees...

...what I'm reading about Skydance lately. Obviously, I have no inside info and it's certainly possible that Skydance is just trying to create the *impression* that they'll keep Paramount largely intact because that's what Shari wants to hear. (Deals like this -- involving a founder or other...

LOL. Well, I suspect the ultimate fate of Walter Cronkite's CBS News will be to join forces with the pioneer of 24/7 cable news, Ted Turner's CNN, which he might actually like. Warner Bros. Discovery is about the only publicly traded US company that I can see who is both interested in buying...

Paramount+ will not be profitable in about a year. They *claim* that it will be profitable domestically next year, but not internationally/overall. I suspect at least part of the reason for that is they are now counting revenue from some or all of the approximately 20 million Showtime pay TV...

I don't think this would be the better deal for Hollywood, necessarily, as (per the NYT's report) Sony would likely just make Paramount a subsidiary label within Sony (much like Columbia Pictures). That would mean one fewer studio for the creative community to pitch their ideas to. But I do...

I've long thought that Hulu with Live TV might get shut down at the point when ESPN it its entirety becomes available as a standalone DTC streaming service. Because ESPN is the original "killer app" of the basic cable bundle. Once you yank that out and sell it a la carte, the whole thing really...

I think Comcast's and Charter's hope is that they will be able to transition from cable bundle distributors to subscription app (and ad-revenue-generating FAST) distributors. The idea is to replace their traditional cable TV revenue stream with the new streaming TV revenue stream. Comcast is...

As I posted elsewhere today, the cable bundle will soon be mostly distributed/streamed by just three companies, Google, Charter and Comcast, with Google being the only one growing while everyone else withers away. If you're a major owner of traditional TV networks, i.e. Disney, Comcast/NBCU...

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/paramount-global-junk-rating-sp-global-1235953838/

Ha, yeah, I remember that ad! https://youtu.be/K_sXmRae8Lk?si=HX8kxV8txZg8GSIj

Yeah, that's an important aspect in the history of Netflix that I failed to mention in my history of the company. They expanded globally and began producing locally-originated content from multiple foreign markets. They are, in effect, the first truly international TV network. The costs of...