Welcome to the blog of Dr. Lisa Burns' Media Studies senior capstone class (2 pm section) at Quinnipiac University. If you're looking for the latest on media industry trends and insightful media analysis, you've come to the right place!
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Media Economics Blog 1, Question 1 (due Tues., Feb. 2nd)
Which major media conglomerate is best positioned to
succeed and which organization will face the most challenges in 2021? Limit:
11 responses
Nick Melanson Part 1 2020 was, for lack of a better term, a dumpster fire. The Coronavirus halted normal life as we know it, with college students being sent home, millions of jobs being lost, and countless companies going out of business. While 2020 was a terrible year for nearly everyone, there was one company that managed to only grow as the year went on – and that was HBO Max. Started in late May of 2020, HBO Max was pretty much thrown into the fire – that is, was launched around the time when most business were starting to bleed money as their operations were stifled or even entirely shut down due to the Coronavirus. That however is exactly why HBO Max shined. With business shut down and major cities on lockdown, there was nothing left to do but stay home and pass the time. This could be playing games with their families, working from home, or how most Americans spent it – streaming shows and movies. That’s probably why “there has been a 99% year-over-year growth in hours of live stream video watched between April 2019 and April 2020… [and] it’s safe to assume this growth has steadily increased throughout 2020” (Beltis, 3Play Media). Although businesses across the world were failing, one of the few businesses that really took off was streaming services. At the end of September 2019, HBO Max had a massive user base of just under 39 million subscribers, but over the next three months saw that grow to over 41 million. HBO Max has grown tremendously in 2020, as it managed to build a subscriber pool of over 40 million in just seven months (Szalai, Jarvey, Hollywood Reporter). One of the reasons that HBO Max began to take off was because of the deal that it struck with Amazon in November that allowed them to release original content such as The Flight Attendant and The Undoing, as well as the streaming rights to massive film releases such as Wonder Woman 1984, Tenet, and others, which helped HBO Max in watching their subscriber count tick up. HBO Max still has loads of content to release, and with its rapidly growing fanbase and focus solely on creating and distributing content, HBO Max has a bright future ahead.
One company that didn’t do great in 2020 was Disney – or at least not entirely. Disney released its very own streaming service in late 2019 called Disney +, and it was a smashing success. Since its launch just over a year ago, Disney + has attracted 73 million paid subscribers (Lang, Variety), nearly doubling HBO Max’s subscriber count. Disney also owns a slate of streaming services and networks, such as ABC, ESPN, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and others. It’s because of Disney’s vast net of content that Disney + is such a huge success. The streaming service offers endless amount of shows and movies, and Disney having the rights to two of the most lucrative film series in cinematic history in Marvel and Star Wars doesn’t hurt either. Although Disney managed to rake it billions of dollars from their streaming service, they still watched their revenue fall “23% to 14.7 billion, while the company reported a loss of $710 million instead of the $777 million in profits it recorded in the year-ago period” (Lang, Variety). The reason that Disney is losing so much money despite seeming owning the streaming wars is because of the company’s other expenditures, namely its theme parks. With the worldwide spread of COVID-19, Disney was forced to shut down its theme parks across the world – including Walt Disney World, Disney Land, Disney World Paris, Disney cruises, and many more. This resulted in huge losses for Disney, as the company bled hundreds of millions of dollars and had to lay off nearly 30,000 employees. Disney has even been forced to permanently cancel services such as its Magical Express service (which brings guests from airport to theme park and vice versa) and has resulted in numerous construction delays. Although Disney + is thriving, especially with the release of over forty upcoming projects, the company finds itself in a tricky spot entering 2021, as the companies short term future has raised some question marks after COVID-19 took its toll on the company.
Sources: Beltis, AJ. “5 Live Streaming Video Statistics for 2020.” 3Play Media, 28 Oct. 2020, www.3playmedia.com/blog/5-live-streaming-video-statistics-for-2020/.
Lang, Brent. “Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations.” Variety, Variety, 13 Nov. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/.
Szalai, Georg, and Natalie Jarvey. “HBO Max Subscriber Update: AT&T.” The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hbo-max-subscriber-update.
Morgan Tencza Part 1 2020 was not a good year for the media conglomerates, except for those who own streaming sites. Because people were locked in, those media streaming companies soared in subscribers with endless amounts of content offered. Disney+, Netflix, and HBO Max were some of the most successful streaming platforms in 2020 and will continue to grow in 2021. However, many of the media companies rely on more than just streaming in order to show growth. As 2021 pushes on with continued effects of COVID-19 and prolonged quarantines, HBO Max and Warner Bros have an opportunity to grow with their initiatives already in effect for the year. Furthermore, I believe that even with substantial success on their streaming platform with all the exclusive content premiering this year, Disney will not have an easy route to success. WarnerMedia’s HBO Max is relatively new to the streaming world, but it has already proven to be a strong success. According to Hollywood Reporter, HBO Max had a rough first six months, only receiving a small percentage of the love Disney+ accumulated in the beginning (Szalai and Jarvey). However, the company saw a boom of success once it released Wonder Woman 1984 on the platform at the same time it entered theaters, but free to the HBO Max subscribers. The executives of WarnerMedia made the decision to release the film digitally on to HBO Max because they were already on their fifth release date and did not want to postpone the release further (Keegan and Jarvey). This decision not only allowed for the film to finally be premiered but gave HBO Max the push it needed to draw in more subscribers. After seeing the success of the release of Wonder Woman 1984 and with the continued effects of COVID-19 hurting the film industry, WarnerMedia made the decision to release all their 2021 films in the same hybrid form, with them being available to subscribers on HBO Max and released on the same day in theaters. WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey said, “streaming service and cinemas could “accelerate that further” and allow the firm to “penetrate the market faster,” when asked about the controversial decision to use the hybrid release for the entirety of 2021 (Szalai and Jarvey). The platform is only growing because of the exclusive content provided. According to the Hollywood Reporter, WarnerMedia saw their active subscribers double in the fourth quarter of the year, once the company announced its hybrid plan (Szalai and Jarvey). I believe that number will only skyrocket once the content begins to drop on the streaming service, especially since they are free to subscribers. I truly believe HBO Max will see success this year and will only gain more traction as they begin to release the exclusive Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter spin off TV shows in early production.
Part 2 Though Disney+ has brought Disney a lot of success this past year, the company has lost substantial money through closing and partial attendance at their parks. The closing of the parks cost Disney, “a $3.1 billion bite out of its quarterly revenues and a $7.4 billion chunk out of its annual sales,” according to Variety (Lang). The article goes on to mention that Disney+ will continue to bring success to the company in 2021 with the exclusive Marvel shows, Star Wars content, and more original films and shorts. However, the success of the streaming platform won’t replace the success in the box office that Disney regularly sees with new films, especially with Marvel and Star Wars. In addition, the platform will be charging the viewers an additional price for the new released content that will also hit theaters. This is to try for box office success but remain to make profit off new releases if those choose to purchase online. Disney tried this technique with ‘Mulan,’ but it was not as successful as they hoped. However, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said, “We saw enough very positive results to know that we’ve got something here,” in reference to the premium on demand options (Lang 2020). With Disney+ still not turning a profit and many parks still closed or opened at a percentage, 2021 will be a tough year for the media conglomerate to be successful.
Sources: Keegan, Rebecca and Natalie Jarvey. “2020's Big Plot Twist: How 'Wonder Woman 1984' Came to Upend Hollywood's Future.” The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Dec. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/2020s-big-plot-twist-how-wonder-woman-1984-came-to-upend-hollywoods-future. Lang, Brent. “Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations.” Variety, Variety, 13 Nov. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/. Szalai, Georg, and Natalie Jarvey. “HBO Max Subscriber Update: AT&T.” The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hbo-max-subscriber-update.
Gina Auletta Part 1 After completing the assigned readings and doing further research, Disney seems to be best positioned to succeed in 2021. Disney Plus, the streaming service which launched in November 2019, brought the media conglomerate new success amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The media landscape diagram in “Here’s who owns everything in Big Media today” by Rani Molla and Peter Kafka shows that Disney/21st Century Fox has the most revenue compared to other media companies like Netflix, AT&T/WarnerMedia, Comcast, Verizon, etc. The media conglomerate is at 328 billion dollars in revenue as of January 2021, with its streaming service, Disney Plus, at 87 million subscribers. In comparison, AT&T/WarnerMedia acquired 214 billion dollars in revenue and its streaming service, HBO/HBO Max, has 57 million subscribers as of January 2021. Evidently, Disney Plus has been gaining popularity since its launch, despite strong competition with streaming services like Netflix and HBO/HBO Max. According to the Variety article by Todd Spangler, Disney Plus hit many more subscribers than expected and is projected to continue to grow immensely. Spangler writes, “With the strong momentum at Disney Plus’ back, the company now expects the streamer to have between 230 million and 260 million total paid subscribers by the end of fiscal year 2024, CFO Christine McCarthy said at the company’s investor day Thursday, along with other projections.” Additionally, Spangler explained that Disney plans to release new originals under the Star Wars, Marvel, Disney Animation, and Pixar brands over the upcoming years and the goal is to have new originals on Disney Plus every week. On top of the prosperity brought by Disney Plus, the company can expect more visitors at its various theme parks as people get vaccinated throughout the country and become more comfortable leaving their homes. However, Disney Plus will only grow stronger in the coming years as streaming content becomes the new normal and the company will continue to prosper even as the pandemic fades.
Gina Auletta Part 2 On the other hand, I feel that Netflix may face the most challenges in 2021 compared to the other major media conglomerates. According to the diagram from Vox, as of January 2021, Netflix has 226 billion dollars in revenue while competing companies are either way ahead or close behind. For instance, as mentioned earlier, Disney/21st Century Fox has 328 billion dollars and AT&T/WarnerMedia has 214 billion dollars. Despite having more subscribers, Netflix is surely facing some strong competition as streaming content becomes more popular. The competing streaming services like HBO/HBO Max, Disney Plus, Hulu, etc. seem to be gaining more and more success as the years go on, and it can be assumed that this will continue into 2021. As a result, Netflix will have to come up with some new strategies to keep their subscribers coming back to the platform amid the other options that continue to emerge. As Natalie Jarvey put it in “Netflix Tops 200 Million Subscribers Amid Pandemic”, “Although Netflix remains the clear streaming leader, investors have started to question just how long its dominance can last. Hollywood spent the past few years mobilizing for the streaming future. Disney, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and Discovery all have introduced streaming services where they’re offering high-profile originals and classic hits that once made up the bread-and-butter of Netflix streaming viewership.” In other words, competing streaming services, such as Disney Plus, may gain enough success in the upcoming years to “dethrone” Netflix as the leader and this may start to happen sooner rather than later as we see these new streaming services producing new content promptly.
Works Cited
Jarvey, Natalie. “Netflix Tops 200 Million Subscribers Amid Pandemic.” The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-tops-200-million-subscribers-amid-pandemic. Rani Molla, Peter Kafka. “Here's Who Owns Everything in Big Media Today.” Vox, Vox, 23 Jan. 2018, www.vox.com/2018/1/23/16905844/media-landscape-verizon-amazon-comcast-disney-fox-relationships-chart. Spangler, Todd. “Disney Plus to Increase Prices in Early 2021, Eyes Up to 260M Subscribers by End of 2024.” Variety, Variety, 11 Dec. 2020, variety.com/2020/digital/news/disney-plus-hits-86-8-million-subscribers-1234850846/.
Stephen Halvatzis Part 1 In 2020, many companies and corporations took a hit financially. Companies associated with media were able to salvage some revenue throughout the pandemic, and are finding new ways to gain attention towards their service. Streaming services saw an increase in usage due to the stay at home orders that were in place. One streaming service that capitalized on the troubling times we've faced was HBO Max. HBO Max was introduced to the streaming world in May and became a huge hit. It was a weird introduction, because customers like myself had used HBO Go up until the requirement to subscribe to HBO Max. HBO Go was compatible with your HBO subscription through TV providers. Now, you can subscribe to HBO Max with your TV provider, Apple Sign In or Roku device. According to AT&T, HBO Max currently has 37.7 million subscribers, with 17.2 million subscribers. According to the Hollywood Reporter, "Combined, HBO and HBO Max had 41.5 million U.S. subscribers as of the end of 2020, compared with 38.0 million as of the end of September." (Szalai, Jarvey). A reason for the emergence of HBO Max as a leading streaming service was their decision to show the debut premier of movies that their partner, Warner Bros., produced for millions of their subscribers to watch. This was a great move that allowed them to gain revenue through subscriptions, and avoid debuting their release on demand or through DVD purchase. One movie in particular, Wonder Woman 1984, garnered a lot if interest and attracted many to subscribe to HBO Max. Despite a rough first quarter to start their service, the debut of this movie has propelled them to one of the top streaming services in the world. According to Deadline, "WW84 racked up 2.252 billion minutes of streaming. That was 35% better than Pixar’s Soul, which drew almost 1.7 billion minutes on Disney+." (Hayes) This is important to note because both movies were released on the same day, and Disney+ had been killing HBO Max in rankings since its debut to streaming. Other movies such as Tenet have been released on HBO Max and it looks like the streaming service will continue to soar in 2021 if they continue to release new, unreleased content through their platform.
Part 2 The streaming platform that is due to take a hit in 2021 is Disney+. Disney+ debuted in 2019, and has been the best streaming platform in my opinion. Not only does it allow families to watch great content from their childhood and new content, but the service comes in affordable bundles with other streaming services like ESPN+ and Hulu, both owned by Disney. However recently, they have lost a lot of attention and revenue because of the COVID pandemic as well as other events. According to Variety, "Disney’s revenues fell 23% to $14.7 billion, while the company reported a loss of $710 million instead of the $777 million in profits it recorded in the year-ago period." (Lang) One reason for this drop off is because of the emergence of the previously mentioned HBO Max and their exclusive releases. Another reason is the loss of opportunities during the pandemic. Disney owns ESPN, and ESPN+ lost a lot of opportunity to stream games exclusively to their premium customers for events like the NBA, NHL, NCAA and MLB when sports took a back seat during the peak of COVID-19 in March-April. The losses that they experienced in that time were monumental, and nearly cancelled all the progress they had made in the previous months since their service debuted with rave reviews and numbers. Another opportunity that was limited and affected Disney was travel. Because of the travel limitations and bans, tourists were not able to visit Disney owned vacation sites and resorts like Disney World. Even after travel bans were lifted, people were either too afraid to travel due to the pandemic or did not want any limitations on the experiences they would have traveling due to the virus. The pandemic has definitely affected Disney the most, and Disney will continue to be affected negatively until we return to a full normalcy in the world.
Works Cited Keegan, Rebecca and Natalie Jarvey. “2020's Big Plot Twist: How 'Wonder Woman 1984' Came to Upend Hollywood's Future.” The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Dec. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/2020s-big-plot-twist-how-wonder-woman-1984-came-to-upend-hollywoods-future.
Lang, Brent. “Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations.” Variety, Variety, 13 Nov. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/.
Hayes, Dade. “'Wonder Woman 1984' Soars To Christmas Streaming Win On Updated U.S. Nielsen List, With 35% Margin Over 'Soul'.” Deadline, Deadline, 29 Jan. 2021, deadline.com/2021/01/wonder-woman-1984-hbo-max-streaming-win-christmas-soul-nielsen-1234683058/.
Gianna Petruccelli Part 1 It is nothing new to say that the year 2020 will be going down as one of the worst years in history. Not only did individuals go through a huge change due to the nationwide quarantine, but many major media conglomerates did as well. So many companies tanked financially due to the pandemic, and have found themselves in some pretty touch spots. Some relevant companies during the time of the pandemic are Netflix and Disney +. Although, some media conglomerates will be coming out of this pandemic better than before. A company that seems to be on the incline is Netflix. Being that so many people were locked up in their homes, everyone turned to streaming services in order to occupy their time. According to Capitol.com, "Netflix added 8.5 million net paid subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2020, beating internal and analysts' estimates (of around 6 million)"(Nicole Willing 3). Netflix nearly doubled their subscribers by the time 2020 was nearly doubled, all thanks to the fact that new movies and shows were not able to be shot. Netflix is in a really good spot right now because people are able to binge shows that have already been aired, they do not have to wait for new episodes to me made. Furthermore, Netflix has expanded their viewership outside of the US and Canada region and into Europe, Middle East and Africa. Netflix has also planned to start making new content for when lockdown ends, keeper their viewers entertained and giving them something to look forward to. Netflix is in a really good position right now because they are using the momentum they gained in the past to ensure a successful future.
Gianna Petruccelli Part 2 On the other-hand, some major media conglomerates did not do so good as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. One that I think will face the most challenges in 2021 is Disney+. In 2019, Disney wracked up more than a billion dollars from only seven movies. In 2020, author Darren Franich says "there's no such thing as a billion dollar movie". Disney is going to be relying on Disney+ to pull the weight while parks start to get ready to re-open, putting a huge pressure on the streaming service. Furthermore, Disney+ is partnered with ESPN and ESPN+. With the uncertainty of the pandemic and the nationwide lockdowns came the inability to stream sports. Another large reason why Disney+ is projected to not do good in 2021 is because of the controversy some of their movies caused in 2020. The most controversial of the bunch had to have been Disney+'s Hamilton which was ridiculed for being "too conservative". Disney must alter many things due to the backlash they have gotten in the past year in order to dig themselves out of the small hole they are currently in, and it is not going to happen over night. According to the Washington Post, Disneys profits plummeted in 2020. "Once taxes are factored in, the company lost $700 million during the quarter" (Steven Zeitchik 1). With this being said, two of Disneys most prominent releases, "The New Mutants" and "Mulan" hardly made $100 million, as opposed to the billions they made in 2019. With the consideration of Disney Parks not being able to open and movies cannot be viewed in person, coupled with the fact that Disney had to "clean up" some political issues, it is safe to say they will have a rough 2021.
Works Cited
Franich, Darren. “2020 Was a Hell of a Year.” EW.com, ew.com/tv/2020-best-worst-essay/.
Willing, Nicole. “‘Netflix Share Price Forecast for 2021: Should You Buy the Stock After It's Q4 Earnings?".” Capital.com, 21 Jan. 2021, capital.com/netflix-stock-forecast-2021-and-beyond.
Zeitchik, Steven. “Disney's Profits Plummet as Coronavirus Keeps Its Core Businesses Flailing.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 13 Nov. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/12/disneys-profits-plummet-coronavirus-keeps-its-core-businesses-flailing/.
2020 and the rise of COVID-19 provided a unique situation for every person, government, and corporation on the planet. With everyone stuck inside quarantining all year, people looked for something to do. Naturally, streaming services seem to be an obvious answer, and boy did they see a rise. I feel like you can’t talk about successful streaming platforms in 2020 without mentioning HBO’s new service, HBO Max. Sort of bridging the gap between their ‘HBO Go’ and ‘HBO Now’ services, HBO Max is available to any HBO subscriber and features all the movies you can find on the HBO channels currently, as well as all of their past original content. But why was HBO Max, a brand new service, so successful? The answer: “content, content, content”. Or perhaps “content is king,” as Bill Gates said. Whatever saying you choose, people want content, and HBO’s got it. For decades HBO has been one highest-rated producers of television shows and miniseries like The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, and Chernobyl. This content, in addition to their licensed content, has brought them “41 million [subscribers], a full two years faster than [their] initial forecast” (Szalai and Jarvey). But HBO isn’t just relying on their old content to keep customers happy, with movie theaters closing down due to the pandemic, HBO had digital releases of movies like Wonder Woman 1984. This meant that people didn’t have to leave their home to see the new movie and the studio makes money on it, allowing them to produce more films, perhaps even more straight to digital releases.
As far as companies that struggled a bit more, Disney was one of the biggest, but not necessarily because of their streaming service Disney+. “Disney estimated that COVID-19 had taken a $3.1 billion bite out of its quarterly revenues and a $7.4 billion chunk out of its annual sales” (Lang). The biggest thing to note about Disney is that a huge chunk of their revenue is made in visits to their parks, and people going to see their movies in theaters. Both of these sources of income were essentially eliminated with the pandemic, but Disney+ managed to bring in 73 million subscribers since it launched a little over a year ago in November of 2019. While Disney posted a decrease in profits last year, I think that this should be a bit of a wake-up call for groups like Netflix. The problem for them is that Disney managed to amass a large number of subscribers in a relatively short time, this is probably mostly caused by the plethora of Disney content that people know and love, as well as the price. Netflix has been increasing the price of their subscription gradually over the years, while Disney is able to keep Disney+ at a measly $7/month (that’s less than the old Netflix price of $8/month). Additionally, Netflix has a lot of plans to choose from, whereas Disney has just one price. Netflix also reportedly saw a decrease in subscriptions after the summer. “July, August, and September — historically a strong quarter for Netflix — saw much slower growth, including just 177,000 adds in the United States” (Zeitchik). This figure is down from the 3 million gained in the spring. The thing is, Disney can afford to do this. They could even afford to lose money on this streaming service for years and be fine; they have billions and billions of dollars. I believe that if groups like Disney want to crush Netflix, they absolutely can.
Georg Szalai, & Jarvey, N. (2021, January 27). HBO Max Reaches 37.7M, Including 17.2M “Activated,” Subscribers. The Hollywood Reporter; https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hbo-max-subscriber-update
Lang, B. (2020, November 12). Walt Disney Company Reports Quarterly Losses Due to Coronavirus. Variety; Variety. https://variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/
Zeitchik, S. (2020, October 20). Netflix new subscriber signups plummeted over the summer, halting pandemic-fueled growth. Washington Post; The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/20/netflix-new-subscibers-plummet/
Hayley Cuttitta 2020 brought on a lot of challenges for all major media conglomerates. It was a year of never knowing what was going to come next. These conglomerates had to attempt at anticipating the future of their work due to the pandemic and in turn make a plan that would keep them afloat. It has definitely been helpful to have so many people at home, especially during the winter, inside wanting to watch TV shows and movies as much as possible. Streaming services became even more popular than they already were at the beginning of the pandemic and have maintained great popularity to this day. When looking back and 2020, the major media conglomerates faced many difficulties, but will hopefully be able to turn around in 2021. As some soared, others did not do quite as well. One streaming service that greatly succeeded in 2020 and will continue to succeed in 2021 is Netflix. Natalie Jarvey wrote that, “Netflix faced more competition than ever before in 2020, but the streamer is showing little sign of flagging, ending the year with an unprecedented nearly 204 million global subscribers”, which seems to be a good indication that Netflix will do well in 2021. (Jarvey 2021). Unfortunately, Netflix is now not the only streaming service that offers original content. Disney, NBCUniversal, Warner Media, and Discovery are competition because they are starting to offer similar content. If users still heavily lean towards Netflix although prices are going up, it will maintain a high spot on the list of successful media conglomerates in 2021. Although streaming services appeared to be greatly successful in 2020 because of the high demand placed on them, Disney as a whole struggled when it came to their other businesses that weren’t part of the streaming services. In October of 2020 Disney decided to do a bit of restructuring, presumably in hopes to increase revenue again. Many were confused about the announcement that was made. In an article from the Hollywood Reporter, Natalie Jarvey wrote that, “Under the new structure, says a source with knowledge of the situation, Daniel’s Media and Entertainment Distribution group will work with the studios to determine their overall budgets and to dictate the content needs of distributors like Disney+ and ABC” (Jarvey 2020) and the group will also decide what content goes where. The COVID-19 shutdown of Disney which included theaters and theme parks closing, caused Disney’s revenues to tumble. At the height of the pandemic, “the entertainment conglomerate’s sales were 42% lower than they were a year earlier, and its quarterly net loss totaled nearly $5 billion” (Jasinski, 2021), that would make it seem like Disney would not be able to come back from such a great loss, but that is not the case. Disney did so well streaming service wise, they gained 87 million subscribers worldwide as of December 2020. Disney’s future is seen in their transition to become a streaming-centric operating service, which will help Disney succeed in 2021.
Jarvey, Natalie, “Disney’s Streaming Pivot: How Will New Structure Work in Practice?” The Hollywood Reporter, 21 Oct. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com.
Jarvey, Natalie. “Netflix Tops 200 Million Subscribers Amid Pandemic.” The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-tops-200-million-subscribers-amid-pandemic.
Jasinski, Nicholas. “Disney Ended the Year on a High Note. Why 2021 Could Be Even More Exciting.” Disney Ended 2020 on a High Note. Why 2021 Could Be Even More Exciting., Barrons, 1 Jan. 2021, www.barrons.com/articles/disney-ended-2020-on-a-high-note-why-2021-could-be-even-more-exciting-51609493400.
In March of 2020, coronavirus entered our lives and changed every aspect of our delicate lives. Aside from the obvious effects, COVID-19 had on our daily lives, it also drastically changed the way media conglomerates functioned and provided content for the customers. Traditional movie theaters were already on their last leg financially. Countless films scheduled years in advance to be released in theaters were halted and thrown off course, now to be released on streaming platforms. In a Nielson report, “Between March and August 2020, U.S. adults spent 12.2 trillion minutes with digital, 11.1 trillion minutes with linear TV and 2.8 trillion minutes streaming — and these numbers continue to exponentially grow." (Porter). If the pandemic never happened I still believe that streaming would’ve taken over eventually. The pandemic is just speeding things up.
In 2020, the number of people using streaming services grew exponentially. I believe that in 2021, Disney looks to be one of the media conglomerates to have lots of success. But, I also believe that Netflix is still an honorable mention. Despite having a rocky 2020, due to its big losses of park revenue, I think the fact that Disney has control of so many other entities will be to their benefit. According to a Hollywood reporter article, they blew away their initial estimates for subscribers to Disney+ almost doubling it, coming in around 87 million subscribers. This number is only going to grow (Porter).
A big part of Disney is its reputation. If Disney puts out a film in theaters whether it be Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, or Pixar people are going out to see it. With the theaters being closed for an unknown amount of time, I think consumers are more willing to pay for a subscription service where they have access to all of Disney’s assets and their favorite content. According to Hollywood Reporter, Disney is releasing 40 new titles across Disney+ and Hulu coming in 2021. The fact that Disney is a legacy media conglomerate changes the game that makes it difficult for others to compete with. In addition, with the vaccine rolling out, I think the Disney parks will have the potential to soon be up and running again by the end of 2021.
Going off of this, I think a conglomerate that might not do well is AT&T/Warner Media. They have Turner, DirecTV, and HBO Max but I don’t think those can compete well with other larger conglomerates. Edmund Lee from the New York Times says it’s also unclear if the decision for AT&T to move into the Media world was a good one. According to a Hollywood Reporter article, they also announced that all their previously scheduled theater content on HBO Max (Szalai). I think that the movies being released in HBO Max are ones better suited for the big screen although that option is not available now. This might cause problems for their content releases.
Lee, Edmund. “Who's Behind the Fight Between Warner Bros. and Hollywood? It's AT&T.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/business/media/hbo-max-subscribers-att-box-office-losses.html.
Porter, Rick. “The Numbers Behind Media Giants' All-In Streaming Plays.” The Hollywood Reporter, 12 Dec. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-long-view-the-numbers-behind-media-giants-all-in-streaming-plays.
Szalai, Georg. “Analyst on Logical NBCU-WarnerMedia Merger.” The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywoods-2021-investor-forecast-outlined-in-analyst-report.
It is to no one's surprise that me saying the year 2020 sucked, is an understatement. With Covid-19 spreading all over the world rapidly and the drama of United States politics, people couldn’t stop watching the news, and fearing for themselves and their loved ones. Streaming took a turn (or multiple turns) during the year of 2020. Some streaming services did awful (well sort of awful), for instance, Disney. Disney as a whole lost 710$ million last year (Lang, Variety) which is much different then their usual 777$ million in profits that they recorded just one year earlier. This is thanks to their parks shutting down and their movies being pushed back. Yet, Disney plus as a streaming service went past their expected marks for the year. This was just about the only good sign for Disney since they were expected to lose millions of more dollars during the year. The CEO Bob Chapek said himself “The real bright spot has been our direct-to-consumer business, which is key to the future of our company.” (Lang, Variety) This is great for Disney Plus since they have many movies and TV shows that were planned to come out in 2020 that are now going to take streaming services by storm in 2021, staking a huge claim in the streaming wars. I believe that this streaming service is now in the best position to succeed in 2021. On the other hand I think that Viacom CBS is set to have a pretty bad year in the streaming wars. CBS All Access has been it’s streaming service that has been competing against the other major conglomerates the past year. CBS All Access is changing this year to Paramount Plus which is causing investors to get a little weary of the company. Although I think it’s a good idea most Agency executives are saying “Those guys are basically trailing everyone else as a media company,” (Peterson, Digiday) The article states that CBS was actually one of the first to get into the streaming wars but never expanded on it. CBS will have trouble because they have a linear-business model with their cable network. They will have to lose money this year before they start to make money and the hope is they can compete for the top spot of tier two in the streaming wars. Still, there is another way to look at these streaming wars. Maybe the streaming wars are ending in 2021, meaning if you aren’t signed up by the end of the year for some streaming service, you probably never will. That is the argument that this article from Wired is trying to make. Claiming that “if the pandemic doesn’t get them to sign up for Apple TV+ or HBO Max or Disney+, nothing will. Chances are that a good portion of 2021 will feature closed theaters and lockdowns. Streaming services will likely have a few more months to sign up new users, but after that, the battle may be over.” (Watercutter, Wired) This is an interesting way to look at the streaming wars and the author in my opinion has a point. The streaming wars will continue in 2021, but we don’t know entirely what the future holds until the end of the year.
Watercutter, Angela. “The Streaming Wars Could Finally End in 2021.” Wired, Conde Nast, www.wired.com/story/disney-plus-hbo-max-streaming-wars/. Lang, Brent. “Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations.” Variety, Variety, 13 Nov. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/. Peterson, Tim. “How ViacomCBS Is Managing the Transition from Linear TV to Streaming.” Digiday, 26 Jan. 2021, digiday.com/future-of-tv/change-the-channel-how-viacomcbs-is-managing-the-transition-from-linear-tv-to-streaming/.
Due to the pandemic, multiple media conglomerates have taken a hit to revenues and potential future revenue. However, it could set some up to succeed better than others. Netflix has hit a record of 200 million subscribers. “Lockdowns around the world helped to significantly boost streaming signups…” (Jarvey). Netflix has also continuously created original tv shows such as Stranger Things and Outer Banks which have hit record viewing numbers. For the past years, Netflix has been known to be the top streaming platform. It’s main audience has been the U.S. and Canada, but towards the end of last year, it has picked up viewers Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (Jarvey). It would be good for the company to get more of a global audience since it is currently focused in certain regions. According to Vox.com, the number of subscribers will eventually decrease due to the flying numbers this year, but subscribers tend to be loyal to this platform. The reasons for this include the variety of content, original content, and lack of content on competing platforms. Because of their record number subscribers and unique content, I believe Netflix is best positioned to succeed as they will keep their high numbers and possibly gain a high number of new subscribers. Disney is set to face the most challenges this year for multiple reasons. Their revenue’s fell 23% this past year (Variety) and reported a loss of $710 million. Even though Disney has other revenue makers such as their parks and cruise lines, it seems they are losing more money than they are making even with the profits from Disney+. When Disney+ first came out it was a hit because it was family focused and showed classics for everyone. Disney+ definitely helped lighten the amount of loss they had, but with it being such a big company, their other money makers took a hit. Disney has been forced to lay off 28,000 workers (variety) due to financial struggles. There is also reduced operating capacities which affects how many people they can take in to entertain at one time. Lastly, there is a big deferral in the movies they were supposed to come out with due to the pandemic which is potential money lost. The lack of revenue is going to continuously be a challenge for them because of the pandemic and the lack of travel going on in the country right now.
Sources: Jarvey, Natalie. "Netflix Tops 200 Million Subscribers Amid Pandemic." The Hollywood Reporter 19 Jan. 2021, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-tops-200-million-subscribers-amid-pandemic Kafka, Peter. “The Pandemic Has Been Great for Netflix.” Vox, Vox, 16 July 2020, www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/16/21327451/netflix-covid-earnings-subscribers-q2. Lang, Brent. "Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations." Variety 12 Nov. 2020, https://variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/
Nick Melanson
ReplyDeletePart 1
2020 was, for lack of a better term, a dumpster fire. The Coronavirus halted normal life as we know it, with college students being sent home, millions of jobs being lost, and countless companies going out of business. While 2020 was a terrible year for nearly everyone, there was one company that managed to only grow as the year went on – and that was HBO Max.
Started in late May of 2020, HBO Max was pretty much thrown into the fire – that is, was launched around the time when most business were starting to bleed money as their operations were stifled or even entirely shut down due to the Coronavirus. That however is exactly why HBO Max shined. With business shut down and major cities on lockdown, there was nothing left to do but stay home and pass the time. This could be playing games with their families, working from home, or how most Americans spent it – streaming shows and movies. That’s probably why “there has been a 99% year-over-year growth in hours of live stream video watched between April 2019 and April 2020… [and] it’s safe to assume this growth has steadily increased throughout 2020” (Beltis, 3Play Media). Although businesses across the world were failing, one of the few businesses that really took off was streaming services.
At the end of September 2019, HBO Max had a massive user base of just under 39 million subscribers, but over the next three months saw that grow to over 41 million. HBO Max has grown tremendously in 2020, as it managed to build a subscriber pool of over 40 million in just seven months (Szalai, Jarvey, Hollywood Reporter). One of the reasons that HBO Max began to take off was because of the deal that it struck with Amazon in November that allowed them to release original content such as The Flight Attendant and The Undoing, as well as the streaming rights to massive film releases such as Wonder Woman 1984, Tenet, and others, which helped HBO Max in watching their subscriber count tick up. HBO Max still has loads of content to release, and with its rapidly growing fanbase and focus solely on creating and distributing content, HBO Max has a bright future ahead.
One company that didn’t do great in 2020 was Disney – or at least not entirely. Disney released its very own streaming service in late 2019 called Disney +, and it was a smashing success. Since its launch just over a year ago, Disney + has attracted 73 million paid subscribers (Lang, Variety), nearly doubling HBO Max’s subscriber count. Disney also owns a slate of streaming services and networks, such as ABC, ESPN, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and others. It’s because of Disney’s vast net of content that Disney + is such a huge success. The streaming service offers endless amount of shows and movies, and Disney having the rights to two of the most lucrative film series in cinematic history in Marvel and Star Wars doesn’t hurt either. Although Disney managed to rake it billions of dollars from their streaming service, they still watched their revenue fall “23% to 14.7 billion, while the company reported a loss of $710 million instead of the $777 million in profits it recorded in the year-ago period” (Lang, Variety). The reason that Disney is losing so much money despite seeming owning the streaming wars is because of the company’s other expenditures, namely its theme parks. With the worldwide spread of COVID-19, Disney was forced to shut down its theme parks across the world – including Walt Disney World, Disney Land, Disney World Paris, Disney cruises, and many more. This resulted in huge losses for Disney, as the company bled hundreds of millions of dollars and had to lay off nearly 30,000 employees. Disney has even been forced to permanently cancel services such as its Magical Express service (which brings guests from airport to theme park and vice versa) and has resulted in numerous construction delays. Although Disney + is thriving, especially with the release of over forty upcoming projects, the company finds itself in a tricky spot entering 2021, as the companies short term future has raised some question marks after COVID-19 took its toll on the company.
DeleteSources:
Beltis, AJ. “5 Live Streaming Video Statistics for 2020.” 3Play Media, 28 Oct. 2020, www.3playmedia.com/blog/5-live-streaming-video-statistics-for-2020/.
Lang, Brent. “Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations.” Variety, Variety, 13 Nov. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/.
Szalai, Georg, and Natalie Jarvey. “HBO Max Subscriber Update: AT&T.” The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hbo-max-subscriber-update.
Morgan Tencza
ReplyDeletePart 1
2020 was not a good year for the media conglomerates, except for those who own streaming sites. Because people were locked in, those media streaming companies soared in subscribers with endless amounts of content offered. Disney+, Netflix, and HBO Max were some of the most successful streaming platforms in 2020 and will continue to grow in 2021. However, many of the media companies rely on more than just streaming in order to show growth. As 2021 pushes on with continued effects of COVID-19 and prolonged quarantines, HBO Max and Warner Bros have an opportunity to grow with their initiatives already in effect for the year. Furthermore, I believe that even with substantial success on their streaming platform with all the exclusive content premiering this year, Disney will not have an easy route to success.
WarnerMedia’s HBO Max is relatively new to the streaming world, but it has already proven to be a strong success. According to Hollywood Reporter, HBO Max had a rough first six months, only receiving a small percentage of the love Disney+ accumulated in the beginning (Szalai and Jarvey). However, the company saw a boom of success once it released Wonder Woman 1984 on the platform at the same time it entered theaters, but free to the HBO Max subscribers. The executives of WarnerMedia made the decision to release the film digitally on to HBO Max because they were already on their fifth release date and did not want to postpone the release further (Keegan and Jarvey). This decision not only allowed for the film to finally be premiered but gave HBO Max the push it needed to draw in more subscribers. After seeing the success of the release of Wonder Woman 1984 and with the continued effects of COVID-19 hurting the film industry, WarnerMedia made the decision to release all their 2021 films in the same hybrid form, with them being available to subscribers on HBO Max and released on the same day in theaters. WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey said, “streaming service and cinemas could “accelerate that further” and allow the firm to “penetrate the market faster,” when asked about the controversial decision to use the hybrid release for the entirety of 2021 (Szalai and Jarvey). The platform is only growing because of the exclusive content provided. According to the Hollywood Reporter, WarnerMedia saw their active subscribers double in the fourth quarter of the year, once the company announced its hybrid plan (Szalai and Jarvey). I believe that number will only skyrocket once the content begins to drop on the streaming service, especially since they are free to subscribers. I truly believe HBO Max will see success this year and will only gain more traction as they begin to release the exclusive Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter spin off TV shows in early production.
Part 2
DeleteThough Disney+ has brought Disney a lot of success this past year, the company has lost substantial money through closing and partial attendance at their parks. The closing of the parks cost Disney, “a $3.1 billion bite out of its quarterly revenues and a $7.4 billion chunk out of its annual sales,” according to Variety (Lang). The article goes on to mention that Disney+ will continue to bring success to the company in 2021 with the exclusive Marvel shows, Star Wars content, and more original films and shorts. However, the success of the streaming platform won’t replace the success in the box office that Disney regularly sees with new films, especially with Marvel and Star Wars. In addition, the platform will be charging the viewers an additional price for the new released content that will also hit theaters. This is to try for box office success but remain to make profit off new releases if those choose to purchase online. Disney tried this technique with ‘Mulan,’ but it was not as successful as they hoped. However, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said, “We saw enough very positive results to know that we’ve got something here,” in reference to the premium on demand options (Lang 2020). With Disney+ still not turning a profit and many parks still closed or opened at a percentage, 2021 will be a tough year for the media conglomerate to be successful.
Sources:
Keegan, Rebecca and Natalie Jarvey. “2020's Big Plot Twist: How 'Wonder Woman 1984' Came to Upend Hollywood's Future.” The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Dec. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/2020s-big-plot-twist-how-wonder-woman-1984-came-to-upend-hollywoods-future.
Lang, Brent. “Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations.” Variety, Variety, 13 Nov. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/.
Szalai, Georg, and Natalie Jarvey. “HBO Max Subscriber Update: AT&T.” The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hbo-max-subscriber-update.
Gina Auletta
ReplyDeletePart 1
After completing the assigned readings and doing further research, Disney seems to be best positioned to succeed in 2021. Disney Plus, the streaming service which launched in November 2019, brought the media conglomerate new success amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The media landscape diagram in “Here’s who owns everything in Big Media today” by Rani Molla and Peter Kafka shows that Disney/21st Century Fox has the most revenue compared to other media companies like Netflix, AT&T/WarnerMedia, Comcast, Verizon, etc. The media conglomerate is at 328 billion dollars in revenue as of January 2021, with its streaming service, Disney Plus, at 87 million subscribers. In comparison, AT&T/WarnerMedia acquired 214 billion dollars in revenue and its streaming service, HBO/HBO Max, has 57 million subscribers as of January 2021. Evidently, Disney Plus has been gaining popularity since its launch, despite strong competition with streaming services like Netflix and HBO/HBO Max. According to the Variety article by Todd Spangler, Disney Plus hit many more subscribers than expected and is projected to continue to grow immensely. Spangler writes, “With the strong momentum at Disney Plus’ back, the company now expects the streamer to have between 230 million and 260 million total paid subscribers by the end of fiscal year 2024, CFO Christine McCarthy said at the company’s investor day Thursday, along with other projections.” Additionally, Spangler explained that Disney plans to release new originals under the Star Wars, Marvel, Disney Animation, and Pixar brands over the upcoming years and the goal is to have new originals on Disney Plus every week. On top of the prosperity brought by Disney Plus, the company can expect more visitors at its various theme parks as people get vaccinated throughout the country and become more comfortable leaving their homes. However, Disney Plus will only grow stronger in the coming years as streaming content becomes the new normal and the company will continue to prosper even as the pandemic fades.
Gina Auletta
DeletePart 2
On the other hand, I feel that Netflix may face the most challenges in 2021 compared to the other major media conglomerates. According to the diagram from Vox, as of January 2021, Netflix has 226 billion dollars in revenue while competing companies are either way ahead or close behind. For instance, as mentioned earlier, Disney/21st Century Fox has 328 billion dollars and AT&T/WarnerMedia has 214 billion dollars. Despite having more subscribers, Netflix is surely facing some strong competition as streaming content becomes more popular. The competing streaming services like HBO/HBO Max, Disney Plus, Hulu, etc. seem to be gaining more and more success as the years go on, and it can be assumed that this will continue into 2021. As a result, Netflix will have to come up with some new strategies to keep their subscribers coming back to the platform amid the other options that continue to emerge. As Natalie Jarvey put it in “Netflix Tops 200 Million Subscribers Amid Pandemic”, “Although Netflix remains the clear streaming leader, investors have started to question just how long its dominance can last. Hollywood spent the past few years mobilizing for the streaming future. Disney, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and Discovery all have introduced streaming services where they’re offering high-profile originals and classic hits that once made up the bread-and-butter of Netflix streaming viewership.” In other words, competing streaming services, such as Disney Plus, may gain enough success in the upcoming years to “dethrone” Netflix as the leader and this may start to happen sooner rather than later as we see these new streaming services producing new content promptly.
Works Cited
Jarvey, Natalie. “Netflix Tops 200 Million Subscribers Amid Pandemic.” The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-tops-200-million-subscribers-amid-pandemic.
Rani Molla, Peter Kafka. “Here's Who Owns Everything in Big Media Today.” Vox, Vox, 23 Jan. 2018, www.vox.com/2018/1/23/16905844/media-landscape-verizon-amazon-comcast-disney-fox-relationships-chart.
Spangler, Todd. “Disney Plus to Increase Prices in Early 2021, Eyes Up to 260M Subscribers by End of 2024.” Variety, Variety, 11 Dec. 2020, variety.com/2020/digital/news/disney-plus-hits-86-8-million-subscribers-1234850846/.
Stephen Halvatzis
ReplyDeletePart 1
In 2020, many companies and corporations took a hit financially. Companies associated with media were able to salvage some revenue throughout the pandemic, and are finding new ways to gain attention towards their service. Streaming services saw an increase in usage due to the stay at home orders that were in place. One streaming service that capitalized on the troubling times we've faced was HBO Max. HBO Max was introduced to the streaming world in May and became a huge hit. It was a weird introduction, because customers like myself had used HBO Go up until the requirement to subscribe to HBO Max. HBO Go was compatible with your HBO subscription through TV providers. Now, you can subscribe to HBO Max with your TV provider, Apple Sign In or Roku device. According to AT&T, HBO Max currently has 37.7 million subscribers, with 17.2 million subscribers. According to the Hollywood Reporter, "Combined, HBO and HBO Max had 41.5 million U.S. subscribers as of the end of 2020, compared with 38.0 million as of the end of September." (Szalai, Jarvey).
A reason for the emergence of HBO Max as a leading streaming service was their decision to show the debut premier of movies that their partner, Warner Bros., produced for millions of their subscribers to watch. This was a great move that allowed them to gain revenue through subscriptions, and avoid debuting their release on demand or through DVD purchase. One movie in particular, Wonder Woman 1984, garnered a lot if interest and attracted many to subscribe to HBO Max. Despite a rough first quarter to start their service, the debut of this movie has propelled them to one of the top streaming services in the world. According to Deadline, "WW84 racked up 2.252 billion minutes of streaming. That was 35% better than Pixar’s Soul, which drew almost 1.7 billion minutes on Disney+." (Hayes) This is important to note because both movies were released on the same day, and Disney+ had been killing HBO Max in rankings since its debut to streaming. Other movies such as Tenet have been released on HBO Max and it looks like the streaming service will continue to soar in 2021 if they continue to release new, unreleased content through their platform.
Part 2
DeleteThe streaming platform that is due to take a hit in 2021 is Disney+. Disney+ debuted in 2019, and has been the best streaming platform in my opinion. Not only does it allow families to watch great content from their childhood and new content, but the service comes in affordable bundles with other streaming services like ESPN+ and Hulu, both owned by Disney. However recently, they have lost a lot of attention and revenue because of the COVID pandemic as well as other events. According to Variety, "Disney’s revenues fell 23% to $14.7 billion, while the company reported a loss of $710 million instead of the $777 million in profits it recorded in the year-ago period." (Lang) One reason for this drop off is because of the emergence of the previously mentioned HBO Max and their exclusive releases. Another reason is the loss of opportunities during the pandemic. Disney owns ESPN, and ESPN+ lost a lot of opportunity to stream games exclusively to their premium customers for events like the NBA, NHL, NCAA and MLB when sports took a back seat during the peak of COVID-19 in March-April. The losses that they experienced in that time were monumental, and nearly cancelled all the progress they had made in the previous months since their service debuted with rave reviews and numbers. Another opportunity that was limited and affected Disney was travel. Because of the travel limitations and bans, tourists were not able to visit Disney owned vacation sites and resorts like Disney World. Even after travel bans were lifted, people were either too afraid to travel due to the pandemic or did not want any limitations on the experiences they would have traveling due to the virus. The pandemic has definitely affected Disney the most, and Disney will continue to be affected negatively until we return to a full normalcy in the world.
Works Cited
Keegan, Rebecca and Natalie Jarvey. “2020's Big Plot Twist: How 'Wonder Woman 1984' Came to Upend Hollywood's Future.” The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Dec. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/2020s-big-plot-twist-how-wonder-woman-1984-came-to-upend-hollywoods-future.
Lang, Brent. “Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations.” Variety, Variety, 13 Nov. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/.
Hayes, Dade. “'Wonder Woman 1984' Soars To Christmas Streaming Win On Updated U.S. Nielsen List, With 35% Margin Over 'Soul'.” Deadline, Deadline, 29 Jan. 2021, deadline.com/2021/01/wonder-woman-1984-hbo-max-streaming-win-christmas-soul-nielsen-1234683058/.
Gianna Petruccelli
ReplyDeletePart 1
It is nothing new to say that the year 2020 will be going down as one of the worst years in history. Not only did individuals go through a huge change due to the nationwide quarantine, but many major media conglomerates did as well. So many companies tanked financially due to the pandemic, and have found themselves in some pretty touch spots. Some relevant companies during the time of the pandemic are Netflix and Disney +.
Although, some media conglomerates will be coming out of this pandemic better than before. A company that seems to be on the incline is Netflix. Being that so many people were locked up in their homes, everyone turned to streaming services in order to occupy their time. According to Capitol.com, "Netflix added 8.5 million net paid subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2020, beating internal and analysts' estimates (of around 6 million)"(Nicole Willing 3). Netflix nearly doubled their subscribers by the time 2020 was nearly doubled, all thanks to the fact that new movies and shows were not able to be shot. Netflix is in a really good spot right now because people are able to binge shows that have already been aired, they do not have to wait for new episodes to me made. Furthermore, Netflix has expanded their viewership outside of the US and Canada region and into Europe, Middle East and Africa. Netflix has also planned to start making new content for when lockdown ends, keeper their viewers entertained and giving them something to look forward to. Netflix is in a really good position right now because they are using the momentum they gained in the past to ensure a successful future.
Gianna Petruccelli
DeletePart 2
On the other-hand, some major media conglomerates did not do so good as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. One that I think will face the most challenges in 2021 is Disney+. In 2019, Disney wracked up more than a billion dollars from only seven movies. In 2020, author Darren Franich says "there's no such thing as a billion dollar movie". Disney is going to be relying on Disney+ to pull the weight while parks start to get ready to re-open, putting a huge pressure on the streaming service. Furthermore, Disney+ is partnered with ESPN and ESPN+. With the uncertainty of the pandemic and the nationwide lockdowns came the inability to stream sports. Another large reason why Disney+ is projected to not do good in 2021 is because of the controversy some of their movies caused in 2020. The most controversial of the bunch had to have been Disney+'s Hamilton which was ridiculed for being "too conservative". Disney must alter many things due to the backlash they have gotten in the past year in order to dig themselves out of the small hole they are currently in, and it is not going to happen over night. According to the Washington Post, Disneys profits plummeted in 2020. "Once taxes are factored in, the company lost $700 million during the quarter" (Steven Zeitchik 1). With this being said, two of Disneys most prominent releases, "The New Mutants" and "Mulan" hardly made $100 million, as opposed to the billions they made in 2019. With the consideration of Disney Parks not being able to open and movies cannot be viewed in person, coupled with the fact that Disney had to "clean up" some political issues, it is safe to say they will have a rough 2021.
Works Cited
Franich, Darren. “2020 Was a Hell of a Year.” EW.com, ew.com/tv/2020-best-worst-essay/.
Willing, Nicole. “‘Netflix Share Price Forecast for 2021: Should You Buy the Stock After It's Q4 Earnings?".” Capital.com, 21 Jan. 2021, capital.com/netflix-stock-forecast-2021-and-beyond.
Zeitchik, Steven. “Disney's Profits Plummet as Coronavirus Keeps Its Core Businesses Flailing.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 13 Nov. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/12/disneys-profits-plummet-coronavirus-keeps-its-core-businesses-flailing/.
Brendan McDonald
ReplyDelete2020 and the rise of COVID-19 provided a unique situation for every person, government, and corporation on the planet. With everyone stuck inside quarantining all year, people looked for something to do. Naturally, streaming services seem to be an obvious answer, and boy did they see a rise. I feel like you can’t talk about successful streaming platforms in 2020 without mentioning HBO’s new service, HBO Max. Sort of bridging the gap between their ‘HBO Go’ and ‘HBO Now’ services, HBO Max is available to any HBO subscriber and features all the movies you can find on the HBO channels currently, as well as all of their past original content. But why was HBO Max, a brand new service, so successful? The answer: “content, content, content”. Or perhaps “content is king,” as Bill Gates said. Whatever saying you choose, people want content, and HBO’s got it. For decades HBO has been one highest-rated producers of television shows and miniseries like The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, and Chernobyl. This content, in addition to their licensed content, has brought them “41 million [subscribers], a full two years faster than [their] initial forecast” (Szalai and Jarvey). But HBO isn’t just relying on their old content to keep customers happy, with movie theaters closing down due to the pandemic, HBO had digital releases of movies like Wonder Woman 1984. This meant that people didn’t have to leave their home to see the new movie and the studio makes money on it, allowing them to produce more films, perhaps even more straight to digital releases.
As far as companies that struggled a bit more, Disney was one of the biggest, but not necessarily because of their streaming service Disney+. “Disney estimated that COVID-19 had taken a $3.1 billion bite out of its quarterly revenues and a $7.4 billion chunk out of its annual sales” (Lang). The biggest thing to note about Disney is that a huge chunk of their revenue is made in visits to their parks, and people going to see their movies in theaters. Both of these sources of income were essentially eliminated with the pandemic, but Disney+ managed to bring in 73 million subscribers since it launched a little over a year ago in November of 2019. While Disney posted a decrease in profits last year, I think that this should be a bit of a wake-up call for groups like Netflix. The problem for them is that Disney managed to amass a large number of subscribers in a relatively short time, this is probably mostly caused by the plethora of Disney content that people know and love, as well as the price. Netflix has been increasing the price of their subscription gradually over the years, while Disney is able to keep Disney+ at a measly $7/month (that’s less than the old Netflix price of $8/month). Additionally, Netflix has a lot of plans to choose from, whereas Disney has just one price. Netflix also reportedly saw a decrease in subscriptions after the summer. “July, August, and September — historically a strong quarter for Netflix — saw much slower growth, including just 177,000 adds in the United States” (Zeitchik). This figure is down from the 3 million gained in the spring. The thing is, Disney can afford to do this. They could even afford to lose money on this streaming service for years and be fine; they have billions and billions of dollars. I believe that if groups like Disney want to crush Netflix, they absolutely can.
Georg Szalai, & Jarvey, N. (2021, January 27). HBO Max Reaches 37.7M, Including 17.2M “Activated,” Subscribers. The Hollywood Reporter; https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hbo-max-subscriber-update
Lang, B. (2020, November 12). Walt Disney Company Reports Quarterly Losses Due to Coronavirus. Variety; Variety. https://variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/
Zeitchik, S. (2020, October 20). Netflix new subscriber signups plummeted over the summer, halting pandemic-fueled growth. Washington Post; The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/20/netflix-new-subscibers-plummet/
Hayley Cuttitta
ReplyDelete2020 brought on a lot of challenges for all major media conglomerates. It was a year of never knowing what was going to come next. These conglomerates had to attempt at anticipating the future of their work due to the pandemic and in turn make a plan that would keep them afloat. It has definitely been helpful to have so many people at home, especially during the winter, inside wanting to watch TV shows and movies as much as possible. Streaming services became even more popular than they already were at the beginning of the pandemic and have maintained great popularity to this day. When looking back and 2020, the major media conglomerates faced many difficulties, but will hopefully be able to turn around in 2021. As some soared, others did not do quite as well. One streaming service that greatly succeeded in 2020 and will continue to succeed in 2021 is Netflix. Natalie Jarvey wrote that, “Netflix faced more competition than ever before in 2020, but the streamer is showing little sign of flagging, ending the year with an unprecedented nearly 204 million global subscribers”, which seems to be a good indication that Netflix will do well in 2021. (Jarvey 2021). Unfortunately, Netflix is now not the only streaming service that offers original content. Disney, NBCUniversal, Warner Media, and Discovery are competition because they are starting to offer similar content. If users still heavily lean towards Netflix although prices are going up, it will maintain a high spot on the list of successful media conglomerates in 2021.
Although streaming services appeared to be greatly successful in 2020 because of the high demand placed on them, Disney as a whole struggled when it came to their other businesses that weren’t part of the streaming services. In October of 2020 Disney decided to do a bit of restructuring, presumably in hopes to increase revenue again. Many were confused about the announcement that was made. In an article from the Hollywood Reporter, Natalie Jarvey wrote that, “Under the new structure, says a source with knowledge of the situation, Daniel’s Media and Entertainment Distribution group will work with the studios to determine their overall budgets and to dictate the content needs of distributors like Disney+ and ABC” (Jarvey 2020) and the group will also decide what content goes where. The COVID-19 shutdown of Disney which included theaters and theme parks closing, caused Disney’s revenues to tumble. At the height of the pandemic, “the entertainment conglomerate’s sales were 42% lower than they were a year earlier, and its quarterly net loss totaled nearly $5 billion” (Jasinski, 2021), that would make it seem like Disney would not be able to come back from such a great loss, but that is not the case. Disney did so well streaming service wise, they gained 87 million subscribers worldwide as of December 2020. Disney’s future is seen in their transition to become a streaming-centric operating service, which will help Disney succeed in 2021.
Jarvey, Natalie, “Disney’s Streaming Pivot: How Will New Structure Work in Practice?” The Hollywood Reporter, 21 Oct. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com.
Jarvey, Natalie. “Netflix Tops 200 Million Subscribers Amid Pandemic.” The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-tops-200-million-subscribers-amid-pandemic.
Jasinski, Nicholas. “Disney Ended the Year on a High Note. Why 2021 Could Be Even More Exciting.” Disney Ended 2020 on a High Note. Why 2021 Could Be Even More Exciting., Barrons, 1 Jan. 2021, www.barrons.com/articles/disney-ended-2020-on-a-high-note-why-2021-could-be-even-more-exciting-51609493400.
Emma Frisbie
ReplyDeleteIn March of 2020, coronavirus entered our lives and changed every aspect of our delicate lives. Aside from the obvious effects, COVID-19 had on our daily lives, it also drastically changed the way media conglomerates functioned and provided content for the customers. Traditional movie theaters were already on their last leg financially. Countless films scheduled years in advance to be released in theaters were halted and thrown off course, now to be released on streaming platforms. In a Nielson report, “Between March and August 2020, U.S. adults spent 12.2 trillion minutes with digital, 11.1 trillion minutes with linear TV and 2.8 trillion minutes streaming — and these numbers continue to exponentially grow." (Porter). If the pandemic never happened I still believe that streaming would’ve taken over eventually. The pandemic is just speeding things up.
In 2020, the number of people using streaming services grew exponentially. I believe that in 2021, Disney looks to be one of the media conglomerates to have lots of success. But, I also believe that Netflix is still an honorable mention. Despite having a rocky 2020, due to its big losses of park revenue, I think the fact that Disney has control of so many other entities will be to their benefit. According to a Hollywood reporter article, they blew away their initial estimates for subscribers to Disney+ almost doubling it, coming in around 87 million subscribers. This number is only going to grow (Porter).
A big part of Disney is its reputation. If Disney puts out a film in theaters whether it be Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, or Pixar people are going out to see it. With the theaters being closed for an unknown amount of time, I think consumers are more willing to pay for a subscription service where they have access to all of Disney’s assets and their favorite content. According to Hollywood Reporter, Disney is releasing 40 new titles across Disney+ and Hulu coming in 2021. The fact that Disney is a legacy media conglomerate changes the game that makes it difficult for others to compete with. In addition, with the vaccine rolling out, I think the Disney parks will have the potential to soon be up and running again by the end of 2021.
Going off of this, I think a conglomerate that might not do well is AT&T/Warner Media. They have Turner, DirecTV, and HBO Max but I don’t think those can compete well with other larger conglomerates. Edmund Lee from the New York Times says it’s also unclear if the decision for AT&T to move into the Media world was a good one. According to a Hollywood Reporter article, they also announced that all their previously scheduled theater content on HBO Max (Szalai). I think that the movies being released in HBO Max are ones better suited for the big screen although that option is not available now. This might cause problems for their content releases.
Lee, Edmund. “Who's Behind the Fight Between Warner Bros. and Hollywood? It's AT&T.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/business/media/hbo-max-subscribers-att-box-office-losses.html.
Porter, Rick. “The Numbers Behind Media Giants' All-In Streaming Plays.” The Hollywood Reporter, 12 Dec. 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-long-view-the-numbers-behind-media-giants-all-in-streaming-plays.
Szalai, Georg. “Analyst on Logical NBCU-WarnerMedia Merger.” The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Jan. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywoods-2021-investor-forecast-outlined-in-analyst-report.
It is to no one's surprise that me saying the year 2020 sucked, is an understatement. With Covid-19 spreading all over the world rapidly and the drama of United States politics, people couldn’t stop watching the news, and fearing for themselves and their loved ones. Streaming took a turn (or multiple turns) during the year of 2020. Some streaming services did awful (well sort of awful), for instance, Disney. Disney as a whole lost 710$ million last year (Lang, Variety) which is much different then their usual 777$ million in profits that they recorded just one year earlier. This is thanks to their parks shutting down and their movies being pushed back. Yet, Disney plus as a streaming service went past their expected marks for the year. This was just about the only good sign for Disney since they were expected to lose millions of more dollars during the year. The CEO Bob Chapek said himself “The real bright spot has been our direct-to-consumer business, which is key to the future of our company.” (Lang, Variety) This is great for Disney Plus since they have many movies and TV shows that were planned to come out in 2020 that are now going to take streaming services by storm in 2021, staking a huge claim in the streaming wars. I believe that this streaming service is now in the best position to succeed in 2021. On the other hand I think that Viacom CBS is set to have a pretty bad year in the streaming wars. CBS All Access has been it’s streaming service that has been competing against the other major conglomerates the past year. CBS All Access is changing this year to Paramount Plus which is causing investors to get a little weary of the company. Although I think it’s a good idea most Agency executives are saying “Those guys are basically trailing everyone else as a media company,” (Peterson, Digiday) The article states that CBS was actually one of the first to get into the streaming wars but never expanded on it. CBS will have trouble because they have a linear-business model with their cable network. They will have to lose money this year before they start to make money and the hope is they can compete for the top spot of tier two in the streaming wars. Still, there is another way to look at these streaming wars. Maybe the streaming wars are ending in 2021, meaning if you aren’t signed up by the end of the year for some streaming service, you probably never will. That is the argument that this article from Wired is trying to make. Claiming that “if the pandemic doesn’t get them to sign up for Apple TV+ or HBO Max or Disney+, nothing will. Chances are that a good portion of 2021 will feature closed theaters and lockdowns. Streaming services will likely have a few more months to sign up new users, but after that, the battle may be over.” (Watercutter, Wired) This is an interesting way to look at the streaming wars and the author in my opinion has a point. The streaming wars will continue in 2021, but we don’t know entirely what the future holds until the end of the year.
ReplyDeleteWatercutter, Angela. “The Streaming Wars Could Finally End in 2021.” Wired, Conde Nast, www.wired.com/story/disney-plus-hbo-max-streaming-wars/.
Lang, Brent. “Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations.” Variety, Variety, 13 Nov. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/.
Peterson, Tim. “How ViacomCBS Is Managing the Transition from Linear TV to Streaming.” Digiday, 26 Jan. 2021, digiday.com/future-of-tv/change-the-channel-how-viacomcbs-is-managing-the-transition-from-linear-tv-to-streaming/.
Kasey Kerrick
ReplyDeleteDue to the pandemic, multiple media conglomerates have taken a hit to revenues and potential future revenue. However, it could set some up to succeed better than others. Netflix has hit a record of 200 million subscribers. “Lockdowns around the world helped to significantly boost streaming signups…” (Jarvey). Netflix has also continuously created original tv shows such as Stranger Things and Outer Banks which have hit record viewing numbers. For the past years, Netflix has been known to be the top streaming platform. It’s main audience has been the U.S. and Canada, but towards the end of last year, it has picked up viewers Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (Jarvey). It would be good for the company to get more of a global audience since it is currently focused in certain regions. According to Vox.com, the number of subscribers will eventually decrease due to the flying numbers this year, but subscribers tend to be loyal to this platform. The reasons for this include the variety of content, original content, and lack of content on competing platforms. Because of their record number subscribers and unique content, I believe Netflix is best positioned to succeed as they will keep their high numbers and possibly gain a high number of new subscribers.
Disney is set to face the most challenges this year for multiple reasons. Their revenue’s fell 23% this past year (Variety) and reported a loss of $710 million. Even though Disney has other revenue makers such as their parks and cruise lines, it seems they are losing more money than they are making even with the profits from Disney+. When Disney+ first came out it was a hit because it was family focused and showed classics for everyone. Disney+ definitely helped lighten the amount of loss they had, but with it being such a big company, their other money makers took a hit. Disney has been forced to lay off 28,000 workers (variety) due to financial struggles. There is also reduced operating capacities which affects how many people they can take in to entertain at one time. Lastly, there is a big deferral in the movies they were supposed to come out with due to the pandemic which is potential money lost. The lack of revenue is going to continuously be a challenge for them because of the pandemic and the lack of travel going on in the country right now.
Sources:
Jarvey, Natalie. "Netflix Tops 200 Million Subscribers Amid Pandemic." The Hollywood Reporter 19 Jan. 2021, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-tops-200-million-subscribers-amid-pandemic
Kafka, Peter. “The Pandemic Has Been Great for Netflix.” Vox, Vox, 16 July 2020, www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/16/21327451/netflix-covid-earnings-subscribers-q2.
Lang, Brent. "Disney Quarterly Losses Mount, Even as Company Beats Expectations." Variety 12 Nov. 2020,
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/walt-disney-earnings-coronavirus-disney-plus-1234830544/