“When you look at the entertainment war for attention and you realise that there are seven trillion-dollar Death Stars – Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Tencent and Alibaba – all with unlimited resources and diversified revenue models, you understand why scale is the most important thing,” says Evan Shapiro, producer, media commentator and creator of …
Discovery Inc. is in the midst of laying off hundreds of employees. A radical headcount reduction is central to Discovery’s current campaign to eliminate $US hundreds of millions in costs in 2020. I hear that the layoffs and other cuts affect all of the company’s activities, from corporate to programming, and from new hires to …
Discovery’s CEO David M Zazlav earned $128 million in 2018 That’s according to an executive compensation analysis published in today’s New York Times. Mr Zazlav’s 2018 payday was ranked #2 among all U.S. public companies. It was exceeded only by Elon Musk’s TESLA package ($2.8 billion). Context Discovery’s producers typically earn 10% of the …
Dr John Morse heads the consumer research firm Byron Media. He is a highly-respected industry veteran with a deep specialization in viewing behavior. He describes how, until recently, we relied on well-established processes and research firms like Nielsen, COMSCORE and BARB to accurately calculate how many viewers watch a particular program, and what type of …
Discovery must be in play after AT&T’s recent takeover of Time Warner with its Warner Bros, HBO and Turner programming assets. The newly combined Discovery Scripps venture is valued at more than $34 Bn. That is a stratospheric achievement for a company that forged its initial connection with viewers via off-the-shelf acquisitions like Australian lizard-specialist Harry …
Tasty is enjoying a meteoric rise driven by its low budget, fixed-camera cooking format and Facebook distribution. It is a Case Study in how viewing on Facebook is hurting leading cable channels like the Food Network, and in turn, damaging Discovery‘s valuation. Hands & Pans: Tasty is a BuzzFeed division that produces and shares content related to comfort …
We round out our 2014 snapshot of the poster-baby of the Reality TV Boom, Leftfield Entertainment: Which networks are buying? And where is the growth? The #’s speak for themselves: A 900% +/- increase in networks served over 5 years. Notably a shift from reliance on Pawn Stars and A+E Networks, which was achieved through organic development by Leftfield …
Money Matters: Finding Finance Workshop MIPDoc, April 5, 2014. Bo Stehmeier, Off the Fence, and Peter Hamilton. After our packed workshop, Bo Stehmeier graciously recapped his important ‘rule of thumb’ for establishing the co-pro, pre-sale or acquisition value of a program in a given market. This was the topic that generated the most discussion in the Q&A …