Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

That's a beauty, a revisit, for sure. For now, on reading the names in

"When the media titans Brian Roberts, John Malone and Barry Diller cast off in early February on Mr. Diller’s
156-foot, two-masted yacht, named Arriva, the waters off the coast of Jupiter, Fla., were placid.
The same could not be said for their sprawling entertainment businesses. "

i thought of Julie, Buggsy and Phyllis, for what that's worth. Then to

"Rarely do these executives speak so candidly, on the record, about the challenge in front of them. And the meetings on the yacht aside, rarely do executives in that stratosphere get together to discuss strategy. Not only are many of them fierce rivals — Mr. Roberts famously drove up the cost of Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets by bidding against Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger — but meetings among direct competitors might attract unwelcome attention from antitrust regulators."

LOL Yep, gotta do our serious stuff outside of the view of those nasty regulators. We
love our subscribers, but not the regulators who are supposed to work for them. So to

"Bob Chapek, Disney’s chief executive until 2022, also agreed that 200 million was the number that meant “you’re big enough to compete.”
P - Netflix has reached that, and then some, with about 270 million paying subscribers. Moreover, those subscribers pay an industry-leading average of more than $11 per month.
P - Netflix is highly profitable, with operating margins of 28 percent. In the first quarter of 2024, Netflix reported revenue of $9.4 billion, and $2.3 billion in net income. No one else comes close."

And in the interests of transparency, yes, as is known here i do subscribe to Netflix. Only the one, still read
more .. And i don't churn. Like shopping for clothes, insurance or energy supplier doesn't grab me either.

When sport arrived my thought was 'was wondering when it would come
up', even though i really hadn't been wondering it. Anyway, didn't know

"Play Ball

Adding to the cost pressure, the executives said, is the soaring cost of sports programming. Even in the bygone era of traditional television, the broad appeal of sports was obvious. The big networks paid billions for must-see events like the Super Bowl and the N.B.A. Finals and much of what was left over went to Disney and Hearst-owned ESPN, one of the most lucrative cable franchises ever created.
P - But that was before streaming and the arrival of the deep-pocketed tech giants. Amazon now offers football games from the National Football League, NASCAR races, the W.N.B.A. with its newly minted star Caitlin Clark, the National Hockey League in Canada and Champions League soccer in Germany, Italy and Britain.
P - Apple TV+ also features Major League Baseball, as well as Major League Soccer."

the others were into it as much. Don't see Netflix in there, but that's cool
as would cost more. To my last cuz this elevator game isn't easy

"Mr. Hopkins of Amazon said “procedurals and other tried and true formats do well for us, but we also need big swings that have customers saying ‘Wow, I can’t believe that just happened’ and will have people telling their friends.”
P - “We want rabid fans,” he said.
P - Bryan Lourd, chief executive and co-chairman of the powerful Creative Artists Agency, said media executives needed to put aside financial engineering and remember that creativity — and entertaining customers — was the only way to win in the long run.
P - “The task at hand is to keep the customer at the front of your brain,” Mr. Lourd said. “When people stop doing that is when things start to go wrong.”
P - And Yet, Continued Optimism"

Well i ain't rabid so, lol, you can keep Amazon. On optimism is a good place to end.

Cheers.