There are three things you need to be aware of.
Westworld, a TV show based on the movie of the same name, has been canceled. On social media, the reaction was shocking.
The creators of the show plan to end the show after five seasons. The network has become an artist friendly one. It would allow the show's creators to finish their work.
There are a lot of concerns about Warner Bros. Discovery. Zaslav, the $246-million man, has scrapped the release of a completed movie, yanked titles off of a pay TV channel and fired hundreds of people.
There was a simple reason for Westworld's demise. The show has lost most of its audience from the first season. While Zaslav is making a lot of changes on the business side of the company, he has made it clear that he respects the programming prowess of the cable channel.
It has survived two of the worst corporate mergers in history, being acquired by AOL and then AT&T, and it still produces some of the best TV in the world. There have been dry spells, but there has been a constant source of great stories. If you include licensed movies and live sports, it's 50.
Felix Gillette and John Koblin wrote a book about the history of HBO, and I talked to them about their reporting. Their book can be ordered here.
"It's not TV" is the most well-known slogan. It's the cable TV channel. It was taken for the title of your book.
They decided they had to counter program from the start. ABC, CBS and NBC were too powerful to compete with each other. Boxing, stand-up, concerts and movies were the first ways they counterprogrammed.
The first person to come up with the idea of the slogan was an executive at the company. It's a memorable slogan because it held true. I don't think it's gone away.
It has been more difficult since the competition from AMC and other channels increased. If you look at the batting average of everyone else, it is a little bit worse.
There has been a lull in programming. The Sopranos and Sex and the City were the first shows to come out. Around the end of the show, they had one. How does it bounce back?
"Hbo has never been defined by a single visionary leader." It is a group of executives who have passed the baton on. The programming chief has been with the company for a couple of years. In 2004, he joined the network. His direct reports are all veterans. They were all trained by people who were there. They go back to trusting the artist.
They don't rely on data or an algorithm to make programming decisions. Market research shows you what happened in the past. It doesn't give you an idea of what's to come.
There is a lot of work put into the process. The story should be told on the right foot. Things are kept in development until they feel good.
One night a week is all they had to do. It is possible to do this in small batches. Sometimes there is too much stuck in development when they are in these phases. There was a lot of projects that they acquired and were not doing anything with.
In 25 pages, you tackled the first decade of the show. Why don't you go through that?
You need to leave a lot of interesting things on the floor in order to tell 50 years of history. Hard decisions were made early on. To give those moments their due, you had to make choices about what you wouldn't.
Felix had a rule that no chapter should be more than 5000 words. Let's move this along.
Sports or sex were more important to the success of the network.
It needs to be a sport.
The boxing of Mike Tyson was important. They were hit when he fought. Mike Tyson was a part of the DNA of the company. He was a big draw for attention. The audience loved these characers that were violent and soft on the skin.
Michael thinks broadcast TV is slanted towards females. Let's counter program by making the network more skewed towards males. Adult sitcoms with female nudity are included. You get late-night documentaries about strip clubs.
The man controls the remote to women or kids and you wrote about it with Girls. The remote is in someone's hands right now.
At this time, it's pretty evenly split. When Casey took over, the audience was mostly male and female. It will be about 50% in 2020.
You write about the lack of diversity at the network. Is that brought up by people without being asked? Is that something that a lot of executives were thinking about.
The gender issue inside the company was not something that we thought about before digging into the reporting. During interviews, it came up a lot. In the 1980's and 90's, it could be difficult for women to work at Time Warner.
The rise of the anti-hero and the difficult men can be traced back to the role played by Hbo. The last couple of years have seen a shift in the number of female characters at the center.
I didn't realize how explicitly they were programming the network for men. It has been difficult to get rid of.
There was a show that announced to the world that HBO was a real player.
I think it's Oz, it's been for a long time. Broadcasting networks did that. There weren't many attempts with 1st and Ten, Dream On and The LarrySanders Show.
Oz was the first place they could point out where someone doing broadcast TV could do everything they couldn't do before. It wasn't a good idea to do a Prison show.
Giving creators more freedom is one of the things that's similar to early HBO. There are many parallels between the two. What are the most similar and different things?
Gillette was the first to jump into new technology. The evolution of cable TV can be traced back to the decision to pay millions of dollars to jump on a satellite. The benefits of a head start were enjoyed by everyone. That is very similar to when it starts streaming.
The Hollywood studios were upset with the initial success of HBO. The studios thought that the movies would be given to people in their homes. Everyone is not happy with the initial announcement of original programming from the company.
The courts stopped the movie studios from creating a competing company.
In the 70s and 1980s, it was a subscription service. I didn't really appreciate it until we reported it. Ted Sarandos used to say, "We need to become HBO faster than they become us." I didn't know how much of a role HBO played.
The data science and technology company aspires to a level of creative excellence similar to that of the premium cable channel. A different set of tools are used.
Is it possible that Netflix succeeded?
It takes a minute for streaming to be done right. It can be difficult to understand. It quickly became apparent that the streaming service would not be a part of the cable network. They would become part of the group. There is a better batting average for premium content.
There was a push to create a streaming service by some executives at the time. Is it possible that it would have been a success?
I don't think that's true. They would have ruined it if they'd bought it. There was a lot of institutional reaction to the acquisition. Everyone was excited about these people from Virginia. There was resentment at Time Warner.
They were trapped by their own successes. Business was tied up with cable operators. It was too risky to upset those relationships without a clear vision.
The phone company brought together different parts of Time Warner and I think that was a good idea even if it wasn't handled in the best way. In the book, you talk about the benefits of being separate. Was it necessary to be separate? Was the idea a bad one?
The risk to the brand was significant. Is it possible that quality programming can coexist with The Big bang Theory and Friends? It has been shown that things are going well. They have been programming a lot. It was not easy.
The AT&T deal was more difficult than the Discovery deal.
The number of executives who left the building was considered. Do you need to throw a premiere party? Do you need to do this much? They would do things AT&T didn't do if they knocked it back a bit. The jury is not finished.
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Media and technology companies are suffering more than most because of the stock market's poor performance. To say the least.
Fox Corp. was the only company that had a good week.
There are a lot of swings that have to do with the economy and the performance of Fox and Roku. Advertisers are focusing on what they think is the most important.
Old reliable advertising will stay strong. Expenditures related to the election need to happen now. Good news for companies with exposure to news and sports.
It is bad news for other TV networks and newer players that are still experimental.
Michael Nathanson is an analyst.
In a slowing economy, the lack of scatter demand for video advertising more negatively impacts media properties that are unproven, hard to measure or beneficiaries of a once-tightened ad market. That would be Roku and other CTV players like Pluto.
All these mergers are supposed to create value for shareholders. It's why we allow them to happen. Let's go back to the beginning of the year Discovery Communications and Time Warner were worth more than $108 billion. They are all part of the same company and have a value of $25 billion. A visual aid could be helpful.
The combined value of Time Warner, Discovery and Scripps has gone down in the last year.
There is a source for this.
By comparison, the S&P 500 has increased 40% since the beginning of the year, while Disney shares are down andNetflix shares are up.
Debt can affect the enterprise value of the company. If you wanted to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, you'd have to buy the debt as well. The enterprise value of Warner Bros. Discovery is less than the enterprise value of Time Warner when it was bought.
The number one album in the world is...
Taylor Swift wrote a song called "midnights". Since 2015, Swift has posted the best first week sales. The business was driven by physical media. She sold over half a million vinyl records and over three hundred thousand CDs. That's right, CDs!
Swift sold more records than the next 80 best selling artists combined.
There is a movie in the world.
Is Adam still black? It is going to be difficult for Warner Bros. to make money in the foreseeable future because of the movie's performance.
The film cost $200 million to make and another nine figures to sell. It will need $600 million to breakeven. The new Black Panther is opening this week.
Ratings for the World Series are good. They are not good.
The World Series TV ratings are up a bit over last year. The bad news is that.
Is it the good news? The World Series have been the least watched on record.
There are deals.
The Lodge Room is an independent venue located in Los Angeles' Highland Park neighborhood. The Marias are a Los Angeles-based group that is on the verge of their big break.
The opening act was a young singer called Ogi. I discovered I had heard the extended play before when I looked her up on the internet. She's going to be a famous person.
(Updates with comparison of Warner Bros. Discovery value to stock market.)
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