Michael Pachter, research analyst at Wedbush Securities, is more pointed: “The market thinks all of the corporate bosses are idiots, and generally sides with the unions.”
He adds: “Higher pay might be difficult to endorse, but protections for residual uses of content and against AI make perfect sense to most people, and the media companies are intransigent and unapologetic.”
I'm hoping we will soon see a 'thinning of the herd' leaving only 3 or 4 big streaming companies to compete against one another while the ones that likely fold then return to a focus on production...
“We’re in the ‘show me’ phase for many of these companies,” says [Neil] Begley. “They will continue to be depressed.” He says traditional media stocks will suffer unless they can get back to growing scale and become tier-one streamers with 200 million plus subscribers globally (for context: Max is at 97 million as of Q1; Paramount+ at 60 million). That scenario requires more content spending and expansion, not price increases for consumers that shrink the base, he believes. As yet, only Netflix and Disney are there.
I'm hoping we will soon see a 'thinning of the herd' leaving only 3 or 4 big streaming companies to compete against one another while the ones that likely fold then return to a focus on production and licencing their content to the others. Even better would be, for example, Netflix entering into co-production deals with the likes of Paramount and HBO to split costs and, hopefully, better ensure the longevity of more niche programming.
I'm hoping we will soon see a 'thinning of the herd' leaving only 3 or 4 big streaming companies to compete against one another while the ones that likely fold then return to a focus on production and licencing their content to the others. Even better would be, for example, Netflix entering into co-production deals with the likes of Paramount and HBO to split costs and, hopefully, better ensure the longevity of more niche programming.