Business of Media
Walt Disney prepares for proxy battle with Nelson Peltz
Activist investor Nelson Peltz will try to force his way on to the board of Walt Disney after the company declined to nominate him as a director, setting the stage for one of the biggest proxy fights in the US in years, report Financial Times’ Christopher Grimes, Ortenca Aliaj and Sara Germano.
Peltz is planning to take his attempt for a board seat directly to investors, according to people briefed on his plans, putting him in confrontation with Bob Iger just months after he returned for a second stint as chief executive of the sprawling entertainment group.
Disney on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) said it was opposed to giving a board seat to Peltz, the head of New York-based Trian Partners, which owns a $US900 million ($1.3 billion) stake in the company. In an apparent attempt to get ahead of the looming fight, Disney named Nike veteran Mark Parker as its next chairman.
Parker will succeed Susan Arnold, whose leadership was called into question last year over the company’s handling of former chief executive Bob Chapek’s final months in the job.
Peltz’s proxy fight against Disney would be one of the biggest boardroom battles since he forced his way into a director’s seat at consumer products group Procter & Gamble in 2018.
Netflix joins upfront week, nabbing Paramount’s vacated spot
It’s official: Netflix is joining upfront week, reports Adweek’s Bill Bradley.
The streaming giant exclusively told Adweek that it will host its first-ever upfront week event on Wednesday, May 17, at New York’s Paris Theater. The company’s event for advertisers will likely start with a presentation at 5 p.m., followed by a reception.
For its first year at upfront week, Netflix is looking to put its own spin on the annual advertising showcase, hosting an intimate gathering with its advertising partners. However, the streamer is still finalizing the details and will share additional information closer to the May gathering.
With the news, Netflix takes over Paramount’s vacated upfront week slot on Wednesday afternoon. In December, Paramount announced it would skip its decades-long Carnegie Hall upfront week appearance in favor of high-impact, intimate gatherings with agency partners.
UK could jail social media bosses who breach child safety rules
Downing Street has said it is considering a Tory-backed amendment to the online safety bill that would allow for the imposing of jail sentences on social media bosses who are found not to have protected children’s safety, report The Guardian’s Kiran Stacey and Dan Milmo.
No 10 said on Thursday it was open to the proposal, which is backed by at least 36 Conservative MPs including the former home secretary Priti Patel and the former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.
The amendment would give Ofcom, the communications watchdog, the power to prosecute executives at social media companies that are found to have breached the law. If ministers include it in the bill, it will mark the third time the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has bowed to the demands of his backbenchers, after U-turns on planning and onshore windfarms.
Warner Bros Discovery rolls out first HBO Max price hike in U.S.
Warner Bros Discovery Inc is raising HBO Max’s ad-free subscription fee in the United States for the first time since the streaming service was launched in 2020, the TV network said on Thursday, sending its shares down 3%, report Reuters.
Prices for the platform, currently streaming shows such as The White Lotus and House of the Dragon, will rise by $1 to $15.99 plus taxes a month for U.S. subscribers.
HBO Max, which also has an ad-supported tier, faces pressure from slowing user growth and tight competition from larger rivals Netflix Inc and Walt Disney Co’s Disney+. Netflix and Disney had also raised prices for some of their streaming services last year.
Warner Bros Discovery, formed last year by the merger of AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia unit and Discovery Inc, is pushing for internal changes including plans to combine HBO Max and Discovery+.
Universal Music CEO takes aim at Spotify, Apple: Artists are “Undervalued” in streaming
Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge said the business models for music streaming need to “evolve” to better reward artists — whether or not they are signed to a major label — and listeners, reports The Hollywood Reporter’s J. Clara Chan.
In a message to staff sent Wednesday, the executive took aim at the royalty model of streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify; these services, broadly speaking, determine their payments to rights holders based on a pool of money coming from subscriptions and ads, divided by contributions to the total number of streams.
Though Grainge name-checked Spotify and UMG’s collaborations with the company as part of the industry’s shift toward streaming, the CEO said it was time to develop a new model “to keep pace with change.”
“There is a growing disconnect between, on the one hand, the devotion to those artists whom fans value and seek to support and, on the other, the way subscription fees are paid by the platforms. Under the current model, the critical contributions of too many artists, as well as the engagement of too many fans, are undervalued,” Grainge said.
Prince Harry’s book Spare sells over 1.4 million copies in U.S., U.K and Canada on first day
Prince Harry’s memoir sold more than 1.4 million copies in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. on its first day, a performance that publisher Penguin Random House said was the largest first-day sales total for any nonfiction book it ever published, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg.
The first day sales totals for Spare included preorders as well as sales of print books, digital books and audiobooks, Penguin Random House, a unit of Bertelsmann SE, said Wednesday. The publisher said it printed 2 million hardcover copies of Spare for the U.S., and that it has gone back to press.
The Prince Harry book, which was officially released Tuesday—but last week mistakenly went on sale in Spain and was leaked to a British newspaper—details his deepening divisions with his brother, Prince William, and other members of the royal family.
Demand for Spare has been so strong that Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore chain in the U.S., said Tuesday the memoir “looks certain to set record-breaking day-one sales” at the bookseller and “is expected to be one of the biggest books of 2023.”
See Also: Prince Harry memoir Spare becomes fastest selling UK non-fiction book ever
Television
Golden Globe viewership continues to decline in US
On the one hand, the ratings were only marginally worse compared with the last telecast of the Golden Globes. On the other hand, viewership for the awards show has officially collapsed from the highs of the past decade, reports The New York Times’ John Koblin.
The Globes drew an audience of 6.3 million people on Tuesday night, only slightly fewer than the pared-down ceremony of 2021 because of the pandemic, but down drastically from the 18 million who watched it in 2020 — the last time the ceremony was in early January.
Reviews for Tuesday’s ceremony, which was hosted by Jerrod Carmichael, were mostly warm. Vulture called it “great live TV,” and The New Yorker praised it as “fizzy and fun.”
The viewership totals, however, are another matter.
From 2010 to 2020, the Globes reliably averaged 17 million to 20 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
Streaming services are now valued at almost $3 billion in Australia. Will they help tell more local stories?
Australia’s film and television industry is changing, reports the ABC’s Sam Nichols.
A recent Screen Australia report showed that film production expenditure in Australia reached a record $2.29 billion during the 2022 financial year, with more than $1.5 billion going towards local titles.
However, the same report also showed a shift in who is producing this content.
Between 2017/2018 and 2021/2022, free-to-air television annual spending on drama productions dropped from $250 million to $208 million.
By contrast, spending by international subscription television and subscription video on demand (SVOD) producers, like Netflix and Amazon Prime, skyrocketed from $96 million to $445 million over the same period.
There’s another shift happening too. A Queensland University of Technology analysis found that in 2019, the average Australian drama television series produced by a commercial broadcaster had seven episodes. In 1999, this number was 21.
Treasure trove of historical Mildura footage saved in WIN TV building clear-out
A historian has saved approximately 80 per cent of the historical footage stored at Mildura’s original local TV bureau from being thrown out in a clean-out of the building, reports the ABC’s Tamara Clark.
Archival news footage taken of the town in the 1960s and ’70s, documenting important local events such as flooding of the Murray River, has been salvaged from the former WIN TV building.
The other 20 per cent of the historical footage has been donated to other historians, including local man David Carson.