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Listen to (and share) episode 36 of our audio podcast Deadline Big Media With David Lieberman. Deadline’s Executive Editor talks with host David Bloom about Apple’s taxing day on Capitol Hill; whether production tax incentives pay off the way the MPAA says they do; and Marissa Mayer’s big gamble with Yahoo’s $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition.
Deadline Big Media, Episode 36 (MP3 format)
Deadline Big Media, Episode 36 (MP4a format) READ MORE »
Many investors weren’t sure what they’d see after February when the streaming music company, eager to control its royalty costs, put a 40-hour-a-month cap on mobile listening. But they liked what they saw in the Q1 report out today, even though the net loss increased: Pandora‘s shares are up 9.3% in post-market trading. The company lost $28.6M in the quarter that ended in April, worse that last year’s $20.2M loss, on revenues of $125.5M, +55.4%. The revenue number beat expectations for $123.8M. And the net loss, at 10 cents per share not including one-time expenses, matched the consensus forecast. Total listener hours were up 35% to 4.2B and Pandora says that ad sales increased 49% to $105.1M. Much of the jump is due to mobile use: The company generated $23.23 in ad revenue for every 1,000 ad-supported listener hours, +29.9%. Read More »
The stock is up about 4% in mid-afternoon trading after Piper Jaffray’s James Marsh raised his price target for Lionsgate this morning by 18.5% to $32 ahead of the studio’s financial report next week for the quarter that ended … Read More »
The broadcaster has begun to warn more than 1.5M viewers in 14 markets that its stations could disappear from Time Warner Cable and Bright House Network systems at the end of next week unless the companies reach a new … Read More »
CEO Jeff Bewkes must be glad that he only has to meet with ordinary shareholders once a year. Two dominated the Q&A session at today’s gathering with questions based on a view that Time Warner is engaged in campaigns to promote President Obama’s political fortunes, and gun control legislation. One found it suspicious that Michelle Obama awarded the Oscar for Best Picture, won by Warner Bros’ Argo. He noted that actor George Clooney — one of the film’s producers — had hosted fundraisers for the Obama campaign, and that the President and First Lady attended TNT’s annual Christmas In Washington special to raise money for the Children’s National Medical Center. “What a way to say ‘thank you’,” the shareholder said. Bewkes explained that the TNT show invites “sitting office holders that we have elected, whether wisely or not. They are not candidates.” As for the Oscar, “that’s done by the members of the Academy….That’s a whole forest if you wander into that.” Read More »
CEO Amy Miles seems confident that consumers will continue to flock to theaters, even with the higher admission costs. “Sometimes we joke and say we are an industry that has been dying for the past 50 years,” she told investors today at Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference. But “as long as we continue to provide that great, affordable out-of-home experience…people are going to continue to go to the movies.” What’s “affordable” is in the eye of the beholder: Regal CFO David Ownby told the group that his company’s ticket prices for 2D movies “will go up in that 3% to 4% range” that’s been the pattern over the last few years. He notes that for IMAX movies Regal adds as much as $6.50 to the price of the basic 2D ticket. The chain’s own RPX large-screen venues have as much as a $5.00 upcharge while regular 3D films cost about $3.50 more than conventional 2D. This year’s potential blockbusters should help the cause. Read More »
The quarterly outlay rises beginning July 1 to 30 cents a share from 27.5 cents for both the Class B stock (which the public owns) and Class A (79.4% owned by Chairman Sumner Redstone). This is the third increase in … Read More »
The new study provides some statistical ammo for those in the Commonwealth who like the tax break, and are still smarting from a state Department of Revenue report in March that raised questions about whether it makes sense. The … Read More »
This is “a new, developing phenomenon,” AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan told investors this morning at the Barclays’ Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference. Although advertisers still crave ratings points, they also increasingly want to reach people who say that “there are only two or three shows I watch and I live and die for them.” The trend is gaining momentum as viewers discover opportunities to binge view shows on pay TV, VOD and streaming services 
including Netflix and Amazon Prime. In addition, young viewers become obsessive about programs when social networks such as Facebook and Twitter help to connect them with others who share their passion. As a result, “that favorite stuff in media is emerging as the most important [driver] of value,” Sapan says. That’s encouraging for networks such as AMC — which has high-engagement hits with dramas including Mad Men, The Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad. But it’s hard to build a business around the trend: “Good dramatic TV shows aren’t known until they’re on,” he says. And nobody has perfect pitch. “There are many shows that have spectacular television pedigree and the show doesn’t work” while others from untested producers or stars “take off like crazy.” Sapan says he’s encouraged by his upcoming shows including Low Winter Sun (a police drama), Turn (about Revolutionary War spies), Halt & Catch Fire (about the computing boom in the 1980s), and Line Of Sight (a sci-fi drama the AMC chief calls “nuanced and exquisite”). Read More »
The company’s U.S. stock closed +9.3% today — at $22.91, the highest it’s been since late 2011 — in unusually heavy trading after Japan’s Nikkei news service reported that Sony‘s board will explore the proposal from billionaire … Read More »
The freewheeling head of FilmOn has to stop using names including Aereokiller and BarryDriller.com for his broadcast streaming service according a settlement overseen by U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Collins. The … Read More »
UPDATE, 11:08 AM: Apple‘s part of today’s proceedings is over after Sen. Carl Levin finally drew blood. He hammered CEO Tim Cook and other Apple execs for creating business arrangements that ensured that the company’s “crown jewels” — economic rights to more than two-thirds of its worldwide profits — “are in three 
Irish companies that you control and don’t pay taxes.” Cook acknowledged that he has “no current plan” to bring that cash “home at the current tax rate.” Levin noted that this was entirely Apple’s choice: The arrangement in Ireland was signed by “three people working for Apple.” He also observed that the company repatriates profits from Latin America and Canada but not elsewhere. “We cannot continue a system where a multinational company as phenomenally successful as you can make a decision as to where the profits are going to flow. An American company where the R&D is 95% in the United States. You had R&D tax credits, all the benefits of living in this country, [including] protection of patents….You made a unilateral decision where these profits are going to be taxed or not taxed. Folks, that is not right.”
Related: Lawmakers Say Apple Exploits Loopholes To Avoid U.S. Taxes
PREVIOUS, 10:13 AM: Tim Cook seems to be in command so far in his appearance before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to defend Apple against charges that it parks cash overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes. He began his testimony throwing down a gauntlet calling for “dramatic simplification” of U.S. corporate taxes. “Apple has always believed in the simple, not the complex,” he said adding that it should also apply to the tax code. He called for a revenue-neutral change that would lower corporate income tax rates and provide for “a reasonable tax”– which he said should be a single digit percentage — “that allows the free flow of capital back to the United States.” It would probably increase Apple’s U.S. taxes, he says, but “it would promote U.S. economic growth.” Read More »
This is curious: Carmike was a founding partner at Fandango, and last year the companies announced that they had extended their “multi-year strategic agreement.” But it appears that deal wasn’t exclusive — and Carmike wants another … Read More »
Despite the growing talk about pay TV cord cutting, providers can feel OK — not great — about consumer attitudes toward them, according to the latest annual measure from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Subscribers gave cable, satellite, and telco video providers the highest overall satisfaction score ACSI has seen in the 13 years it has measured the public’s feelings about subscription TV. The score of 68 is up 3% vs last year, which ACSI calls “a glimmer of good news.” Even so, researchers say that pay TV remains “among the lowest-scoring industries” they study. Annual price hikes of 6% or so and “sporadic reliability” keep the group just slightly ahead of airlines (67) and Internet service providers (65) but well behind TV and video players/recorders (86), soft drinks (84) and autos and light vehicles (83). (Internet news and information services also come out ahead at 73.) Consumer attitudes vary widely by provider. Time Warner Cable took it on the chin with an industry-low score of 60, down 5% from 2012. Moving up we see Comcast (63, +3%), Charter (64, +8%) and Cox (65, +3%). Satellite and telco video providers scored highest with Verizon FiOS leading (73, -1%) followed by DirecTV (72, +6%), AT&T U-verse (71, +4%) and Dish Network (70, +1%). Read More »
Apple CEO Tim Cook can expect a tough grilling about his company’s tax practices tomorrow when he appears before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on “Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code.” An 18-month bipartisan investigation — whose findings were summarized in a memo released today – charges that Apple’s offshore subsidiary, Apple Operations International, reported net income of $30B from 2009 to 2012 but “declined to declare any tax residence, filed no corporate income tax return, and paid no corporate income taxes to any national government for five years.” In addition, Ireland-based Apple Sales International generated $74B in sales income over four years but allegedly “paid taxes on only a tiny fraction of that income” after the company negotiated a deal with the government that enabled Apple to pay a tax rate of less than 2% vs the statutory rate of 12%. Read More »
The DVR pioneer says that it added 277,000 subscriptions from cable and satellite companies, the biggest increase from pay TV providers in more than seven years. And although TiVo continues to spill red ink, it wasn’t as bad as the … Read More »
The book retail chain’s shares are up 8.1% in mid-afternoon trading, making it one of the day’s biggest gainers in the media pack. Barron’s appears to be largely responsible for the move after it seized this weekend on … Read More »
The FCC Commissioner became Acting Chair — and the first women to run the regulatory agency — on Saturday taking the job just vacated by Julius Genachowski until the Senate (presumably) confirms President Obama’s choice … Read More »
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer danced on a tightrope this morning as she tried to explain the logic behind her company’s $1.1B agreement to buy social network site Tumblr. She told analysts in a conference call that the companies will work together, but separately. They appeal to different audiences, but she says they can complement each other. And since Yahoo is “all about brands” and advertising, it can gin up sales on Tumblr even though it has a history of being ad averse — and tolerant of porn. “We need to have good tools for targeting” ad messages, Mayer says. 
While it’s important for Tumblr to be “true to their voice,” the companies can “monetize [it] in a way that’s tasteful” while showing advertisers “the benefits of [Tumblr's young] demographics and the huge volume of users and traffic.” Tumblr’s 26-year-old founder and CEO David Karp — who Mayer called “one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs I’ve ever met” — underscored the cultural differences in a blog post this morning. Promising that “We’re not turning purple,” he ended his brief news announcement saying “fuck yeah.” Mayer vowed to “let Tumblr be Tumblr” operating “under the Tumblr brand and David’s vision” from its base in New York. Yahoo will help with the infrastructure, but won’t put its brand on Tumblr’s site. The connection “will be largely invisible to users.” She says it shouldn’t be hard to gin up ad sales at the social network, which just began to accept them a year ago. “Of the top 10 Hollywood studios, all use Tumblr to promote movies,” she says. “Tumblr views itself as a home for brands.” For example, Yahoo could “work with [Tumblr] bloggers who want ads.” She acknowledges that the businesses have different psychographics — Yahoo audiences are older than those at Tumblr where the average user is 25. “I would expect any ad units that we create [there] would be native and follow the form and function” of the site, Mayer says. Read More »
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