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Deadline Big Media With David Lieberman

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Saturday September 15, 2012 @ 10:06am PDTTags: Big Media, David Lieberman, Deadline Big Media

Deadline’s Executive Editor David Lieberman talks with host David Bloom in the first episode of Deadline Big Media. Lieberman discusses the face-off this week between CEOs for Dish Network and CBS over ad-zapping technology; Disney’s summertime blues over soft ad revenues; and questions about whether this year’s election ad spending may end up being both a misspent blizzard of overkill for viewers and a bonanza for station-group owners.

Deadline Big Media Episode 1 (MP3 format)
Deadline Big Media Episode 1 (M4A format)

(The M4A version of this podcast is designed to run on any device using Apple’s iTunes software, and includes enhanced graphics and links to stories and other resources. The MP3 version of this podcast is designed to play on virtually any device capable of playing digital audio.)

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Big Media Stocks End Week On A High Following The Fed’s Stimulus Moves

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday September 14, 2012 @ 1:47pm PDTTags: Big Media, Stock Market

The Federal Reserve’s announcement yesterday that it will try to bolster the economy with purchases of mortgage-backed securities contributed to a sense of giddiness among investors in media stocks. CBS, Charter Communications, Comcast, DirecTV, Discovery, News  Corp, Time … Read More »

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Deadline Wall Street With David Lieberman

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Saturday September 8, 2012 @ 12:16pm PDTTags: Big Media, David Lieberman, Deadline Wall Street

Deadline’s Executive Editor David Lieberman talks with host David Bloom in the latest episode of Deadline Wall Street. Lieberman discusses what’s been driving the huge increase in share prices for News Corp, helped by the end … Read More »

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Deadline Wall Street With David Lieberman

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Monday August 20, 2012 @ 2:41pm PDTTags: Big Media, David Lieberman, Deadline Wall Street

The second episode of Deadline Wall Street With David Lieberman features our executive editor talking with moderator David Bloom about Quarter 2 Earnings Season on Wall Street for Big Media stocks. Media company after media company turned … Read More »

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Big Media Q2 Corporate Earnings Round-Up: A Hint Of Anxiety, But Not For Investors

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday August 16, 2012 @ 1:03pm PDTTags: Big Deals Film, Big Deals TV, Big Media, Big Media Earnings

There’s a little hyperbole in Nomura Securities analyst Michael Nathanson’s observation that the Q2 Big Media earnings season that wrapped up last week was “one of the most unusual periods [for the industry] in recent memory.” But he’s basically on target. Most companies had something worrisome to report — including softer than expected Q2 revenues, and likely weakness in the Q3 ad market. Even so, media stocks are up, in some cases substantially: Over the last 30 days the Dow Jones Media Index is +7.8% while the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 is +4.6%. CBS is the stand out, +14.7%. “Strangely enough, the market didn’t seem to care that much about the specifics,” says Bernstein Research’s Todd Juenger. “In general, media stocks are all in favor, each with its own story.”

What accounts for the euphoria? The most common explanation is that Big Media looks like a safe haven in a weak economy, especially in comparison to other sellers of consumer discretionary items (think Coach, Starbucks, or Best Buy). Giants including Disney, Discovery, News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom, and NBCUniversal make most of their profits from cable networks — and that business has a safety net: Channels still have enough muscle to negotiate guaranteed price hikes from pay TV distributors. For example, Disney’s cable channels are seeing “tremendous price growth,” CEO Bob Iger says. News Corp COO Chase Carey says his networks “have continued to achieve or exceed our targets.” And Discovery CEO David Zaslav says his execs will “be pushing hard to make sure that we get fair value” in carriage deals. CBS chief Les Moonves also crowed about the retransmission consent payments flowing to his broadcast stations. He’s “confident there is significant upside” because “each new deal means increased fees.”

Viacom illustrates the importance of these bullish cable network forecasts. Even though it arguably reported the industry’s most disappointing Q2 revenue and earnings results, the stock is up 8.2% since the announcement. That’s due in part to CEO Philippe Dauman’s claim that Viacom won a substantial price hike from its recent battle with DirecTV. “The battle he conducted against DirecTV was spectacular,” Chairman Sumner Redstone says. “Philippe has the same passion to win that I’ve always had.” But DirecTV CEO Michael White says programmers demanding these big increases celebrate Pyrrhic victories. “The customer at the end of the day is the one getting squeezed and bearing the brunt of these exorbitant price increase demands that are just not sustainable,” he says. Read More »

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Media Stocks Join Wall Street Rally Over Hopeful Signs About Jobs And Europe

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday August 3, 2012 @ 1:44pm PDTTags: Big Media, Stock Market

Media investors ended the week on a cheery note after the market recorded its strongest rally since early May. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 closed the day +1.9% following a better than expected jobs report … Read More »

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Lawmakers Ponder: Are Big Media Companies Too Powerful?

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday July 24, 2012 @ 7:44pm PDTTags: Big Deals TV, Big Media, Broadcast TV, Cable, Retransmission Consent Rules, U.S. Senate

That wasn’t the precise topic of the Senate Commerce Committee hearing today. (It had the boring title: “The Cable Act at 20.”) But the question — as well as ones about whether the federal government over-regulates media — bubbled underneath the discussion of problems including higher-than-inflation annual pay TV price hikes, and contract disputes that sometimes result in blackouts of consumers’ favorite channels. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W Va.) says that there’s too little competition in a system where pay TV customers “are still forced to pick larger and larger packages of channels no matter how few they watch.” His view resonated with Colleen Abdoulah, a witness who chairs the American Cable Association which primarily represents small and mid-sized cable operators. She says that broadcasters make “crazy payments for sports (rights) because they can be forced onto consumers…This abuse of power should be outlawed.” Mark Cooper of the Consumers Federation of America also called for changes that would enable pay TV customers to just buy the channels they want. “The only way to break the market power (of major networks and programmers) is to ensure consumers have choices.” Read More »

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Media And Tech Giants Make Think Tank List Of U.S. “Investment Heroes”

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday July 17, 2012 @ 6:29am PDTTags: Big Media, Comcast, Disney, Time Warner Cable

You may think of Comcast, Disney, and Time Warner Cable as masters of belt-tightening, stock buybacks, and financial engineering. But the Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank that started off as former President Bill Clinton’s “idea mill,” says that last year they were also among the top investors in U.S. jobs and economic growth. They joined telecom and tech firms including AT&T, Verizon, Google, and Apple in the organization’s list of 25 non-financial U.S. companies that allocated the most money in 2011 to domestic capital spending. “In many cases this required detailed calculations and assumptions, since companies often report global capital spending without breaking it down by country,” says the report entitled Investment Heroes: Who’s Betting on America’s Future? Read More »

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Media Stocks Down As Disappointing Jobs Report Chills Investors

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday June 1, 2012 @ 11:46am PDTTags: Big Media, Stock Market

Market benchmarks are down more than 2% this afternoon — the biggest one-day drop so far this year — following the Labor Department’s report that the economy added 69,000 jobs in May, far fewer than economists expected. And … Read More »

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New York Times Staff Protest Company Shareholders Meeting

By DOMINIC PATTEN | Wednesday April 25, 2012 @ 3:18pm PDTTags: Big Media, The New York Times Company

The New York Times Co.’s annual shareholder meeting today had some unexpected and uninvited guests — its own employees. Although they often have bylines on the machinations of Big Media, the New York Times editors and reporters weren’t … Read More »

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Will Sports TV Strike Out Big Media?

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday April 5, 2012 @ 8:24am PDTTags: Big Media, Sports, TV Sports

Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett says it’s possible in a provocative, and well timed, note this morning. The escalation in TV sports costs has “gone to unimagined proportions,” he says. If unchecked, he adds, it could  ”blow the entire media model apart.” And the business does appear to be unchecked. The huge price increases from the $15.2B NFL deals that ESPN, Fox, CBS, and NBC cut last year kick in with the 2014 season. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal likely will want higher payments for its NBC Sports Network — formerly Versus before it was rebranded in January. News Corp is considering a similar upgrade of its action sports channel Fuel into a mainstream national sports service. And the Magic Johnson-led consortium that just paid more than $2B for the Los Angeles Dodgers is thinking about stealing a page from the playbook for the New York Yankees’ YES Network by launching its own regional sports channel — which would be the sixth in LA. Read More »

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Media Stocks Hit As Investors Weigh Federal Reserve Plans For Economy

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Wednesday April 4, 2012 @ 12:40pm PDTTags: Big Media, Stock Market

Stock markets grappled with the worst day they’ve had so far in 2012 after a Federal Reserve report suggested that the central bank won’t continue to boost the economy by aggressively buying bonds. The Dow Jones U.S. Media … Read More »

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Big Media Stocks Could Hit 52-Week Highs In Industry’s “Golden Time”: Video

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday March 26, 2012 @ 12:16pm PDTTags: Big Media, Stock Market

Giants including CBS, Discovery, Disney, and News Corp are poised to hit one-year highs today on Wall Street, benefiting both from the improving economy — and developments within media. RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank tells CNBC that this is “a golden time” for the industry, although he adds that … Read More »

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Media Stocks Down As Fear Of Global Economic Downturn Spreads

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday March 6, 2012 @ 11:45am PSTTags: Big Media, CBS, News Corp, Stock Market

U.S. Media Index DowBarring a last-minute turnaround, this could be the worst day for U.S. stock exchanges since November. The U.S. Media Index is -1.7% in mid-afternoon trading, worse than the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard and … Read More »

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2011 Big Media: Recalling Moguls Lost Year

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday December 30, 2011 @ 12:37pm PSTTags: Big Media, James Murdoch, Netflix

YEARENDER: We’ll probably remember 2011 as a lost year for Big Media. Tech companies continued their drive to harness the Web in ways that could topple existing infotainment businesses. But most traditional media execs just smiled and said that their industry has nothing to fear but fear itself. You’ll go blind looking for major new initiatives, with one exception: Dish Network’s Charlie Ergen bought airwave spectrum and took Blockbuster out of bankruptcy as part of a plan to create a national video streaming service. Other companies didn’t even try to cut transformative deals although Comcast had its hands full trying to fix NBCUniversal, which the cable giant formally took over in January.

News Corp exemplified the sense of rudderlessness with its handling of the year’s most engrossing media story: the News Of The World phone hacking scandal. After years of confidently and indignantly denying that lawbreaking had become pervasive at the UK tabloid, Rupert Murdoch’s company was humiliated in July. The Guardian disclosed that in 2001 the paper hacked the phone of a missing school girl, Milly Dowler, and deleted voice messages – giving her parents and police false hope that she was still alive. Murdoch apologized, and accepted resignations from several close execs including News International’s Rebekah Brooks and Dow Jones’ Les Hinton. But Murdoch wouldn’t take responsibility for creating the anything-goes corporate culture that tolerated phone hacking. He couldn’t be expected to know everything that goes on at his global conglomerate, he told Parliament. His son, Deputy COO James Murdoch – who oversees the UK properties – looked even more foolish and incompetent as the year wore on. He says he wasn’t criminally culpable for covering up crimes. To make that credible, he portrayed himself as a hands-off manager who naively accepted information that confirmed what he wanted to hear, and couldn’t be bothered to even read at least one urgent message that tried to tell him otherwise. The tawdry story disgusted the public and News Corp shareholders, likely destroying Rupert’s plan to eventually turn News Corp over to James.

That fed into another growing concern in 2011: Who will run Big Media in a few years? In addition to the question about News Corp’s succession plans, Disney announced that Bob Iger will step down in 2015 with a replacement yet to be named. We also still don’t know who will eventually call the shots at Viacom and CBS as the actuarial tables catch up with Sumner Redstone, who controls both companies. The four jobs shouldn’t be hard to fill. The current occupants collectively received $194.6M in compensation in 2010, a 58% raise from the previous year.
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UPDATE: 3rd Online Piracy Bill Surfaces As Hollywood Lobbying On Capitol Hill Escalates

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday December 8, 2011 @ 1:50pm PSTTags: Barry Meyer, Big Media, DGA, Google, IATSE, Jim Gianopulos, Michael Lynton, MPAA, Protect IP Act, Rupert Murdoch, SAG, Stop Online Piracy Act

MPAA Arranges Studio-Guild D.C. Lobbying

UPDATE, 1:50 PM: Movie studios took Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and California Rep. Darrell Issa to task today after they unveiled draft anti-piracy legislation that could serve … Read More »

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Media Stocks Up On Strong Holiday Sales And Hope Of European Debt Solution

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday November 28, 2011 @ 9:40am PSTTags: Big Media, CBS, Cinedigm, Comcast, Crown Media, Disney, Madison Square Garden, Netflix, News Corp, RealD, Sinclair Broadcasting, Sony, Time Warner, Viacom, Westwood One

Shoppers spent a record $52.4B over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, up 16% from last year, the National Retail Federation says. Add that to reports that European leaders are getting serious about resolving their debt crisis, and it’s easy … Read More »

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Analyst: Big Media Earnings To “Decelerate Sharply” In 2013 Due To TV Zero-Sum Game

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday November 14, 2011 @ 7:42am PSTTags: Amazon, Big Media, CBS, Discovery Communications, Netflix, News Corp, Time Warner

Nomura Equity Research analyst Michael Nathanson has been one of Wall Street’s more vocal enthusiasts for U.S. media stocks. So you can bet a lot of investors will be surprised this morning by his report downgrading the sector in general — and CBS in particular — to “neutral” from “buy.” He says 2012 will be a strong year, in part because of the influx of political ads. But he also sees growing industrywide problems which could cause earnings to “decelerate sharply” afterward. He’s concerned that television scatter market pricing is beginning to soften, which portends “slower local and national TV ad growth ahead for all.” That’s happening as pay TV subscriptions decline, turning the programming business into a zero-sum game where a show can only build its audience by taking viewers from somewhere else. As a result, channels will have to “spend more to differentiate [themselves] in an increasingly competitive market,” he says. ”Within our media coverage, total cable network expense [which includes programming costs]  increased 12.1% over the first nine months of 2011, led by Time Warner (+18% due to the new NCAA contract), Discovery (+14%), and News Corp (+13%).” Read More »

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Big Media’s 2Q Earnings Roundup: Will The Economy Change The Story?

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday August 11, 2011 @ 4:07pm PDTTags: Amazon, Apple, Big Media, Big Media Earnings, David Zaslav, Discovery Communications, Dish Network, DreamWorks Animation, Hulu, Jeff Katzenberg, Les Moonves, Netflix, Philippe Dauman, RealD Earnings, Regal CEO Amy Miles, Regal Entertainment, Steve Burke, Time Warner, Viacom, Walmart

Now that Big Media’s 2Q earnings season is over, the big question on Wall Street is: Did it give us any insight into the future? CEOs’ cheery talk about strong ad sales in TV’s upfront market, the expected bump next year from political ads, and the revenues coming in from online streaming services may be irrelevant if the economy sinks into a deep, new recession.  CEOs say they see no evidence of trouble yet. The industry’s leading cheerleader, CBS chief Les Moonves, channeled his inner Buzz Lightyear last week saying that he has “every reason to believe that we will deliver strong results throughout the rest of the year, into 2012 and beyond.” Investors still sliced 6.3% off of CBS’ market value. The Dow Jones U.S. Media Index is down about 16% in the last month as traders anticipate cuts in ad spending, ticket buying, subscriptions — the works. If the pessimists are right, then the race is on: Which company will be the first to change its message from “people will buy media because they have cash” to “people will buy media because it helps them to forget their problems”?

Here are other themes from the latest earnings reports:

Jobs: Media companies still aren’t hiring. No one said that so baldly, but it’s there between the lines: CEOs talked more about financial engineering – cutting costs and returning cash to shareholders – than about spending to become more competitive. Time Warner recorded $24M in layoff-related expenses, quadruple the amount from the same quarter last year, while Viacom spent $14M, up from zero last year. Yet virtually every media company is repurchasing shares or increasing its dividend. The message? CEOs can’t persuade investors that the companies know how to make a decent profit from their cash, and shareholders want it back.

Pay TV: This was “the weakest (quarter) in the industry’s history,” says Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett. Analysts were startled to see the largest cable, satellite, and telco companies collectively lose about 195,000 video customers. The cord cutters don’t fit the stereotype of well-to-do technophiles. Moffett says that “all the evidence” shows that a growing number of people – especially young adults — simply can’t afford pay TV. Dish Network seemed to confirm that thesis by saying that it will shift its marketing focus to upscale consumers instead of bargain hunters. With the U.S. market stalled, it’s easy to see why cable programmers want investors to look at their expansion efforts in growing markets overseas such as India, Russia, China, and Brazil. “It is the current momentum and potential of our international assets that present a meaningful, unique opportunity for us,” Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav told analysts. Read More »

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