Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Thursday, February 23rd, 2023

Four reasons to worry about Warner Bros. Discovery

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Thursday, February 23rd, 2023.

FOUR REASONS TO WORRY ABOUT WARNER BROS DISCOVERY
Warner Bros. Discovery held its 4Q 2022 Earnings Presentation a few hours ago and here is a link to the PDF if you want to see all the numbers. But I want to talk about some of the things I heard on the investor call with CEO David Zaslav, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels and streaming chief JB Perrette. 

Reading between the lines and based on how some of the statements were framed by the three executives, I was left with some very troubling questions of my own after hearing the presentation.

1) How Much Cost-Cutting Is Enough?
Everyone knows that WBD is desperately in search of places to cut costs. In part because of the overall industry economic outlook. But primarily because the recently completed merger with Discovery added lots of debt to the company. And in order to keep the stock price from dropping too much, Zaslav promised investors he would find places to cut costs. The guidance at the time of the merger close was that there would be about $3 billion in overall "synergies," which was later raised to $3.5 billion. And in today's call, that number was increased by $500 million to $4 billion. Despite Zasalav's claim that "the bulk of our restructuring is behind us...we have full command and control of our company now." Continuing to raise the amount of the cost cutting does not provide me with any reassurance the company is on track financially. And it makes me wonder if we will be looking at additional cuts in the coming quarters.

2) What Is The Future Of CNN?
CEO David Zaslav said he wants CNN to be broader than politics and sports. "We must get it right" at CNN, and "this is no going to happen overnight." So what does that mean? More pop culture programming? Scripted shows in primetime? Live clog-dancing? We don't know and if Zaslav any specific thoughts on the matter, he didn't share it. This sounds like CNN is being reimagined as a more general interest channel. Which doesn't make much sense, given the myriad of other channels WBD owns that cover some of this same ground. It feels as if they are admitting that despite their previous goal of turning CNN into a center-right non-partisan alternative, they've now decided that it too hard or not worth the effort. Or more likely, they just can’t figure out how to do it.

3) "HBO Viewers Are From Mars, Discovery+ Viewers Are From Venus," Part Deux
When Warner Bros. Discovery executives announced they were going to combine HBO Max and Discovery+, the stated rationale was that Discovery+ viewers tend to be female and HBO viewers tend to skew male. So combining the two services made a lot of demographic sense. Now that they have reversed course and decided to keep the two services separate, they explained that it was due in part to Discovery+ subscribers being more "lean-back" viewers who consume shows in off-primetime hours. While HBO Max content tends to be viewed more actively, with family. Which to be honest, also sounds like a reason to combine the two services.

I do appreciate Zaslav's ability to rewrite recent corporate history. He also argued that churn is low  on Discovery+ and that it is profitable. He suggested that many subscribers are happy with Discovery+ content, so "why would we shut that off?" I don't know, Dave. It was your idea to do it! No, he makes it sound as if he's protecting Discovery+ subscribers from the dumb idea which he had originally argued made "all the sense in the world."

4) Is It Possible To Balance WBD's Need For Money With Its Strategic Plans?
It's no secret that Warner Bros. Discovery needs to juice revenue nearly as much as it needs to cuts costs. But what do you do when short-term revenue growth gets in the way of building your business in the long-term? Take, for instance, FAST channels. During the investor's call today, David Zaslav reiterated that WBD will launch its own FAST service and bragged that "We can create a Tubi or a Pluto without having to buy anybody." If that's the case and if a FAST service is coming sooner than later, why did the company recently license nearly 100 movies as well as 14 FAST channels worth of content to Tubi? I'm assuming the deal isn't exclusive, but holding that content for the upcoming WBD FAST service would have given it a stronger push at launch. And if Zaslav believes the company has plenty of content to go around, why give the Tubi channels prime, high-profile shows such as Westworld and the unreleased episodes of The Nevers?

ODDS AND SODS
* HBO Max has ordered a prequel series to the recent It movies titled Welcome To Derry.

* ABC has announced that its long-running comedy The Goldbergs will end with its current season.

* The James Tynion IV comic Something Is Killing The Children is getting a Netflix series adaptation from Dark creators Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. 

* Peacock announced today their new true crime documentary titled, Who Killed Robert Wone? which will premiere on Tuesday, March 7th.

* Investigation Discovery today announced a new special, The Idaho College Murders, which will premiere on Sunday, March 12th.

VANITY FAIR PROFILES THE ANKLER
One advantage of having worked in the entertainment journalism business for a long time is that you know how to convince other journalists that you have a story worth telling. 

Vanity Fair has a big profile of the The Ankler's Richard Rushfield and Janice Min and if they were looking for a way to have someone to perfectly frame their story, they couldn't have picked a better approach than journalist Joe Pompeo's decision to open the piece with some paragraphs that essentially describe Rushfield as a dogged, yet less vindicative and psychotic version of famed entertainment rabble-rouser Nikki Finke:

You might say Rushfield is capturing life’s rich pageant but without Finke’s malevolence and ethically compromised behavior. The Ankler, which he started in late 2016, chronicles Hollywood in all of its naked theatricality, with a mischievous bent and a sardonic regard for the industry’s towering egos. It’s a sensibility Rushfield has nurtured for years through an array of DIY media projects, from his alternative college newspaper (The Hampshire Hypocrite) to his AOL-era email newsletter (The Barricade) to his early-aughts fanzine (L.A. Innuendo) and now The Ankler. “I seem to have a history of starting troublemaking publications,” Rushfield told me.

And this description of Rushfield is also...well...a bit optimistic about his impact in the industry. He's certainly not the ONLY person who has built a successful one-man operation (cough). And unlike Hedda Hopper and Water Winchell, I'm not sure that he has ever been a household name in the parts of the America that lie outside the confines of the entertainment industry:

He’s unique among his peers in that he built a significant brand from scratch with his bare hands, a middle-aged one-man band without the backing or support of a larger organization. He’s also the only one whose name rolls off the tongue with the same alliterative ring as the legendary columnists of yore: Walter Winchell. Hedda Hopper. Army Archerd. Richard Rushfield.

If I sound irritated, it's because I find it frustrating to be out here plugging away on a bootstrapped business that is doing very well. But what I don't have is the story hook, which makes all of the difference. It's certainly not The Ankler's subscriber base size or even its apparent revenue, which is pretty modest give the amount of money they've raised and the staff they've been able to hire.

As with all start-ups, Ankler Media’s finances are opaque. Last spring, after completing Y Combinator, the company raised $1.5 million at a $20 million valuation. The company says it is profitable, with about 50 percent of revenue from subscriptions and 50 percent from advertising, the type where film and television studios pay good money to woo members of the awards-voting bodies. When I spoke with Min in December, she told me The Ankler landed in 38,000 inboxes every day, but she wouldn’t specify the number of paying subscribers, who get the full shebang of content for $17 a month or $149 a year. Rushfield told me that when he moved The Ankler to Substack at the end of 2019, there were about 800 paying subscribers at $40 a year. By the end of 2022, according to Min, subscription revenue had grown by a multiple of nearly 40. (Per my back-of-the-envelope math, that would put The Ankler’s annual subscription revenue a little north of $1 million.)

Luckily, the profile isn't all positive, with some feedback that suggests The Ankler is still not as essential as it claims to be:

In conversations with an array of sources, I caught some whiffs that The Ankler may not be as essential to Hollywood’s power class as it’s made out to be. “I think Richard’s excellent, but the diversification of The Ankler feels like a stretch,” said a well-placed source in the agency world who reads Rushfield and The Wakeup but ignores “all the other stuff.” A second knowledgeable agency source concurred: “I just don’t feel like it’s necessary reading. When something like [Bob Iger returning to Disney] happens, you wanna hear what Richard has to say. But the other things on The Ankler, I still haven’t figured out why I’m supposed to be reading them.” A Hollywood heavy hitter told me he subscribes because it helps him make sense of a wildly disrupted industry in a challenging market, but “on the other hand, sometimes it’s a little bit prurient, a little bit claustrophobic, and it’s not always right.” Take this for what it’s worth, but when I asked another top player for his thoughts on The Ankler, he said he couldn’t help because he doesn’t regularly read it.

Despite my near-whining about the profile, I don't have any ill-will towards anyone at The Ankler. Anyone in the entertainment news industry who can make a living without being sucked up by Penske Media deserves some congratulations. I just think there are some other stories out there that are as interesting as the one being pitched by The Ankler.

TWEET OF THE DAY

WHAT'S NEW FOR THURSDAY:

Alaska Daily Season Premiere (ABC)
Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches Season Finale (AMC+)
Barnwood Builders Season Premiere (Magnolia)
Bel Air Season Premiere (Peacock)
Black Snow (Sundance Now)
Call Me Chihiro (Netflix)
Kold X Wendy Season One Finale (WE tv)
Grey's Anatomy Spring Premiere (ABC)
Outer Banks Season Three Premiere (Netflix)
Rap Trap: Hip-Hop On Trial (Hulu)
Station 19 Spring Premiere (ABC)
The Ms. Pat Show Season Three Premiere (BET+)


Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.

SEE YOU FRIDAY!

If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.