By admin 
All the major entertainment companies are singing the same tune these days, and the tune is: “Help! We have an unmanageable debt burden!” With that in mind, it’s starting to become easy to predict what the big boys’ quarterly results will sound like. Streaming is picking up, but the other parts of the business are doing poorly, so big decisions need to be made about the future of the business. That’s pretty much how things went on Thursday’s Q3 call at Comcast, and that’s now also consider breaking up to survive.
Revenue rose, but Comcast profits fell overall (via Variety), and the Olympics provided a big boost for Peacock. The number of paid subscribers reportedly rose 29%, while revenue for the streaming service rose 82%. According to IndieWirePeacock added 3 million subscribers specifically during the Olympics, but nevertheless lost $436 million dollars. On the traditional television side, the company lost 87,000 broadband customers. All told, the company exceeded media analyst expectations. IndieWire reports.
Even with some good news in that totally mixed set of numbers, Comcast, like everyone else, has to think about how to survive in a rapidly changing industry. The company’s president, Mike Cavanagh, said the company will consider splitting its cable networks — including Oxygen True Crime, Bravo, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, E!, Syfy, Universal Kids and Universo — into a new publicly traded company . “As you know, we opted not to participate in the merger and acquisition process surrounding Paramount at the beginning of this year, but we would consider partnerships in the streaming space, despite their complexity, and like many of our colleagues in media We are experiencing the impact of the transition in our video businesses, and have been studying the best path forward for these assets,” said Cavanagh (via Variety). “To this end, we are now exploring whether creating a new, well-capitalized company owned by our shareholders and comprised of our strong portfolio of cable networks would enable them to take advantage of the opportunities in the changing media landscape and create value for our shareholders . We are not ready to talk about specific details yet, but we will contact you once we have reached final conclusions.”
Cavanagh went on to say that the new company would only be cable networks and not NBC’s broadcast operations, but it is otherwise too early in the process to comment on specifics. However, the announcement echoes a similar one made by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav earlier this year. This seems like a good indication of the direction the company as a whole is heading. Amid the era of cord-cutting and these conglomerates’ all-in bets on streaming, will the cable networks survive if they are unburdened and forced to fend for themselves? Time will tell, but somehow the TV business will transform again.
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