AT&T To Lay Off 600 At HBO and Warner Bros. After Revenue Decline (arstechnica.com) 61
AT&T's WarnerMedia division is planning to lay off hundreds of employees in AT&T's latest cost-cutting move. Ars Technica reports: "Warner Bros. is expected to commence layoffs of around 650 people starting Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, while HBO is seen shedding between 150 and 175 staffers. A WarnerMedia spokesman declined to comment," Variety reported yesterday. The numbers quoted in Variety may be a bit too high. A source with knowledge of the AT&T layoffs told Ars that the real number is about 600 jobs across all of WarnerMedia, which includes Warner Bros., HBO, and Turner. The layoffs come days after WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar announced a shakeup including the departure of three executives and an increased focus on AT&T's new HBO Max streaming service. Kilar detailed the changes in an internal memo published by CNBC on Friday.
In its Q2 2020 earnings report, AT&T said that HBO revenue was "$1.6 billion, down 5.2 percent year over year, reflecting a decrease in subscription revenues and content and other revenues." HBO operating expenses were "$1.5 billion, up 32.5 percent year over year, primarily due to higher programming costs and expenses related to HBO Max." HBO operating income was $113 million, down 80.3 percent. Warner Bros. revenue in Q2 was $3.3 billion, down 3.9 percent year over year partly because of "the postponement of theatrical releases due to closure of movie theaters," AT&T said. Warner Bros. operating income rose 43.9 percent to $633 million, however, as the unit's operating expenses declined 11.1 percent to $2.6 billion "primarily due to the production hiatus and lower marketing expenses."
In its Q2 2020 earnings report, AT&T said that HBO revenue was "$1.6 billion, down 5.2 percent year over year, reflecting a decrease in subscription revenues and content and other revenues." HBO operating expenses were "$1.5 billion, up 32.5 percent year over year, primarily due to higher programming costs and expenses related to HBO Max." HBO operating income was $113 million, down 80.3 percent. Warner Bros. revenue in Q2 was $3.3 billion, down 3.9 percent year over year partly because of "the postponement of theatrical releases due to closure of movie theaters," AT&T said. Warner Bros. operating income rose 43.9 percent to $633 million, however, as the unit's operating expenses declined 11.1 percent to $2.6 billion "primarily due to the production hiatus and lower marketing expenses."
South Park (Score:3, Informative)
Can Hulu have South Park back now, please?
HBO Max is OK, but still not great... (Score:5, Insightful)
I subscribed to HBO Max to catch up on a few series, but will probably be ending my monthly membership soon after...
They still don't have a service with any sticking power. The movies they offer are mostly kind of lame (more Hollywood's fault than HBO I guess). The series they have can be good but they also have a lot of dreck, very expensive and well-produced dreck but not stuff I want to watch.
HBO also oddly seems kind of stuck in the middle with respect to audience they are going after. They have Sesame Street but other kids content is very thin on the ground compared to Disney+. They don't have as well-rounded a collection of TV shows or as frequent new content as Netflix, yet command a premium price as if they had.
They also want to be popular with adults, yet some time ago removed all truly adult content, leaving the whole series dry on the top end of the adult spectrum where maybe they could offer enough value to keep subscribers around and true distinction from all other streaming services....
Between that and losing Game of Thrones, and the last season of GOT also blowing some goodwill HBO had built up with consumers.. they have a tough road ahead.
Re: HBO Max is OK, but still not great... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think AT&T didn't get their business model (high quality exclusive content and some movies for filler), and is killing them with a bad signal to noise ratio on content.
HBO makes hit shows you need to spend $15/month to see. Filling them with garbage won't help, and yet with the switch to MAX, that's exactly what they've done.
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It's a classic business move. Find a luxury brand that you can buy and then use it to polish your turds.
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You may not be able to polish a turd, but you can wrap it in gold foil. Shiny!
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I hear ya!
The Sopranos was good.
Normally I never watch anything to do with horror, or the sub-genres, but True Blood fantasy horror drama was surprisingly good. (Shame that the ending was complete shit.)
Game of Thrones peaked around S1 - S4 before slowly "jumping the Stark." It's too bad Season 8 was [youtube.com] crap [youtube.com] with [youtube.com] plot [youtube.com] armor [youtube.com]. When people start referring to D&D (David Benioff and D.B. Weiss) as Dumb and Dumber you know many fans were pissed. What's that joke about how the show ended?
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Curb Your Enthusiasm is all the George Costanza bullshit without any of the surrounding shenanigans at all times. I found it too annoying to take.
It's Always Sunny might be the funniest show ever produced, if you don't mind crawling down into the gutter and eating with the rats. Sometimes, literally. It has nothing to do with HBO, but it's good.
The Wire's great. Veep is fantastic. Deadwood is gold if you skip the shit reunion movie from last year.
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This has to be a troll. True Blood was a good series? I mean, I've seen it with the wife and it's basically encapsulated soap opera within a supernatural shell.
Sopranos beats it on plot alone, barring the biffed landing. The Wire smacks True Blood around like a spoiled child at military school. The first four seasons of Game of Thrones were arguably better, though by the end of the final season it started making True Blood look like Shakespeare.
Perry Mason and Big Little Lies both are really good shows,
HBO Max + Roku (Score:2)
It's almost as if they should have put HBO Max on Roku to get more subs...
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You mean like how they pulled Gone with the Wind?
https://www.enidnews.com/opini... [enidnews.com]
How about the very woke adaptation of Watchmen?
https://www.worldofreel.com/bl... [worldofreel.com]
How about the woke adaptation of Looney Tunes cartoons?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
The story repeats with show after show. Their NFL coverage is a failure, and so on and so on.
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Loss leaders. Pearl clutching headlines. Everything is strictly business, no matter how we see it
You can still torrent the cartoons
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The point isn't whether or not I can get the content. The point is the woke actions of HBO. They do woke stuff exclusively to any other ideology or political view. In doing so they exposed themselves as actually being the intolerant ones. That's the problem with purity tests, the standards keep getting raised and before you know it nobody passes anymore.
The net effect is that they have driven away not just conservatives and those in the middle, they are now alienating moderate liberals as well. Even liberal
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The point is the woke actions of HBO. They do woke stuff exclusively to any other ideology or political view. In doing so they exposed themselves as actually being the intolerant ones... The impact is undeniable with thousands of media jobs being lost.
Who the fucks cares?! It's business. They do "woke" stuff to make money. If subscriptions go down they will do things differently. You can shitcan the high drama, please. Success is measured in the stock market, not the jobs market.
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Yes, that was very true. HBO has been desperate to replace it as well. For which they have bought the rights to Wheel of Time to rekindle what Game of Thrones had.
Had, as in it can't be replaced because Wheel of Time will be woke and GOT just wasn't. They have already made quite clear that WOT will put woke before story and all other regards. WOT isn't going to save HBO like GOT did.
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Also conservatism makes boring TV.
True Conservative values are about keeping the status quo. Good storytelling has conflict, resolution and growth. The key to good storytelling better aligns with Liberal values, which seek to change and try to improve. aka See where there is a problem (conflict), change the rules to fix the problem (resolution), hopefully see an overall improvement (growth).
The conservative narrative would just be a documentary on what is going on. See this person doing what he always do
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> When you push virtue signaling in everything, you do so at the expense of everyone who isn't woke. Even everyday liberals are starting to get sick of the phony inclusiveness.
I don't know about HBO, I don't want it. Well really I don't watch anything fiction other than my wife puts on old sitcoms. I do wonder about one thing, though.
I wonder if there happens to be an inverse correlation between wokeness and having a decent income. The far left seems to appeal to the 25 year old living with their paren
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Ok that made me chuckle.
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The far left seems to appeal to the 25 year old living with their parents.
Actually, it's the right which collectively are slackers who can't pull their own weight. Source. [apnews.com] They're good at projecting [wikipedia.org], though.
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According to your link, "On average, states received $1.14 in federal spending for every tax dollar they sent to Washington." So you're borrowing money to send it to me. Thanks. It's gonna suck when it comes time to pay up.
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Ps "votes for socialist programs" or "votes for high taxes" is not the same as "has a good job". That's what you looked at - who votes for high taxes. In fact, broke people, understandably, are the ones who want the government to take care of them. People with good careers are taking care of their own family's needs.
Re: Perhaps they should stop alienating people? (Score:1)
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I'm curious how you figure a 14% rate has anything to do with borrowing 14% of what another state is spending.
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Here's something to think about: The right, center and center-left share a strong work-ethic, the traditional American belief in getting ahead through hard work. The far-left says that's racist. Where do you thin
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By the way, when we go back to the question of who earns money (not which states vote for high taxes), here is what we get:
https://www.payscale.com/conte... [payscale.com]
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I wonder if there happens to be an inverse correlation between wokeness and having a decent income.
The causation runs the other direction. If you're fat, dumb, and happy, there's no reason for you to learn new things. That's "conservatism" in a nutshell.
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https://www.payscale.com/conte... [payscale.com]
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Not everything is some great conspiracy to undermine your political views. Sometimes certain forms of entertainment just go out of fashion, like disco music. It's entirely possible that an increasing percentage of viewers are content to watch whatever is available on Netflix/Amazon Prime Video/YouTube and don't see any value in subscribing to HBO.
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I think these professionals from hollywood would disagree with you:
https://thehill.com/opinion/te... [thehill.com]
https://www.hollywoodintoto.co... [hollywoodintoto.com]
https://www.hollywoodreporter.... [hollywoodreporter.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/entert... [foxnews.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.looper.com/65478/r... [looper.com]
https://www.hollywoodintoto.co... [hollywoodintoto.com]
You would have to be extraordinarily partisan to deny the active censorship and suppression of conservatives going on right now. Even a study by the liberal Columbia Journalism Review found the censorship to be ove
I sure am glad we allowed all these mergers (Score:3)
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Once again, rsilvergun insists, he has a right to tell others, how to run their businesses. For the Greater Good...
Typical declining megacorp strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
"Well we could try re-organizing the business, putting new people in charge, hiring new talent to expand things and see where that goes in the next five years."
"Five years? Johnson, and don't give me any 'that's not my name' business because it is now, Johnson in five years the Getty's are going to have two new yachts and I won't have any. Simply unacceptable. Fire some people so it looks like our profits are going up, tell my finance guy to exercise my stock options, then fire yourself after you're done."
John Oliver better stop taunting AT&T (Score:1)
I guess John Oliver might consider refraining from taunting AT&T, and spending exorbitant amounts of money on frivolous crap.
Go woke go broke? (Score:2)
They just don't have that much new content (Score:2)
HBO has a back library of some great stuff, especially stand-up. But they produce new material slowly. Their competition has been going full blast, and they have a lot of new stuff I haven't seen yet. I can get all the HBO I want by occasionally signing up for a month, once a year or less. The days when people were forced to subsidize things they weren't watching are ending, and it's inevitable that there will be losses.
AT&T ruins everything. (Score:2)
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One reason... (Score:2)
I hate Bill Maher, that's why I don't subscribe to HBO. Seriously though, I am still annoyed with HBO (and the other original movie channels) for requiring me to have a cable subscription back in the day. I take other cable channels to task as well, including the big three news organizations. Start live streaming your content on my Roku and I'll pay you.
HBO just hasn't decided if it's a streaming service or a cable TV service and that's why it's hitting the skids.
Good point... (Score:1)
HBO just hasn't decided if it's a streaming service or a cable TV service and that's why it's hitting the skids.
I think that's an excellent point, HBO has ironically probably been hurt having a background as a cable station, as it's led them to move very very slowly into streaming, and even now as you say they aren't really committing either way. As a result what you get is kind of mediocre and doesn't fit that well in either world.
99% Game of Thrones (Score:2)
HBO milked Game of Thrones for years and dragged out the final season as long as they could. After it was over, I'd bet my house that they saw a considerable drop in subscribers within the following 3 months.
Until they get a new "must watch" show, they will bleed subscribers. There is just too much content available for most people to justify another $15/month for a single channel that gets less and less new hit movies.
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Agreed.
HBO really burnt a lot of fans with how shitty S8 [youtube.com] of Game of Thrones was. It is funny how "It jumped the Stark" after season 7 (possibly earlier.) If that isn't proof that Dumb and Dumber (David Benioff and D.B. Weiss) can't write I don't know what is.
Season 1 of Westworld was great. Unfortunately S2 onward shit [youtube.com] the bed [youtube.com].
Watchmen was crap [slashdot.org] right out of the gate. Thankfully it was only 1 season.
What does HBO even have these days??
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Uh, you're general sentiment is actually incorrect. Game of Thrones was planned to be ten full seasons in the beginning, the Ds decided they were bored with it after the Red Wedding so they rushed as fast as they could to the finish line.
But yeah, lots of folks jumped after Game of Thrones ended, some jumped mid last season because it was so brutally painful to watch something that started off so good turn into such a dumpster fire. At least it got the Ds punted out of the Star Wars universe. They could
Rubber hits the road (Score:1)
Sometimes, the rubber actually hits the road. Are they producing anything that people want? Not much. Adios.
Elmer's Revenge (Score:2)