☀️NETFLIX 🤝 Big Bird & the New Kids' Arms Race
SONY revives 'S.W.A.T.' / NETFLIX enlists Longoria to direct / SEARCHLIGHT gets Payne pic
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Where there’s nothing quite like a couple of encouaraging larger employment signs emerging from corporate America leaders at roughly the same time . . . just as America’s next generation graduates from college with 6-figure debt (and folks 4 years younger decide where to sign up for theirs).
First up — America’s largest bank, JP MORGAN CHASE, which recently had an Investors Day where the CFO nodded to the fact that its hiring practices will be half the rate they were over the past 5 years, and yes — AI doing jobs that entry level folks used to do is a significant part of that, cutting about 10% of jobs in some divisions. Nice to see good ‘ol “efficiency” popping up on Wall Street too.
“We’re asking people to resist head count growth where possible and increase their focus on efficiency.”
Next up is the Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LINKEDIN, who published a NYT Op-Ed yesterday sounding an alarm about the disappearance of entry level positions in white-collar fields like law and finance due to . . . AI increasingly doing the work, and making a comparison to the American manufacturing job sector collapse in the 1980s.
Just curious — it’s never too late to learn how to become a plumber, right?
AND: If you ever did a 23&ME — here’s who now owns your data, as the company sold for $256M in a bankruptcy sale (the new owner is a company looking to create new drugs using AI and other tech). 23&ME went public as a SPAC 4 years ago at a $3.5B valuation.
YEAH: Always great to see a number like this inch close to where it was when the U.S. economy had a 🤏 crisis.
PLUS: Here is your April Gauge from the NIELSEN folks, with a few takeaways on U.S. viewership:
YOUTUBE hit its highest TV streaming viewership share to date, at 12.4%.
That’s +2.4% YoY.
NETFLIX was down to a 7.5% share — although remember NETFLIX makes more money than YOUTUBE’s ad business by a margin ($10.5B to $8.9B in Q1).
YT PREMIUM & MUSIC subscription 💰 and YT TV revenues are not included in that $8.9B.
The 2 most popular shows in April in the U.S. based on minutes-viewed: Grey’s Anatomy and The White Lotus.
10% of Grey’s streaming minutes were for episodes from the new season (on HULU)
60% came from NETFLIX (old episodes)
30% was older episodes on HULU
YoY changes in share points from April 2024:
Streaming: +5.9 points
Broadcast: -1.4 points
Cable: -4.6 points
IMPORTANT NOTE: There’s an interesting caveat here to the chart in regards to the growing ROKU CHANNEL number.
If you subscribe to a streamer like PAR+ or MAX through your ROKU CHANNEL app — your viewing of MAX or PAR+ programming that you then technically access by going to ROKU CHANNEL app first is counted in the ROKU total in The Gauge chart, not the MAX (WBD) or PAR+ total.
ROKU added MAX to its ROKU CHANNEL Premium Subscription offerings in November.
The ROKU CHANNEL number in The Gauge has had a +21% boost since then (PAR+ has long been available there too), although no direct causality was noted.
Other streamers like AMC+, DISCO+, STARZ and BRITBOX are also available to subscribe to directly via ROKU CHANNEL.
NETFLIX, DIS+, HULU, APPLE TV+ and PEACOCK are not.
Basically — whichever app you go into initially to watch something . . . is the app that gets the viewing credit.
I’m not sure entirely if this would be the same for AMAZON PV and any apps that you subscribe to/access via Channels, as I don’t use the product — but if you access MAX by first going into AMAZON PV, it sounds like the ‘credit’ would go to APV, not MAX.
SO: While not a major consideration, this could be skewing numbers here to a degree in regards to putting what most would consider to be MAX or PAR+ viewing into the ROKU CHANNEL (or potentially AMAZON PV total).
THANKS: To the folks at PARAMOUNT for the invite to come say goodbye to Mission: Impossible on Sunday night, which definitely goes out in a big, signature Tom Cruise way.
A fun time at the big screen, and a great way to kick-off summer . . . harkening back when we used to do such things on Memorial Day weekend.
FINALLY: Just a fun read related to the MI:8 plot about an invading AI overtaking cyberspace — this BBC piece on how many things we use in everyday life such as ATM machines, elevators and even transit systems still rely on very old MICROSOFT OS technology (WINDOWS NT anyone?).
📺 THE TV SET
