☀️NETFLIX Oscar hopeful is bonafide global hit
AMAZON & DIAMOND SPORTS set a deal / LGF seals future with Wick helmer / SEARCHLIGHT dumps Majors pic
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on WEDNESDAY Jan. 17, 2023.
Where hopefully you all got your OSCAR votes in yesterday, and… were the EMMYS any good? Some of the clips seemed fun!
As a responsible NY GIANTS fan, I just couldn’t turn off the EAGLES getting trounced by the BUCS Monday night on ABC (Jason Kelce is gonna call it a career and hang up the helmet btw), and FOX had no streaming option for the EMMYS outside of the cable bundle for me to do the two-screen thing. Way to keep it on-brand linear TV!
Rob McElhenney seemingly couldn’t turn the game off either, for… the opposite reason (and my condolences to the one Wakeup reader that I know took the game very hard, in addition to Rob I’m sure).
AND: It seems like most of America was with me and the NFL on ABC/ESPN… as only 4.3 Million people watched the EMMYS on FOX, a new all-time low, and down from 5.9 Million in Sept 2022.
Well hey at least there’s not another ceremony in eight months right 😬? Ok… well at least it won’t be up against an NFL game and a caucus night 🥴.
Note: the caucuses had their own issues, down about 50% from 2020 on the top three cable news networks to an aggregate 4.7 Million viewers.
BUT: This snapshot of the show from Deadline during Steven Yuen’s speech seemed to be a fitting analogy for the audience at large.
PLUS: This is more a comment on the state of late night TV in 2024 - but the only promotion I saw for the launch of the big new CBS 12:30 a.m. James Corden replacement show After Midnight in the CBS NFL Wildcard game on Monday… was a couple airings of a (maybe five-second?) promo for the show, the day before the show launched 🤯. So, don’t judge those premiere numbers too hard later today.
Meanwhile, CBS “premiere week”… which is still a full month away, got plenty of promo throughout the game.
OH: No thank you PEACOCK - I don’t want to give my data to the NFL, but thank you for asking. Very thoughtful thinking I might enjoy this.
ELSEWHERE: It’s kind of reassuring to see the big banks have as much variety in their success as Hollywood studios/streamers do. Leadership matters.
JP MORGAN: 2023 was a year of record profits at $46 billion, +32%.
CITIGROUP: -$1.8 billion Q4 loss with 20,000 layoffs coming this year, at a restructuring cost of $1 billion.
BOFA: Q4 profit $3.6 billion… but -56% YoY.
WELLS FARGO: Profits +9% in Q4 to $3.4 billion… but it had $1.1 billion in severance costs in Q4.
ALSO: Here is how a lot of these results are tied to the FDIC and the collapse of SILICON VALLEY BANK and SIGNATURE BANK in early 2023 for anyone inclined.
OH: If Bob Iger owes ya money 🙋♂️ (I told him taking the COWBOYS was a bad idea, but I’ll still happily take that $20), he’s got some fresh 💵: Bob got paid $31.6 Million for his first 10 months of work at DISNEY.
$26.1 Million in stock and options
$2.1 Million in bonus/incentive payment
$865k in bi-weekly checks (about $33k every 2 weeks, before taxes, health insurance and 401k of course - Bob is 72 after all and I hear he’s losing his job in three years 😳).
Bob II/Chapek also got $9 Million for his roughly 1.5 months of work in FY23 (btw he landed his first role post-DISNEY - details in the Executive Suite section below).
DISNEY laid off about 7,000 people in said FY23. Pretty sure they didn’t get stock on the way out.
DISNEY also said uh, yeah don’t vote for Nelson Peltz in the upcoming board elections #shocker, stating he hasn’t presented a “single strategic idea” in 2 years of seeking a seat and “seemed oblivious” to what’s going on in the business. Hard to argue that logic.
It also said former CFO Jay Rasulo has an “an outdated perspective” on the business, given he’s been out of the company since the four years before it launched a streaming service.
APRIL: Your COACHELLA headliners this year are Doja Cat, No Doubt, Lana Del Rey and Tyler the Creator.