ROKU growth rate drops by about 60% as pandemic boost fades

AMAZON has first quarterly loss in 7 years / HUNGER GAMES sets prequel pic / HULU gets SCHITT'S CREEK

Apr 29, 2022

Mornin! This is Sean McNulty and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on FRIDAY April 29, 2022.

Where in honor of finishing out the busiest week of Q1 Earnings season 🥵, our Friday Morning coffee is gratis at Michael Eisner’s Malibu “compound” - I hear ~~his barista~~ Michael brews it himself 👨‍🍳 - but if you want to leave with the keys to it, it’ll cost you… $225 Million. 🤯

AND: This new $230 small drone “selfie”camera from SNAP 📷 will be super helpful for…taking pictures of your neighbors in their compound’s private backyards, and then posting them on social media. Can’t wait to fly mine over the $100 Million estate SNAP CEO Evan Spigel is building in Holmby Hills to post some pics as a thank you.

AND: Just to share a little newsletter love - not sure if any folks live in the Kids programming space… but if so just a Kids / Family streaming biz analysis newsletter from another industry exec here to check out that you may find of interest.

📽 THE SILVER SCREEN

Jlaw is an exec producer on it so… she can totally do this. via giphy

Hunger Games prequel will be called “Hunger Games Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”

Will hit theaters Nov 17, 2023, and be directed by Francis Lawrence who did the last 2 pics. No cast as of yet. /THR

ALSO IN MOVIES

NETFLIX Tudum content site lays off at least 10 people. /THR
- Deadline has tweets from a few affected here.
“MI: 7” releases a full title… even though no one will ever call it this when talking about it: “Mission: Impossible 7 — Dead Reckoning: Part 1”. Still has the July 2023 release plan. /THR

📝 IN SO MANY WORDS…

“I don’t think the agents are very happy at all. There will still be some people who command big dollars but they are proven entities with track records.”
- UNIVERSAL Studio Group Chair Pearlena Igbokwe on the ceasing of the streaming arms race, and prices for non-A List talent normalizing

📺 THE TV SET

HULU getting “Schitt’s Creek” exclusively in streaming starting October 3

Currently streaming on NETFLIX, no word on an acquisition price or deal duration. /Deadline

ALSO IN TV

James Corden will leave CBS’s “Late Late Show” in May 2023. /THR Here’s the link to his announcement on last night’s show.
AMAZON PRIME announces 40 INDIA Movie & TV series projects… as we all await to see how much they’re willing to spend to buy Cricket rights this June. AMAZON is projected to be the 2nd largest streaming service in INDIA behind DISNEY+HOTSTAR. /THR
- Also apparently 1 in 5 PRIME VIDEO users who live outside of INDIA watches Indian content. /Deadline
HBOMAX signs Molly Shannon to 1 year development deal. /Deadline
NBC renews “College Bowl” for a Season 2. /THR
AMAZON’S ~~IMDBTV~~ FREEVEE orders series starring people from Judge Judy’s entourage. /Variety

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💻 THE MEDIA BIZ

ROKU adds 1.1 Million customers from Jan thru March, now at 61.3 Million total

While that number’s small, ROKU’s had quarters with similar growth #s before… but more important here is the year-over-year growth rate, which was 14%. It was 35% in Q1 2021.

The company also lost $26 Million, vs a $76 Million profit in Q1 2021. Supply chain (mostly re: new TV’s) again was cited as a large cause here.

But like many others in the streaming business, ROKU says they’ll be good on the year in terms of previous net Revenue guidance… even if the Q2 in front of us will likely be a break even situation. Hopefully. /Variety

ROKU stock was +8% yesterday on the COMCAST-CHARTER team up (further validating what ROKU does), and was +2% on this news last night (Wall Street was basically… eh).

AMAZON’s big Q1 miss, stock down 9% last night

And when you trade at over $2800 a share… that’s a huge drop. Blame their first quarterly loss in 7 years, at $3.8 Billion.

That’s on $116 Billion in revenue, +7% vs Q1 2021, but that’s their lowest growth rate since… well, basically AMAZON was the AMAZON we know and not a book company (early 2000s)

And… cue the Q2 clouds. They’re only projecting 3-7% growth, which is below expectations. And don’t even get them started on that new Staten Island union.

And then they totally told us how many AMAZON PRIME VIDEO members they added in Q1. Oh wait that was a 🖕 instead. /Variety

APPLE… took a different tactic, beating Q1 Revenue expectations by $4 Billion at $97 Billion total

They did release some streaming customer stats that… really gave 0 insight into anything. Thanks Tim.

But APPLE did make $25 Billion in profit in 3 months so… yeah they can afford all those Tom Hanks APPLE TV+ projects.

For perspective, that’s just slightly under what NETFLIX will make in Revenue alone all year.

iPhones make up half of their total Revenue, and the Americas represent about 45% of their business. CHINA is about 20%.

Speaking of which - while supply chain issues seem to have somehow evaded APPLE thus far (the big $$ they’ve invested in CHINA’s ~~government~~ economy over the past 5 years probably didn’t hurt), APPLE did say the supply chain will catch up with them in… you know it - Q2. At the rate of a $4 Billion to $8 Billion hit.

So the APPL stock took a slight 2% loss in after hours trading.

That takeaway from Q1 Earnings Week again: Man Q2 is gonna be dark…

ALSO IN MEDIA

ALTICE lost 74k Cable TV subscribers, and lost Broadband subscribers again, -13k. #notgood. The company still cleared about $200 Millon on $2.4 Billion of Q1 revenue.
- BROADBAND subs: 4.37 Million
- CABLE TV subs: 2.65 Million
GOOGLE giving you greater control over the ads you see. In addition to Gambling and Booze, you can now block ads for Dating, Pregnancy, and Weight Loss. /9to5Google

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🏦 STOCK NOTES:

FACEBOOK +17% (basically maintained the boost they got Wed eve)

NETFLIX +6% ($199.52)

SIRIUS +6% ($6.31)

SPOTIFY +6% ($102.68)

(Notice a pattern here? #buyinglow?)

SNAP +6% ($28.81)

COMCAST -6% ($41.70) #peacock #broadbandsubs

👩‍💻 THE FSS FEED:

(new Stuff to Watch this weekend, Friday - Saturday - Sunday)

WEEKEND READS

Producer Jason Blum lays out advice for NETFLIX in a NY TIMES Opinion piece.

#Funfact - Jason FED EX’s profit participation checks to actors in his movies himself! Along with a video clip of it apparently.

FRIDAY

IN THEATERS:

OPEN ROAD “Memory” - Liam Nesson action pic. Yes they’re still making these. And yes Liam turns 70 in about a month.

STREAMING:

MOVIES

HULU “Crush” - YA high school love triangle movie about a girl trying to decide between two different girls - STREAM HERE

SERIES

NETFLIX “Ozark” final episodes - STREAM HERE
NETFLIX “Grace and Frankie” final episodes - STREAM HERE
APPLE TV+ “Shining Girls” - Elizabeth Moss thriller series - STREAM HERE
SHOWTIME “Ziwe” Season 2 on the app (airs Sundays on TV) - STREAM HERE

SATURDAY

hmm, take a hike? I mean in the literal sense, not the usual way I mean things in this newsletter. Unless you’re going to NERD PROM in DC of course.

SUNDAY

New “60 Minutes” CBS at 7p
SHO “I Love That for You” - Vanessa Bayer series at 830p
CNN: “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” new season at 9p
E! “Welcome Home Nikki Glaser?” - Premieres at 10p
SMITHSONIAN CHANNEL “The Color of Care” - docu from Oprah, 8p
FOX “Duncanville” - I guess 830? You can’t scan Fox.com’s schedule more than 2 days in advance for… some reason.

🎥 TRAILER HOUSE

NETFLIX “The Pentaverate” series trailer. Premieres on Thursday

UNIVERSAL “Jurassic World Dominion” trailer #2 - In theaters June 10

STARZ “Becoming Elizabeth” trailer - the queen one, not Taylor. And yes I missed this one last week… so catching up now. Premieres Sun June 12

PARAMOUNT+ “Black Gold” docuseries trailer - 3 parts, exec produced by Darren Aronofsky about how EXXON MOBIL knew that yeah… we have a climate change problem, and the extensive steps they took over the past few decades to keep that on the DL. Premieres May 17.

🎧 PLAYING ME OFF

THE KNOCKS - new album out today, stream here on SPOTIFY. I’ll drop any tracks I’m digging over the weekend on Monday!

If you need some new tunes:

THE WAKEUP Spotify playlist

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-SEAN MCNULTY

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