Transcript: WBD, Disney and the New Frenemy Era

Struggling studios keep banding together to make streaming work

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Elaine Low (00:04):

Welcome to The Ankler Podcast. I'm Elaine Low, writer of the Series Business newsletter, and your host for the week, alongside The Ankler himself, Richard Rushfield. Our usual pod captain, Sean McNulty is an earning zombie this week after covering results for the quarter out of Disney and Fox and Warner Bros., which you can, of course, read in his daily, Wakeup, newsletter, but we have, nonetheless, dragged him out of his earnings cave anyway just to say hello to you dear listeners. So say hello, Sean.

Sean McNulty (00:29):

I feel like I'm in a Danny Boyle movie, I'm 28 Days Later, but 28 earnings calls later, or something. They're making a sequel to that now, that could be something, Elaine.

Elaine Low (00:39):

How are you feeling about the state of the industry now after riffling through their balance sheets this quarter?

Sean McNulty (00:44):

How do you feel talking to writers every week? Well, we'll get into some numbers. There's a mix, but today was Warner Bros., which was probably the most troublesome of the three studio calls this week that went on. So...

Elaine Low (00:59):

Yeah, we're going to dig into that soon. And Richard, I know we were last floating the idea of calling ourselves The Office of the CEO, a la, Paramount Global's new leadership trio, but I think maybe after this week's news cycle, we might be better off calling ourselves The Bundle. What do you think?

Sean McNulty (01:14):

Oh.

Richard Rushfield (01:17):

I think that's great. Package three things that you wouldn't think of together and one price that's slightly more than what you'd pay for them individually and-

Sean McNulty (01:27):

Can I be Max or no?

Richard Rushfield (01:28):

Go ahead, yeah.

Sean McNulty (01:30):

You could be Disney+, Elaine, and Richard's Hulu. There we go. I think we just nailed it.

Elaine Low (01:32):

Yeah, no, I think that's about right. Yeah, I am Disney+. I see it.

Sean McNulty (01:36):

You are Disney+, I worked for HBO, so I get Max, and then, Richard's Mr. Hulu, so good.

Elaine Low (01:41):

Yeah, I'm of course talking about the news that Disney+, Hulu and Max are going to soon offer a bundle in a friends become enemies, enemies become friends situation that is two major competitors, that's of course, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery teaming up to... What? ... save the World from an a la carte streaming planet. We're going to get into that in a little bit as well as Richard's deep dive into Hollywood's yearbooks to look at where the industry's leaders all went to college.

(02:07):

But before we jump in, don't forget to listen to the Ankler crew every Thursday over on LA's number one NPR station in Southern California public radio's flagship radio station, 89.3 FM, LAist, as part of their Entertainment Thursday programming. You can catch us on Morning Edition, AirTalk and All Things Considered throughout the day.

(02:27):

And if you're in LA, come to our screening of Expats on May 13th where our brand new awards' editor, Katey Rich will be in town to talk to writer and director, Lulu Wang, and star, Sarayu Blue. I'd also highly recommend reading Katey's first Prestige Junkie column over at theankler.com, or if you're a subscriber, that's already in your inbox, alongside our other new-ish columnist, Erik Barmack, who, of course, writes a newsletter on AI. So definitely check that out.

(02:56):

Okay, so Sean, Earnings Sean, the Walt Disney Company reported earnings, from what I understand, no longer being the kind of person who has to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to look at earnings.

Sean McNulty (03:06):

The morning calls. Yeah, you guys would definitely not, but yeah, "5:30 A.M., no, thanks."

Elaine Low (03:11):

So Disney+ and Hulu, together, hit a milestone, right? They're like profitable? They're profitable business? And I mean, if you include ESPN+, I understand the streaming business still lost a little bit, lost like 18 mil for the quarter, but that's like hugely narrowed from the prior year quarter.