Report: Traditional TV Is Now Disney's Weak Link

Disney’s traditional television business has gone from superhero to weak link in just a few short quarters. reports The Wall Street Journal.

Income from its TV networks has dropped faster than expected as the world’s largest entertainment company struggles to boost its share price and get its streaming-video business to profitability.

The situation presents a quandary for Disney. For the past 3½ years, the company has been subsidizing the losses that its streaming division has incurred by using cash earned from two other businesses: theme parks and so-called linear TV, which makes money from ad-sales revenue and cable subscription fees paid to networks such as ESPN, the Disney Channel and Freeform.

Disney in recent months has been trying to reduce its streaming losses by slashing costs, laying off workers and evaluating moves such as selling its flagship ESPN channel directly to cable cord-cutters.

In Disney’s most recent financial quarter, operating income from the linear TV segment fell by 35% to $1.8 billion, its sharpest year-over-year decline in at least three years. Operating income from Disney’s parks, experiences and products unit has exceeded that of the linear-TV business for two consecutive quarters for the first time since Disney launched its streaming business.

Disney Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy has said the downturn in the linear-TV business isn’t permanent and has affected rivals too, and that when the advertising market improves, so will Disney’s finances.

“Advertising is cyclical. I think everyone is pretty much down on advertising,” she said at an investor conference earlier this month. “But the fact of the matter is, advertising will come back. When the ad market does become more robust, we are very, very well positioned.”

The rapid deterioration of the linear-TV business points to more fundamental change in the kind of business Disney is, analysts say.

5/30 WAKE-UP CALL: Congress To Act On Debt Deal

President Joe Biden projected optimism Monday that Congress will back his agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling as the White House worked behind the scenes to rustle up votes. “I feel very good about it,” Biden told reporters outside the White House as he left Washington for Delaware, adding that he had spoken to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "I spoke to a whole bunch of people and it feels good," Biden said. Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy struck a tentative agreement on Saturday to raise the debt ceiling until 2025 in exchange for a number of Republican demands to cut spending. As the text of that agreement became public late Sunday, both sides were spending the Memorial Day weekend selling the plan.

What's in Biden and McCarthy's debt ceiling deal?  In a last-minute deal to raise the debt ceiling, the White House was able to stave off the sweeping budget cuts that House Republicans pushed in their own legislation while keeping intact the president's signature domestic programs. The deal now faces an unclear outlook in Congress, where progressive Democrats and hardline Republicans have both criticized components of the agreement.

• The tentative deal would raise the debt limit  on how much the government can borrow through the end of 2024, averting a default that could happen June 5 if the debt ceiling is not raised.The deal caps annual discretionary spending for two years, keeping non-defense spending levels flat.
• Funding for domestic programs across the board − besides Social Security and Medicare − will stay the same next year. 
• The White House succeeded in keeping intact the Inflation Reduction Act − the president's signature climate and prescription drug bill − and the president's program to forgive student loan debt for millions of Americans, at least for now.

➤DeSANTIS SLAMS DEAL: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday slammed the bipartisan debt ceiling deal. “Prior to this deal, our country was careening towards bankruptcy, and after this deal, our country will still be careening towards bankruptcy, and to say you can do 4 trillion of increases in the next year and a half, I mean, that’s a massive amount of spending,” DeSantis, who recently announced his 2024 presidential bid, said on “Fox & Friends.”

➤DRONES STRIKE MOSCOW AS RUSSIA ATTACKS UKRAINE: Russian barrages at nighttime have become commonplace in Kyiv. Daylight attacks cause a different level of terror. The Kremlin followed the former with the latter Monday, sending residents of the Ukrainian capital scurrying for cover from ballistic and cruise missiles in the late morning after a drone and missile fusillade several hours before. City officials said it was the 16th air assault on Kyiv this month. Even though Ukrainian chief of staff Valerii Zaluzhnyi said all 11 of the rockets fired at Kyiv around 11:30 a.m. were shot down, the sound of air sirens and the sight of white smoke above the city prompted the locals to scamper in fear and pack the central subway station, Tetatralna, to seek shelter.

#Moscow... Drones 👀 https://t.co/ofEoE50zO5 pic.twitter.com/2OQGAvEXp0

— MAKS 23 👀🇺🇦 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) May 30, 2023

In Moscow, residents reported hearing explosions and Mayor Sergei Sobyanin later confirmed there had been a drone attack. Sobyanin said in a Telegram post that the attack caused “insignificant damage” to several buildings. Two people received medical attention for unspecified injuries but did not need hospitalization, he said. Residents of two buildings damaged in the attack were evacuated, Sobyanin said. Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the wider Moscow region, later said several drones were “shot down on the approach to Moscow.” There was no immediate comment on the attacks from Ukrainian officials.

Sounds of Summer: Here Comes Country Music

Move over, George, there's a new king of country, and it's helping the music genre's charts grow year after year, according to Chris Oberholtz, at Fox Weather.

Yet, before you go off and download their No. 1 hit, it's not the best up-and-coming Nashville musician you might be searching for. These lyrics are simply the sound of summer.

"The rise of the thermometer in northern climates and summer listening levels to country radio have been a long-time parallel trend in the U.S. and Canada," said Kenny Jay, a consulting partner with Albright & O’Malley & Brenner.

It's partly due to the combination of artists releasing more "summertime, feel-good" songs, Jay continued, and the shift in normal life patterns with more vacations and outside time. 

The endless amounts of summer touring have also historically led to annual rating highs in small towns and large cities, Jay added.

In the top 50 radio markets, combined radio station ratings were at an annual low in December 2021 at 281 shares of those markets, the country radio specialist reported. By June and July 2022, those numbers increased to over 363 shares – a 29% increase.

According to Jay, that’s a pretty typical pattern for the pre-COVID format, too. In 2017-18, the format followed the same path from a low point in December to a high point in July.

"Country music is authentic to everyone, not just to a lifestyle that lives in the suburbs of the suburbs," Jay said.

Kenny Jay

Country: The Ultimate Summer Playlist

One summer road trip down Highway 49 in your old Ford, surrounded by a young love with two bare feet on the dashboard, you can't help but think of Kenny Chesney's perfectly written anthem to the season.

"Summertime," the third single from Chesney's 2005 album, The Road and the Radio, even reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.

"According to Nielsen, it’s very typical for classic hits, classic rock and country formats to lead the way in ratings increasing during the summer months," Jay said. "These formats are perceived by listeners as formats of music that ‘make me feel good when I listen.'"

So as summer traditions go , country music is sure to fill the ultimate playlists during those vacations, trips to the beach, picnics and tailgates. 

According to Jay, the country music industry has a unique relationship where the performers are closer to fans than any other type of music. That, combined with more festival and outdoor opportunities in the summer, provides the perfect landscape for all business areas to grow from radio, streaming and touring.

You can thank some of the world’s top songwriters who have landed in Nashville and helped the genre secure some of the best country songs being released in music today, according to Jay.

"Combine that with artists like Keith Urban, Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood, who have been household names for 15 years or more … with new stadium headliners Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and, musically, there’s something for everyone," he said.

It's those artists like Combs and Wallen who are keeping the lights on in Nashville right now, according to Dale Carter, morning on-air personality and program director for KFKF 94.1 FM in Kansas City, Missouri.

"Country music is not just a song-driven format; it's an artist-driven format," Carter said. "And listeners develop a connection with these artists and want to go see them when they come to town. I think that helps our ratings along the way, too."

According to Albright & O’Malley & Brenner, the country music format has increased in streaming the past three years, but as for overall market share in radio, it’s down about 25% in the past five years. 

"As it relates to the weather, I can tell you that on my station in Kansas City, we had a great year last year, and the uptick started right in spring and went all the way through summer," Carter said.

Kelly Says Fox News Fearful Of Streaming Platforms

SiriusXM podcaster Megyn Kelly sat down with a former Fox News colleague on his Newsmax TV show last Wednesday evening to diagnose what’s happening to their former employer in the wake of the network’s decision to take top star Tucker Carlson off the air.

Talking with Newsmax host Eric Bolling, Kelly appeared to share some insider information indicating that upper management is in a state of ‘panic’ Fox News fell from its commanding perch over all cable news competitors in the wake of the Carlson decision.

“They’re terrified. They don’t know what to do,” she told Bolling as many prime-time shows have lost more than a million viewers since Carlson’s removal and are now barely topping MSNBC or losing out to the far-left network while CNN remains well in third place.

“There was a day when they didn’t view digital as a threat and as a competitor,” she said. “That day is gone.”

Comcast's CEO Is Considering His Next Big Move

Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts has a penchant for lining up a huge deal around every five years or so. It was 2018 the last time he made a big acquisition, and Wall Street is ready for his next dramatic move.

Bloomberg reports the stakes have arguably never been higher for the media and communications giant: Comcast is losing cable TV subscribers at record rates. Growth in its broadband internet business has dried up amid fierce competition from the likes of Verizon Communications Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. The NBCUniversal division has been shaken by the departures of CEO Jeff Shell, who was ousted last month amid sexual harassment allegations, and ad chief Linda Yaccarino, who jumped ship to run Twitter. The likely sale of streaming service Hulu looms large and Hollywood writers are on strike. Comcast’s shares are down about 32% since peaking nearly two years ago.

As the largest cable TV and broadband provider in the US, Comcast has gotten too big to acquire any more cable companies. But Roberts has embraced the idea of owning more of the content his cable system can deliver. His next big move will most likely involve Comcast’s media division, an entertainment business that includes the NBC broadcast network, a stable of cable channels, the Universal and DreamWorks movie studios, streaming platforms including Peacock and a stake in Hulu, and theme parks. And yet, Comcast lacks the breadth and depth of content to rival Disney and Netflix.

Podcasting’s Next Wave Of Mergers Starting

The era of consolidation in podcasting seemed like it might have effectively started and ended when Spotify, Amazon, SiriusXM and others gobbled up major names in the space in an effort to diversify their audio lineups. But now, four years after Spotify got into podcasting by buying Anchor and Gimlet Media, Bloomberg reports we’re witnessing the dawn of a second wave. This time around, the companies up for sale are smaller production studios and networks.

Last week brought news of two such deals. Audily, a relatively new production company that specializes in branded shows, bought Rococo Punch, an independent studio best known for its shows Welcome to Provincetown and Finding Raffi .

A second, all-stock deal involved LiveOne, the owner of PodcastOne, acquiring Kast Media, which makes and monetizes programs like The Sarah Silverman Podcast and Whitney Cummings’ Good For You .

The terms for these deals were not disclosed. But the back-to-back announcements arrived in an increasingly challenging environment for podcasters looking to monetize their work, both through ads and selling programs to production partners. The tech companies that have traditionally spent the most money in the space have slowed down their spending just as advertisers, spooked by a possible recession, have pulled back on marketing.

Target's Pride Merch Decision Called 'Huge Mistake'

Entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary responded to Target's Pride merchandising controversy after suffering a hit in market value and threats of boycotts. 

O'Leary said that although Target wants to sell to everybody, its marketing decision to roll out the Pride merchandising line was a "huge mistake."

"When Bud happened, I can't believe that boards didn't wake up to that decimation market cap… Budweiser was the American beer. It took decades to build that brand and they blew it up in 30 hours," O'Leary told guest host Rachel Campos-Duffy on "Jesse Watters Primetime."

Kevin O'Leary

Bud Light's sales plummeted since April after teaming up with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney. The American beer giant continues to grapple with the backlash from its marketing decision.

Target and Anheuser-Busch lost around a combined $28 billion in market value as of Friday, FOX Business reported.

The "Shark Tank" star said companies like Bud Light and Target "cannot be partisan in any way" when selling consumer goods and services. 

"Let me give you an example," O'Leary said. "Do you ever hear a CEO that represents a company ever talking about abortion? Never. Because that is an issue that will never be resolved. It's a personal issue, it's a family issue, it's a religious issue. It's partisan forever. You don't touch it. Same thing with politics, same thing with gender identity. Everybody has a personal opinion about it. When you actually get involved in a fight like that, you lose 50% of your constituency." 

Tampa TV: Nexstar To Acquire Lower Power TV Signal

Nexstar Media Group, Inc. has announced that it has agreed to acquire WSNN-LD in Sarasota, Florida, from Citadel Communications, LLC.

The acquisition will enable WFLA-TV (NBC) and WTTA-TV (My Net) to significantly expand their leading local news presence in the Tampa DMA to include Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties along the West Coast of central Florida. The transaction is expected to close later this year, subject to regulatory and other customary approvals. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Home to the award-winning journalists of the “Suncoast News Network,” WSNN-LD is a low-power independent television station reaching more than 400,000 homes in the region. The station currently broadcasts more than seven hours of live local news each weekday and nearly 50 hours of live local news every week. Together with WFLA-TV and WTTA-TV, the three TV stations will provide unprecedented coverage of breaking news, weather, sports, and community activities in Tampa, the nation’s 13th-largest television market, and in the surrounding area.

“WSNN-LD and its Suncoast News Network provide comprehensive local news, weather and sports coverage across both linear and digital platforms, and offer a variety of advertising opportunities for businesses and marketers throughout Sarasota and the three-county region,” said Mark Higgins, WFLA-TV/WTTA-TV Vice President and General Manager. “WSNN-LD is the perfect complement to WFLA-TV and WTTA-TV, and positions us extremely well in what will again be a battleground state during the 2024 presidential election cycle.”

Philly's Last Newstand Sells No Newspapers

30th Street Newstand Back 'In The Day'

The handwritten sign hung on the door of the newsstand at 30th Street Station. It offered one final headline from a shop that will carry no more, according to The Philly Inquirer.

“No newspapers,” it read, underlined four times for emphasis.

That’s because earlier this month Faber, the New Jersey-based newsstand and bookseller, stopped selling newspapers at its 30th Street location. The store’s shelves remain stocked with magazines, periodicals, books, snacks, greeting cards, and travel trinkets. But the iconic station’s sole newsagent is now a newsstand without newspapers.

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

“We weren’t making any money off newspapers,” said Claudia Carr, the store manager. Corporate made the call a couple of weeks ago, she said. But she was relieved to be rid of them. “We were making like pennies off newspapers.”

Slumping sales would hardly come as a surprise. Not in the Age of Smartphones. Not when the pandemic only worsened the newspaper industry’s existential struggle to survive its digital transformation. And not as newsstands themselves, like coin-operated news boxes before them, slowly disappear.

R.I.P.: Pete Brown Lyricist For Cream

Pete Brown (1940-2023)

Pete Brown, a British Beat poet who wrote the lyrics to songs by the rock supergroup Cream, including the hits “White Room,” “I Feel Free” and “Sunshine of Your Love,” and who after the band’s breakup collaborated for nearly five decades with Jack Bruce, its lead vocalist and bassist, died on Friday at his home in Hastings, on the southeast coast of England. He was 82, reports The NY Times.

His manager, Peter Conway, said the cause was cancer.

Brown entered Cream’s circle at the request of Ginger Baker, the band’s drummer. They knew each other because Brown performed his poetry backed by jazz musicians and Baker had gotten his start in jazz combos; Mr. Baker asked Brown for help on the lyrics to the group’s debut single, “Wrapping Paper,” which preceded the release of “Fresh Cream,” its first album, in 1966.

Brown quickly discovered a career-long writing partner in Bruce, whose fluid and propulsive playing provided counterpoint to Mr. Baker’s explosive drumming and the guitar pyrotechnics of Cream’s third member, Eric Clapton.

In a short documentary about the making of “White Room” seen on Dutch television in 2018, Mr. Brown recalled, “It became evident that Jack and I had a chemistry, and when we wrote ‘I Feel Free,’ which was a big hit, so everyone went, ‘OK, that’s a team, let it roll.’”

Mr. Brown did not provide the lyrics to all of Cream’s songs, but he was the group’s primary lyricist. On its second album, “Disraeli Gears” (1967), he wrote the words to “Sunshine of Your Love,” a collaboration with Mr. Bruce and Mr. Clapton, as well as “Dance the Night Away” and two other songs.

Peter Ronald Brown was born on Dec. 25, 1940, in Surrey, England, with World War II underway. His parents had moved there after fleeing London during the Blitz. His father, Nathan Brown, whose birth name was Nathan Leibowitz, and his mother, Kitty Cohen, sold shoes.

Peter started writing poems as a teenager, fired up by the works of Dylan Thomas, Federico García Lorca and Gerard Manley Hopkins. But he detoured, at least temporarily, to journalism, which he studied for nine months in 1958 at the Polytechnic-Regent Street (now the University of Westminster) in London.

R.I.P: Sheldon Reynolds, Earth, Wind & Fire Guitarist

Sheldon Reynolds (1960-2023)

Sheldon Reynolds, a guitarist and singer for the band Earth, Wind & Fire, has died at 63.

Reynolds joined the popular band in 1987 and remained a member until 2002.

"Sheldon was an excellent addition to the band, a great writer and producer, and a kind, loving person," current band member and singer Philip Bailey wrote on social media. "He will be missed. Our condolences to his family."

Reynolds appeared on the albums Heritage, Millennium and In the Name of Love.

Earth, Wind & Fire began in 1970 under the leadership of Maurice White, who created a band that could combine elements of jazz, funk, R&B, soul, dance, pop and rock, and celebrated African musicianship and spiritualism.

Earth, Wind & Fire was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Other achievements include performing during the 2005 Super Bowl halftime show. The band, among the best-selling of all time, has won six Grammys including the Grammy lifetime achievement award.

Earth, Wind & Fire's biggest hits are still widely played including "September," which features the ever-popular lyric "Do you remember the 21st night of September?"

The band's drummer Fred White died in January at the age of 67. He performed as a vocalist, percussionist and bass player for the band.

R.I.P.: Bob Bittner, E-Z King of AM Radio In Cambridge, MA

Bob Bittner

Bob Bittner, longtime local radio personality and owner of WJIB 740 AM in Cambridge, died on Friday.

Ben Ewen-Campen, Somerville City Council President, tweeted the news on Friday night. "I'm heartbroken to learn that Bob Bittner passed away. He ran the indescribably great local radio station WJIB AM740, "The Memories Station." What a beautiful life bringing this wonderful music into our homes, never playing ads, and reading his own PSAs. Thank you, Bob," Ewen-Campen tweeted.  

Bittner also owned four other ad-free stations that were located on Cape Cod and in Maine.

WJIB, which was a part of "The Memories Stations" Bittner owned, played music from the 1930s through 1960s. 

Bittner was the owner and sole employee of WJIB. The station doesn't play any commercials and relied on non-deductible donations from listeners.

While WJIB runs no spot advertising during the week, its evening and weekend programming was made up in part by paid leased-time shows. In addition to the usual religious broadcasts on weekends, WJIB has carried college sports, Chinese-language programming, student-produced shows from the Massachusetts College of Communications, Radio France International's morning show.

R.I.P.: Actor George Maharis, Starred In Route 66

George Maharis (1931-2023)

George Maharis, who played Buz Murdock on the popular 1960s series “Route 66,” has died at age 94.

A cause of death was not released for Maharis, who died last Wednesday, according to the announcement over the weekend.

“George is well known for his stardom in route 66, stage productions, singing, artist, and above all a great guy would do anything for anyone,” caretaker Marc Bahan wrote in a Facebook post. “My dear friend, you’ll be terribly missed.”

He appeared in more than 70 screen and stage roles during a career spanning four decades, including the Off-Broadway play “Deathwatch” by Jean Genet during the late 1950s.

He was best known for his starring gig on “Route 66,” appearing as the New York native Murdock on dozens of episodes, including the series’ first in 1960. The show largely centered on Murdock and Martin Milner’s character, Tod Stiles, embarking on adventures throughout the U.S. in a Chevrolet Corvette.

R.I.P.: Rick Wolff, MLB Player, Coach, WFAN Broadcaster

Rick Wolff’s résumé is about as long as a Major League roster, his disparate professions linked by an adoration of sports and a fascination with sports psychology.

He was a professional baseball player, a college baseball coach, an author of books about sports psychology and an editor and publisher of books by athletes like Tiger Woods (as well as business figures).

In the early 1990s, he became the psychological coach for the Cleveland baseball team now known as the Guardians, helping them rise from the American League basement to perennial pennant contenders. And for 25 years he was the host of “The Sports Edge,” a show on the New York sports station WFAN dedicated to helping families navigate the increasingly competitive world of youth sports.

His last episode, which dealt with whether children were becoming less interested in youth sports, aired two weeks before he died on April 10 at his home in Armonk, N.Y., in Westchester County. He was 71, reports The NY Times. 

May 30 Radio History

➦In 1894...John Florence Sullivan was born (Died – March 17, 1956).  Known professionally as Fred Allen, he was a comedian. His absurdist, topically pointed radio program The Fred Allen Show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the Golden Age of American radio.

His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it was only part of his appeal; radio historian John Dunning (in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio) wrote that Allen was radio's most admired comedian and most frequently censored. A master ad libber, Allen often tangled with his network's executives (and often barbed them on the air over the battles) while developing routines whose style and substance influenced fellow comic talents, including Groucho Marx, Stan Freberg, Henry Morgan and Johnny Carson; his avowed fans also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, humorist James Thurber, and novelists William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Herman Wouk (who began his career writing for Allen).

From 1942...

Allen has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: a radio star at 6713 Hollywood Blvd. and a TV star at 7001 Hollywood Blvd

➦In 1908...Melvin Jerome Blanc born (Died – July 10, 1989). He was a voice actor and radio personality. 

Mel Blanc & Characters

After beginning his over-60-year career performing in radio, he became known for his work in animation as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, the Tasmanian Devil, and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons during the golden age of American animation. He voiced all of the major male Warner Bros. cartoon characters except for Elmer Fudd, whose voice was provided by fellow radio personality Arthur Q. Bryan, although Blanc later voiced Fudd, as well, after Bryan's death.

He later voiced characters for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, including Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons. Blanc was also the original voice of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures and provided vocal effects for the Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Chuck Jones for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, replacing William Hanna. During the golden age of radio, Blanc also frequently performed on the programs of famous comedians from the era, including Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen and Judy Canova.

Having earned the nickname The Man of a Thousand Voices, Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice acting industry.