As we bring down the curtain on a tough 2023 for the content business with our final newsfeed of the year, C21 runs down the stories you clicked most from our coverage of the past 12 months.
1. A year of strikes in the US
Long-brewing discontent over how writers and actors are compensated in the streaming age – coupled with fears over how artificial intelligence (AI) will change the business and lack of data transparency – brought an historic dual strike in Hollywood, shuttering large parts of the US production sector between May and November. The labour stoppages had an estimated economic impact of more than US$6bn in the US and resulted in dozens of shows being cancelled and entire development slates being torpedoed.
While the post-strike commissioning landscape has yet to come fully into focus, what’s clear is there will be significantly fewer shows than in 2022 (per FX’s John Landgraf, there were 599 scripted US shows released in 2022) and budgets will decline as buyers adjust both to post-strike economics and a broader decrease in the number of shows being made. Against this backdrop, commissioners are likely to deprioritise genres such as high-end sci-fi and fantasy in favour of less costly genres such as romance and crime.
Although there has been a lot to worry about in 2023, Ampere Analysis this week projected that all the major studios will have profitable direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses within the next 18 months, which, if it happens, would put the entire industry on much surer footing. However, as always, there are potential headaches on the horizon, with below-the-line union IATSE set to begin contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the early part of the year.
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2. It’s the economy, stupid
The ‘right-sizing’ of the global television and streaming business has been necessitated in part by the pressures of inflation and an advertising revenue downturn. As a result, studios and broadcasters across the globe have made thousands upon thousands of lay-offs over the past 12 months. Disney CEO Bob Iger set the tone for the year in early February when he announced the media giant would be making 7,000 job cuts across the breadth of its business. In the months since, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal and even Netflix have made cuts of their own.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) made the majority of its job cuts in 2022, though it did make additional rounds of lay-offs in 2023 after Kathleen Finch, chairman and chief content officer for WBD’s US networks, insisted the lay-offs had been completed in January.
In Canada, all three major broadcasters – the CBC, Bell Media and Corus Entertainment – announced deep and painful cuts, while Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 axed 400 jobs.
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3. The end of the walled garden party
From 2019 until early 2023, major US studios eschewed content licensing in favour of withholding content to stream exclusively on their proprietary D2C platforms. However, as market challenges have intensified, all major studios and streamers not named Netflix have re-entered the licensing game or jumped in for the first time.
Amazon Studios made headlines ahead of the LA Screenings in May with the formation of a new sales unit, Amazon MGM Studios Distribution, while Disney has been selling shows to third parties including Netflix in the US and broadcasters Channel 4 and ITV in the UK. WBD, after almost entirely curtailing its licensing activities as it launched and grew its Max streaming service, has also done a 180-degree turn under president and CEO David Zaslav. Early in the year, WBD licensed around 225 titles to AVoD platforms Tubi and The Roku Channel in the US, while it has also started licensing older HBO shows and a raft of titles from the DC Extended Universe to Netflix.
But there are signs that the demand for US programming is shifting, as demonstrated by this week’s news that German media group ProSiebenSat.1 plans to terminate its output deals with US studios and put a bigger focus on local programming. It will be interesting to see if other international broadcasters and networks will follow suit, or whether they will become more reliant on licensed US programming as market challenges persist into 2024.
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4. Who will buy my All3Media?
This year’s pursuit of All3Media, the UK-based production and distribution giant jointly owned by WBD and John Malone’s Liberty Global, by various suitors has had more ‘will they, won’t they?’ moments than an episode of Naked Attraction, one of the many shows in All3Media International’s catalogue of 30,000 hours of content across scripted and non-scripted.
The likes of ITV and Banijay were seemingly only in it for the chase, possibly baulking at the asking price of upwards of US$1bn and leaving RedBird IMI, the private investment company led by former CNN chief Jeff Zucker and Gerry Cardinale, in pole position to tie the knot with the London-headquartered company by the end of the year.
That was, until this week’s revelations of a potential tie-up between WBD and Paramount, which could throw a spanner in the works and change All3Media’s relationship status from ‘engaged’ to ‘it’s complicated.’
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5. Growth of a super indie
While it doesn’t look like Banijay will be beefing up by buying All3Media (see above), 2023 was nonetheless another year of growth for the European super-indie, which hired an M&A specialist in February to continue its 2022 buying spree that saw it acquire yet more prodcos from across Europe as well as Brazil and Israel. No single company featured more in our top 50 most clicked stories.
In 2023, it was all about launching new business units, be it arms focusing on live events, sports or branded entertainment following various investments in these growing areas of content production.
Banijay also grew in markets such as its native France, where it took over Puzzle Media and launched a scripted company from the CEO and MD of Survivor and Fort Boyard producer Adventure Line Productions. Just over the border, it bought Belgian scripted prodco Jonnydepony, while zeroing in on the UK with the launch of a £50m (US$61m) Banijay UK Growth Fund in February that saw it invest in a string of prodcos led by high-profile talent, including British actor, comedian and writer Lenny Henry’s Esmerelda Productions in October.
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6. A Nordic noir for Viaplay
We’re all familiar with Nordic noir by now, but your average bloodbath in a quiet Scandinavian town had nothing on Viaplay’s 2023, when the Swedish firm’s share price fell off a cliff after it put all its chips on streaming revenue at home and abroad at the beginning of the year.
It all kicked off in June after the Scandi outfit submitted disappointing financial results as the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on streamer subs and the declining Scandi advertising markets bit hard. Within a month, its share price had tumbled almost 80% as story after story detailed the embattled company’s woes: cuts to 25% of its workforce and withdrawal from international markets such as the UK and US; a drastic reduction in its originals strategy; putting itself up for sale; endless management shake-ups; and, this month, plans to renegotiate the terms of a debt now totalling SEK14.6bn (US$1.45bn) as it battles for survival.
It now looks like Viaplay will serve as the poster child for the excesses of the streaming age, over-extending itself in international markets, over-spending on drama and sports rights and over-estimating consumer appetite for the subscription model. Meanwhile, some of its scripted originals have found new homes – most recently Ronja the Robber’s Daughter at Netflix – while its first (and likely only) UK original, an adaptation of Sir Ian Rankin’s bestselling Rebus detective novels – has been filmed but is yet to find a new home.
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7. We shall call the baby Max
Following the 2022 mega-merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery to form WBD, combined streaming offering Max was launched this May. At an April launch event, WBD revealed a bumper development slate including series spin-offs from Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and The Big Bang Theory.
A central thesis for the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery was that combining the top-tier scripted output of HBO and Warner Bros. Television with the addictive reality TV of Discovery would create a streaming offering that catered to all tastes and reduced churn. Thus far, the results of the HBO Max-Discovery+ merger have been mixed, with WBD turning a profit of US$111m in its D2C business in the most recent quarter but also contending with a decline in its subscriber base (at last count, it had 95.1 million global streaming subscribers).
This year also saw the exit of former CNN CEO Chris Licht following a turbulent 13-month tenure, while WBD restructured its non-US operation under international president Gerhard Zeiler, resulting in the departure of long-serving, big-name execs including Priya Dogra, Pierre Branco, Robert Blair and Hannes Heyelmann.
And there could be more upheaval on the way after it emerged that CEO David Zaslavv met with Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish earlier this week to discuss a potential merger of the two media companies. While it is still very early days, WBD is expected to be involved in more M&A over the next 18 months, with Paramount and Comcast both being viewed as potential merger partners. Should a deal come to fruition, Max could find itself bulking up once more as streaming consolidation continues.
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8. Comings and goings at Fremantle
Like Banijay and All3Media, there is considerable interest in the strategy and future of European production and distribution group Fremantle.
The company has been building an impressive roster of production companies and exec talent in scripted and, particularly, unscripted in recent years. However, it lost two of its biggest names this year in Simon Andreae and Fatima Salaria.
Fremantle UK CEO Andreae stepped down in April, citing health concerns, though a report the previous week in Deadline revealed he’d faced two accusations of workplace bullying. Salaria, who’d moved from Channel 4 to replace Andreae atop unscripted label Naked Television, had announced her own departure in January.
Both stories featured high in our top 50 most read, along with the news of their replacements. Amelia Brown made a swift return to lead the UK business after initially stepping down from Britain’s Got Talent producer Thames in January, while Tom O’Brien and Charlie Irwin subsequently got the top jobs at Naked and Thames.
The creation of new Northern and Southern Europe CEO roles, to be taken by Georgette Schlick and Jaime Ondarza respectively, also made our top 50 most clicked, along with Fremantle teaming up with Israeli financier IBI Investment House to launch a €150m (US$160m) fund to finance a portfolio of scripted TV and film projects with international appeal.
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9. Mike Darnell exits Warner Bros.
Mike Darnell’s departure as president of Warner Bros. Unscripted and Alternative Television after 10 years with the company drew mega-clicks in July.
Darnell, who joined the company in July 2013, is considered to be among the most influential executives in the history of reality and unscripted television, having also previously served as the president of alternative entertainment at Fox.
Darnell said at the time that a couple of “new ventures” had cropped up, though he did not specify what the future holds in 2024.
During his decade with Warner Bros. TV Group, Darnell led the studio that produces hits including The Voice (NBC) and The Bachelor (ABC). He has also worked on a laundry list of other unscripted hits during his career, including Hell’s Kitchen, MasterChef, So You Think You Can Dance, X Factor, Temptation Island and Kitchen Nightmares.
Several shows Darnell brought to Fox, such as American Idol, Kitchen Nightmares, Temptation Island, Paradise Hotel and Joe Millionaire, have been rebooted in recent years.
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10. Other notable exec movements
As ever, it’s the exec movements that draw the most clicks in our coverage. Our most read story of the whole year was January’s news that ITV Studios (ITVS) was combining its global distribution and entertainment units under one team, to be led by Ruth Berry, with the rejig resulting in the departure of Arjan Pomper.
The departure of NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell due to sexual harassment allegations, with Susan Rovner not far behind him and Donna Langley promoted in the subsequent reshuffle, also featured highly.
There were new roles for Reed Hastings, Ted Sarandos, Greg Peters and Bela Bajaria at Netflix in January too, and a new gig at Sister for their former colleague Cindy Holland.
Our exclusive on former Virgin Media TV director of content Bill Malone setting up a Cable
Rock Pictures in Ireland also made our top 10, and former A+E chief Sean Cohan returning to the cut and thrust of broadcast TV at Canada’s Bell Media scored well too.
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