Rebecca Day

SiriusXM scaled back guidance for self-pay subscriber growth due to challenges and uncertainty in new and used auto sales, said CEO Jennifer Witz on a Q2 earnings call Thursday. The company said on its April earnings call it expected 500,000 more self-pay subscribers in 2022.

U.S. linear TV ad spending will grow 4.1% to $68.4 billion this year, then trail downward over the next few years to $64.9 billion in 2026, with a slight bump in 2024 due to the presidential election and Summer Olympics, said a June eMarketer report. TV ad spending won’t return to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels through the 2026 forecast period “and most likely it never will," it said. "The golden age of traditional TV advertising is behind us."

The “extremely volatile” virtual MVPD market “never really took off” in the way its proponents thought it would, said Horowitz Research analyst Adriana Waterston on a Wednesday Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing webinar on the state of the pay-TV, over-the-top video and subscription VOD markets.

The FTC sued Walmart in U.S. District Court in Chicago Tuesday, alleging the retailer allowed its money transfer services to be used by fraudsters, who “fleeced consumers out of hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The push of big tech companies into the automotive space will create a customer ownership conflict, said participants on an Xperi connected car webinar last week. “Is someone a supplier to Ford, or is someone ultimately competing with Ford for ownership of the customer?” said Jeff Jury, general manager, Xperi’s Connected Car unit. “Whose product is it?”

Staggered releases of popular TV series could prop up the subscriber count at Netflix, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter wrote investors Monday, upgrading the stock to "outperform." The analyst believes Netflix will exceed guidance for Q2 due to the staggered release date for Ozark, and it believes the same approach for Stranger Things in Q3 could also reduce churn. “Netflix is positioned to grow,” as the subscription VOD service “gradually” raises prices and rolls out an ad-supported option, Pachter said; he doesn’t believe Netflix’s share price will approach 2021 levels “for many years.” Wedbush sees recent Netflix losses as the result of “deep saturation” in the U.S. and Canada. The company’s plans to crack down on password sharing -- which Netflix estimates at 30 million households in those two markets and 100 million globally -- will bring it a “few million new customers.” But its plan to offer an advertising-supported tier “has great potential to drive significant revenue,” he said. Raising prices in mature markets would allow Netflix to drive up its average revenue per user, and its level of profitability, allowing it to reinvest profits to continue growing in Latin America and Asia-Pacific, he said.

After two years of COVID-19 impact, artist services and expanded-rights revenue increased 19.5% at Warner Music Group in fiscal Q2 2022, reflecting increases in merchandising and concert promotion revenue, said the company’s Tuesday earnings report. Performance revenue rose 9% “as bars, restaurants, concerts and live events continue to recover from COVID disruption,” said Chief Financial Officer Eric Levin on the company's earnings call. Streaming revenue from emerging platforms grew to $345 million for the quarter ended March 31; digital revenue, 70.1% of the company’s total recorded music revenue, was $931 million, up 8%; physical revenue grew 3.4% on “increasing demand for vinyl,” said CEO Steve Cooper. The music company continued international expansion, acquiring Qanawat Music, a distributor in the Middle East/North Africa market, expanding WMG’s presence in Dubai, Cairo and Casablanca, it said. It also partnered with Bollywood artists in India, where it grew share over the past 24 months, Cooper said. He positioned WMG at the “intersection of gaming, social and entertainment" with brands including Roblox, Fortnite and The Sandbox. An area of incremental revenue is digital fitness: WMG was the music launch partner for Peloton’s gaming-inspired fitness experience, Lanebreak, Cooper said. The company continues to build its presence in podcasting, launching in April Interval Presents, an in-house podcast network covering music, pop culture and social impact. WMG expects music to remain “resilient” amid macroeconomic challenges, Levin said. In video streaming, people generally subscribe to multiple services, he said, vs. audio where they generally subscribe to one service with their music aggregated in one place. Levin called digital music a very “fairly priced, if not even low-priced, high-value service that's central to people's lives.” Shares hit a 52-week low Tuesday at $25.35 before closing 5.46% down at $25.78.

The 50-50 Charter Communications-Comcast joint venture to develop a national streaming platform on branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs lacks a brand name. The venture, announced Wednesday, will give consumers a “world-class user experience and navigation designed to simplify the search experience, all the top apps, a voice remote and more choice in the streaming marketplace,” a Charter spokesperson emailed Wednesday. The companies “have nothing to share regarding the brand of the JV at this time,” he said. The closing of the joint venture is subject to customary closing conditions, the companies said.

Warner Bros. Discovery is “positioned to win” as one of the “true content makers,” with its ability to produce and control intellectual property “vs. those that just write checks,” said CEO David Zaslav Tuesday on a Q1 earnings call, its first as a combined company after AT&T’s spinoff of WarnerMedia was finalized April 8.

Consumer hours spent streaming will continue to swell, but consumers' approach to subscription VOD services is becoming more “discriminating,” Parks Associates Research Director Paul Erickson told us Friday.