Homepage

Douglas said they will need to do further restructuring involving axing titles and layoffs. Iwan Le Moine of emge, a British paper-industry consultancy, expects a big increase in 2022 of the number of papers that shut compared with a typical year. That will lower demand and nudge the market back towards equilibrium.But newspapers will have more hard conversations about paper, full stop.

Karen said “I think some investors have become confused with the alt-nets. They are thinking ‘big investment and secure returns. So far, they have only seen big investments and forgotten about the returns."

“The overbuild issue [from Openreach and Virgin Media O2] is something the [alt-nets] would like to skirt over."

Douglas said “It’s all about the market business now."

Douglas said “One of the effects of the pandemic is that it’s accelerated structural change that’s been going on for some time. The transition from physical retail to online retail, the transition of offline media to online media... all of those structural changes were rapidly accelerated. In actual fact, about five years of change – from the perspective of business planning – was probably in effect executed overnight due to the pandemic."

He added “I think that had an upside effect. I think it gave some people confidence in the fundamentals of media businesses in a way that they were still worried about them at the end of 2019 and early 2020. Which is to say that the transition was expected to take a long time, and it was to be very expensive."

Tom said “If you’re a new service and you’re not spending as much on content as Netflix, you can’t feasibly argue to the consumer that you’re offering something better. You certainly can’t offer more, so you have to undercut them.” He added: “It’s an artificial price environment that can’t last for ever — and not everyone will win.”

Tom said “content on screen doesn't directly translate to real-world harm” and the leaking of Chappelle’s deal – $24 million for one stand-up special. “Netflix is no longer a disruptor – they’re an established multinational,” he argues. “They may have scaled up everything but they’re still reacting like a start-up sending round memos not realising they’ll be leaked. Warner and Disney wouldn’t send that kind of memo and five years ago this sort of content wouldn’t have been as big a deal.”

Part of the staff fury is down to the way Netflix runs a more open, start-up style internal culture that it describes as “radical transparency.” It is acceptable practice to be brutally honest when offering feedback to co-workers as long as “you only say things about fellow employees that you say to their face.”

Gill said "Advanced booking deadlines may seem anachronistic given the flexibility when planning and booking digital campaigns. But the comparison is unfair: digital players offer fixed audiences with no set time or day requirements, nor for specific programmes, nor quality metrics, such as position-in-break. As TV deals are struck against so many parameters, sales houses need sufficient time to schedule and traffic all campaigns to best optimise the airtime for everyone."

She added "Reducing the deadline to four weeks last year was welcomed, and shouldn’t be reversed, but shortening it further will require significant tech investment and may be problematic."

Tom said “An actor is intellectual property. When you sign up Adam Sandler for multiple films, you know what you are buying. When that property comes in, viewers know what they are going to get. But if you can only make films for Netflix, creatively it can be quite restrictive."

He added “There may be only one person there who decides what you are making. Previously, you would find that Netflix might not want to take a film, but you could sell it to Amazon or the BBC instead.”