At the same time, the rest of WBD is in a period of duress as the cable and movie industries struggle. Films like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice failed to reach the same success as last year’s Barbie, sending WBD studios’ revenue down 17 percent and its theatrical revenue down 40 percent. As WBD CEO David Zaslav put it:
Inconsistency also remains an issue at our Motion Picture Studio, as reinforced recently by the disappointing results of Joker 2.
Some things that helped buoy WBD’s legacy businesses won’t be around the next time WBD execs speak to investors. This includes revenue from distributing the Olympics in Europe and gains from the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes ending. With WBD’s networks business also understandably down, WBD’s overall revenue decreased 3 percent YoY. It’s natural for the company to lean more on its strongest leg (streaming) to help support the others.
WBD wants more streaming M&As
Today, Zaslav reiterated earlier stated beliefs that the burgeoning streaming industry needs more mergers and acquisitions activity to maintain profitability. He discussed complications for users, who have to consider various services’ pricing and are “Googling where a show is, or where a sport is, and you’re going from one to another, and there’s so many.” He added:
It’s not sustainable. And there probably should have been more meaningful consolidation… You’re starting to see fairly large players saying, ‘Hey, maybe I should be a part of you. Or maybe I should be a part of somebody else.’
Zaslav said that it’s too early to know if Donald Trump’s presidency will boost these interests. But he suggested that the incoming administration “may offer a pace of change and an opportunity for consolidation that may be quite different [and] that would provide a real positive and accelerated impact on this industry that’s needed.”
It’s also too early to know if streaming consolidation would help subscribers fed up with rising prices and growing ad loads. But for now, that’s about all we can bet on from streaming services like Max.