r/movies • u/Vanderlyley • 28d ago

News Paramount Posts $286M Fourth Quarter Streaming Loss

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/paramount-fourth-quarter-streaming-1236148263/
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u/spaceraingame 28d ago

I still fail to see why they needed their own streaming service

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u/R_W0bz 28d ago

They didn’t, I actually think CEO Bob Bakish knew better than Shari Redstone and even Shareholders. Pre pandemic he was publicly taking Sonys approach of “these places need content, so we will provide it”, basically a gun merchant in a war. Amazon and Netflix all paid Paramount to make shows for them (Jack Ryan & 12 Reasons Why for example) or license their IPs. But shareholders and Shari Redstone saw all these services and thought we need to get into that to bolster the company up for a sale, not realising the ship had already sailed and the market was now oversaturated, burning cash on projects that generated no return. I imagine this is why Bakish was fired because he just didn’t believe in doing a streaming service in the end. He tried but ultimately took the fall.

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u/NullPro 28d ago

They didn’t understand that the only ones who make money in a gold rush are the ones selling the shovels

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u/VirginiaMcCaskey 28d ago

There are no serious shovel sellers in streaming, everyone is vertically integrating. That's why they're posting a quarter billion in losses, they literally can't buy the shovels to dig their gold mine.

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u/NullPro 27d ago

Not having a streaming service and instead selling your content to streaming services would be the metaphorical selling shovels

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u/livefreeordont 27d ago

Shovel sellers would be the telecom companies?

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u/thrownjunk 27d ago

Comcast is vertically integrating. So Verizon seems to be the big winner.

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u/livefreeordont 27d ago

Comcast has made a lot of poor decisions. But they finally sold off Warner