The NBA‘s new round of rights negotiations has reportedly lured NBCUniversal back to the league after an absence of more than two decades. NBCU is planning to bid $2.5 a year for rights to the games, according to the Wall Street Journal. If the offer is successful, the company would supplant media rival Warner Bros. Discovery, whose TBS and TNT cable networks began carrying NBA games in 1988. TNT has been the flagship Turner network associated with pro basketball, with its Inside the NBA the gold standard ...

NBCUniversal is hiking the price of Peacock for the second time in two years, tacking $2 onto the cost of the streaming service this summer, around the time of the Paris Olympics. Beginning in July, the monthly price for Peacock Premium will increase to $7.99. Premium Plus, which offers limited advertising, download capability and live local programming, will now be $13.99. Annual plans will go up to $79.99 for Premium and $139.99 for Premium Plus. The change will take effect starting July 18 for new custo ...

Skydance and Paramount are deep into hashing out a complicated deal that would see the David Ellison’s studio and its backers take control of the storied film and television company owned by Shari Redstone. The exclusive month-long negotiating period through May 3 is likely to be extended perhaps by a few weeks, Deadline hears, given the complexity of the transaction. The rough contours of a Skydance deal would see a circa $2 billion payout to Redstone for a majority stake in family holding NAI (which cont ...

Google and YouTube parent Alphabet blew away Wall Street estimates with revenue up 15% to $80.5 billion driven by strong ad growth. The company also announced a major milestone, its first ever dividend of 20 cents a share in June. The stock is up more than 12% after market close. Total advertising of $61.7 billion for the three months ended in March was up from $54.5 billion in the first quarter of 2023. YouTube ads topped $8 billion, up from $6.7 billion. Google Search is the bulk of ads, at $46 billion, ...

Core Insights - Comcast's first quarter results exceeded Wall Street expectations, with Peacock reaching 34 million subscribers but facing increased programming costs that impacted profits in the Media unit [1] Group 1: Financial Performance - Total revenue increased by 1% to $30.1 billion, with adjusted earnings per share rising to $1.04 from 92 cents in the same period last year [1] - The Media division, which includes Peacock, saw a nearly 4% revenue gain to $6.4 billion, but higher operating expenses led to wider losses, with adjusted EBITDA falling 6% to $827 million [1] - Peacock generated $1.1 billion in revenue, a 54% increase year-over-year, while losses narrowed to $639 million from $704 million a year ago [1] - Domestic advertising revenue remained flat at $2.025 billion, primarily due to lower revenue from linear networks, offset by Peacock's revenue increase [1] Group 2: Studios Division Performance - Revenue in the Studios division decreased by 7% to $2.7 billion, with profit declining by 12%, despite strong theatrical revenue from titles like Kung Fu Panda 4 and Migration [2] - Content licensing revenue fell during the period, mainly due to the timing of theatrical titles reaching other distribution windows [2] Group 3: Pay-TV and Broadband - The company continued to experience a steady decline in video losses, with a loss of 487,000 residential video customers during the period [2]

(formerly called ) pretty much ignored the social media elephant in the room today on a post-earnings conference call, with chief financial officer Susan Li saying it’s too early to discuss what just happened in Washington, D.C. President Biden has signed into law a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest the hugely popular U.S. app within about nine months or risk it being banned. TikTok said it will take the fight to the courts. “We’ve obviously been following the events related t ...

parent posted solid quarterly financials today with revenue and EPS beating Wall Street expectations, but investors dinged the stock on high expenses and lower than anticipated revenue for the current quarter. Shares are down 10% in after-market trading. What Meta calls “Family daily active people” or DAP, rose 7% to 3.24 billion for the three months ended in March. The company also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. Revenue rose 27% to $36.46 billion for the quarter. Net income of $12.4 billion was way up from ...

Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish saw his total compensation dip slightly in 2023, to $31.3 million from $32 million in the prior year. The latest figures were disclosed Monday in an SEC filing. The next-highest tally among top execs was for CFO Naveen Chopra, who collected $8 million, up from $6.5 million in 2022. Bakish’s salary was $3.1 million and he was given a stock award of $15.5 million and another $12.4 million via the company’s non-equity incentive plan. Along with executive compensation, the fil ...

Aaron LaBerge, who helped oversee Disney‘s expansion into streaming during two stints totaling 20 years, is exiting the company. On July 1, the exec will become Chief Technology Officer at Penn Entertainment, holding the same title he did at the end of his Disney run. Penn is largely known for its gaming operation. In 2023, the company teamed with ESPN and rebranded its sports book as ESPN Bet. As Disney’s CTO, LaBerge oversaw a number of product rollouts, including the integration of Hulu into Disney+ and ...

Paramount Global shares jumped 13% Friday as investors cheered news that Sony Pictures Entertainment is talking with Apollo Global Management about joining Apollo’s bid for Paramount. The beleaguered stock ended the day at $12.44 after registering more than twice its normal trading volume. Shares reached their highest point since February, offering fresh evidence that many investors appear to be gravitating toward the Apollo/Sony scenario, largely for structural reasons. Importantly, even if the two entiti ...