After skidding to multi-year lows in late-2023, Disney stock has rebounded more than 20% thus far in 2024 as two activist investment firms have launched a proxy fight. The stock finished Thursday trading at $110.18, up a fraction. It started the year at $90.10, putting its gains at 22% for the year to date. Goosing the stock price is a stated goal of two activist investment firms that have taken aim at Disney’s top execs and board of directors ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting on April 3. I ...

Paramount Global could be set for change in the tough Indian media market. A Bloomberg report, citing unnamed sources, claims the MTV and Comedy Central owner is in talks with Reliance Industries to sell its stake in their channels and streaming venture, Viacom18. This would allow Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, to consolidate his media assets as his conglom Reliance Industries prepares to form its new merged venture with Disney India. Reliance already majority controls Viacom18, whose JioCinema has be ...

Disney CEO Bob Iger called the proxy fight being waged by two activist investors a campaign that “is, in a way, designed to distract us, to take our eye off all [that’s] necessary to do what we need to do to generate returns for shareholders.” Nelson Peltz ‘ Trian Partners is fielding two director candidates – himself and former Disney executive Jay Rasulo — and has been aggressively soliciting Disney stockholders. Investment firm Blackwells Capital has nominated three candidates. Shareholders will elect t ...

Instagram and suffered apparently widespread outages Tuesday morning, with users venting frustration on other social media platforms. Users reported being kicked out of Facebook and unable to log back in. Visitors to Instagram were greeted by an error message reading, “Something went wrong. There’s an issue and the page could not be loaded.” According to the website DownDetector, which tracks tech outages, the issues began in the 10 a.m. hour Eastern Time. The situation remained unresolved an hour later. M ...

The forthcoming sports streaming venture backed by Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery will reach 5 million subscribers in its first five years, according to a projection shared Monday by Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch. Speaking at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley, Murdoch cited the forecast in responding to questions about whether the new venture would threaten the company’s existing pay-TV business. Fox has “built our plans around” the 5 million subscriber outlook, Murdoch said. “So some of the ta ...

Apple has been fined €1.8B ($1.95B) for breaking antitrust rules in Europe over music streaming. The EU’s European Commission issued the heavy penalty, Apple’s first ever of its kind, after ruling the tech giant had prevented the likes of Spotify from informing consumers about “alternative and cheaper music subscription services” outside of the App Store. The EC said this amounted to Apple “abusing its dominant position” — effectively restricting Apple handset users using its operating system (iOS) to its ...

Fubo CEO David Gandler blasted a planned sports bundle backed by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, calling the companies a “sports cartel” engaging in “borderline racketeering.” The comments came during a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss fourth-quarter results. Fubo posted strong numbers in the quarter, including 1.62 million paid subscribers, a 29% gain in revenue to $402 million. The company is not yet profitable, but narrowed its losses to $71 million from $96 million in the ye ...

Electronic Arts, which makes such games as Madden NFL and Apex Legends, said today that it plans to lay off five percent of its employees and will discontinue work on several games. The announcement continues the ongoing downsizing in the gaming and tech space, a development that has seen thousands of jobs lost. EA said the layoffs are part of a broader restructuring aimed at supporting “strategic priorities and growth initiatives,” according to a Tuesday securities filing. EA said in that document that i ...

Disney has reached a deal with Sony under which the latter’s home entertainment division will handle all Disney releases on DVD and Blu-ray as well as all physical media production. It’s the latest sign of the decline of the physical disc trade. Netflix last fall unplugged its foundational disc-by-mail service and revenue from disc sales has continued to decline markedly in the streaming era, as indicated this month in a 2023 recap by the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade consortium. The two studios dec ...

Some of the only Disneyland Resort workers who are not unionized announced today that they are organizing with Actors’ Equity Association. Ironically, they are among the most public-facing of the resort’s employees. Calling themselves “Magic United,” Cast Members who work in the Disneyland resort’s Characters and Parades departments began circulating union authorization cards to 1,700 Cast Members and will seek voluntary recognition from Disney Resort Entertainment when a majority of the workers have signe ...