The Media Odyssey

TMO - Spring Cleaning (audo)
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Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Football?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, football.

Evan Shapiro: Football.

Marion Ranchet: Round ball. Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Who's Paris? Who?

Marion Ranchet: Come on.

Evan Shapiro: The French don't play football, do they?

Marion Ranchet: No, we've just won two World Cups, but okay.

Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast. This is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: and that is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: This week on the pod, we're doing a spring wrap up.

Evan Shapiro: Spring cleaning.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Let's say that. We have a lot to cover and there's a lot of cleanup to do in the media and entertainment industry this week.

Evan Shapiro: We each brought two topics to cover from this past spring that we think deserve a second and a current look.

Mine are the recent Upfront. And what's happening now. And the recent spate of layoffs in big media.

Marion Ranchet: So we've had layoff on this side of the ocean too, namely at ITV. So we'll be talking about [00:01:00] that. But I'm also coming with a strategy and a management lesson from football. And the fact that Paris Saint-Germain won. PSG is Paris Saint-Germain. That's the team from Paris, they won on Saturday.

Evan Shapiro: The Champions League.

Marion Ranchet: Yes.

Evan Shapiro: And that's important?

Marion Ranchet: That is very important. This is very important.

Evan Shapiro: Why?

Marion Ranchet: So this is football. It's an amazing sport. Much more interesting than your own football anyway. This is done tick, no.

Evan Shapiro: And much more popular than American football. Strangely, even though the most financially successful league in the world is the NFL. Football is watched by billions of you worldwide.

Marion Ranchet: It's the global sports, right?

Evan Shapiro: Correct.

Marion Ranchet: So I think American football super nice, but it's not truly a global sport.

Evan Shapiro: Got it. And so the league championship was recently and your team, whose name is

Marion Ranchet: Paris Saint-Germain. Paris and Magic.

Evan Shapiro: Won [00:02:00] the championship?

Marion Ranchet: We did. So it's a club championship, right? So for the last few months you've had teams, so Paris, Liverpool, Arsenal, Munich, you name it, right? So European teams surely, slowly but surely going up at the top and at the end you had Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Milan. I'm saying it in French, so Milan, huh?

Yeah. I don't know. And so we won five zero. That's great. The story behind this for me, right, for this pod because there is more than football. One, it's a management

Evan Shapiro: Football is life. Go ahead. Sorry.

Marion Ranchet: It's a management lesson. Let me explain why. So, we've never won. We were in a final a few years ago. The team is backed by the Qatari. So they've poured a lot of money into that team.

Evan Shapiro: That's not a good story.

Marion Ranchet: Of course, they wanted that team to win for years. Yeah, they invested in trying to have, we had Messi we've had tons of amazing players, Mbappe, [00:03:00] et cetera, we never won.

Evan Shapiro: You had Messi and you didn't win the championship?

Marion Ranchet: Exactly. Exactly.

Evan Shapiro: Holy cow.

Marion Ranchet: So this team is not a team of superstars. It's just a great team with a great coach. And they won the year when they had no superstars. So Mbappe just left. He was frustrated. He wanted to go to Real Madrid to win with Real Madrid and the year he does that, PSG wins without him. So that's a management lesson, is that

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. The real shift in philosophy from a star-driven team to much more of a team, much more of the original warriors. Very much in keeping with a lot of the Detroit, although there were superstars on each one of these teams.

And by the way, the Pacers here at NBA, I know your family's into the NBA. The Pacers have never won a championship, and they're a very small market team and they're about to go to the championship. Anyway, go ahead.

Marion Ranchet: And OKC, right? The same. OKC, this year there's, they've had amazing season. There's not one big star, it's just, amazing teams together. So that's my lesson.

No, the other [00:04:00] lesson that is interesting is that, so the year we win, we lose our main broadcaster, meaning that on the French markets, DAZN who bought the rights for this season and the next season.

Evan Shapiro: To the team's television rights?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: The team's television rights. Okay, got it.

Marion Ranchet: And so at the end of this season, we don't have a broadcaster.

Evan Shapiro: So prior to this current time, Canal+ was the traditional broadcaster of the team?

Marion Ranchet: Historically. Then beIN, then Prime dabbled, then

Evan Shapiro: Then beIN, got it.

Marion Ranchet: And then you had Media Pro, and then after a season it went under.

And so this is history repeating. It's a new market entrant who's buying the rights and they're not making it. We spoke about this a few months back on the podcast, fans felt it was too expensive. Piracy grew like this. Anyway, the lesson here is there's no way they're gonna launch a channel or an OTT product in [00:05:00] three months. The season starts in August. So big question mark on to what's gonna happen.

Evan Shapiro: But they just finished, the new season starts in August? They just won the championship a couple days ago.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, they so that's a different tournament, but the league, just the Ligue 1 season.

Evan Shapiro: The league they normally play in, but the champions league that, they were still the same team playing.

Marion Ranchet: Believe it or not, in July, on DAZN, you have the World Cup for clubs. So anyway, these guys are working around the club.

Evan Shapiro: So let me ask you, let me ask you a question there, 'cause that's a good, that's an excellent point. So the club season, that's the television rights that you're talking about, right?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Shapiro: And who's the company that bid, overbid for them and then failed?

Marion Ranchet: So what happened is that initially no one bid last year. No one. Canal+ is mad, they didn't want a bid. And then Amazon and others didn't wanna do it again. And so DAZN went in, bought the rights for, you know, decent money, but not as crazy as

Evan Shapiro: But they reneged on those rights, didn't they?

They're pulling back. They're no longer broadcast.

Marion Ranchet: And now they're pulling back. [00:06:00] Now they're saying it's too expensive.

Evan Shapiro: From what I understand, what they are offering is a bespoke service behind the, operationally speaking, behind the scenes for the club. So they'll be able to use the DAZN. The DAZN, that's hard to say.

They're gonna be able to use the DAZN platform. And so I think there's, I think there's a potentially less disruptive opportunity there for them. And I think that's that rather than litigate both sides decided to compromise on this. Whereas it seems like DAZN is offering the services basically for free to compensate for breaking the contract.

And the club was able, will, would be able to launch if they so choose. The problem, I think to your point though, is they've pissed off everyone so badly in the market. Nobody wants to work with them.

Oh, sorry. I was gonna make one larger point, which is because of the Champions League and the World Cup of [00:07:00] Clubs, there's so many opportunities for the fans to see the team everywhere else than through what might be the normal club season.

Marion Ranchet: The normal season. Yeah. I think yeah, and I think that's right. But what's interesting is that it's a good example of legacy broadcasters, whether that's free or paid, leaving the market. The streamers taking a stab at it, ultimately not that easy to break in a new market with a brand that is not known right by the local population.

The price point was honestly around 30 or 40 euros. It's a lot of money. But why are they doing that? Is because that's their way of saying, that's when we can make money or break even. So it's also, it also speaks to the sports rights and the fact that it's just going up, up, up, up. And there's a moment where it's

Evan Shapiro: Yeah there's not a lot of logic around some of the prices.

Marion Ranchet: Exactly.

Evan Shapiro: And I think everybody said, don't sign this deal originally to them, because it's not realistic. It's not gonna work out. But it does, to your point [00:08:00] of getting into these new markets with a new name is difficult. I think it's, I think it's much harder than everybody seems to be realizing.

And that segues to one of my things from this past spring, which is the layoffs throughout the ecosystem and what they represent. And so just this past week, despite having terrific results in first quarter.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Disney announced the largest layoff of the Iger Redux era.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, how many people are we talking about?

Evan Shapiro: I don't think we got a total number, but behind the scenes it's, they keep hinting that it's the largest one. So that means, I think it's four figures of humans being let go.

Marion Ranchet: Whoa.

Evan Shapiro: And then, first Disco Brothers AKA Warner Brothers Discovery floated the idea that they were gonna do yet another round of layoffs.

And then this week, the shareholders of Warner Brothers Discovery, AKA Disco Bros. Finally revolted and voted against Zaslav's [00:09:00] $50 million plus pay package. And then the day after that gets announced, they announce the actual layoffs. And then on top of that, you've got NBC Universal, Cable Town, Comcast laying off a bunch of people prior to spinning out Versant.

And in each one of these cases you can see the lack of strategy leading to the layoffs. However, I would argue that Disney of all of those three.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: I understand it's painful to be laid off. And I write about this and we talk about this a lot, but at least, it seems like Iger seems to be the only adult in the room.

I'm not gonna reorg on paper to satisfy Wall Street. I'm not gonna spin this very profitable enterprise out right now. I'm going to downsize it as I promised you I would while I'm making our streaming business incredibly profitable. Now they're haven't, not generating huge profits yet, but they're on their pathway.

They have the [00:10:00] lowest churn in streaming, when you bundle those three services together, they are better at that than I think even Netflix. And so I think that's an adult solution to the problem of a broken model, whereas Disco Bros. AKA Warner Brothers Discovery has lost that. Just the whole merger was so wrongheaded and the entire strategy since has only been cut, cut, cut, cut which improves your overhead, but it really hurts your ability to generate revenue as his earnings calls have demonstrated quarter after quarter after quarter.

And NBC Universal, I have friends who are going through this there, and there's gonna be opportunities and downsides for everybody across that entire continuum. But people have lost their jobs. And what is the strategy? What is it? That to me the layoffs are only a symptom, unfortunately, a human based symptom for just the larger brain rot that we [00:11:00] see in a lot of our traditional media.

And it goes back to your point of they've had a really hard time transferring very successful, very profitable businesses into this new era.

Marion Ranchet: Pretty much at the same time we've had the layoff announced by ITV and I will say I will put them in the Disney camp in the way they communicated around those layoffs. The portion of staff who's gonna be impacted is mainly folks working on the morning segments.

Evan Shapiro: Right. The daytime.

Marion Ranchet: And ITV said it's not a question of performance, because that was my first thing. Okay, their linear TV, is struggling. Perhaps, not enough people watching, the economics don't work out.

They said that's not the reason why. And I think there's still a lot of demand. We're talking a million people watching, I think, every morning. So it's still sizable, people watching those shows in the morning. It is also very much part of the culture. And so there's the topic of, it's nice to slice, but you need to look.

Evan Shapiro: It's not dissimilar to Good Morning America and the Today Show and things like [00:12:00] that.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly. I think one of the shows is Good Morning Britain.

Evan Shapiro: Right, exactly.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, there you go. You have it. But so they said it's not a question of performance, it's more a question of focus and it's a question of trying to optimize.

So they wanna do pretty much the same thing with less people. So some shows will be shorter, but, the programming stays and guess what? They want some of that money to be reinvested in different areas of the broadcaster. And so they mentioned a couple of scripted shows that were proven successful.

Mr. Bates and the Post Office were talking one of their biggest shows with, over 10 million people.

Evan Shapiro: The biggest show of last year. Yeah, absolutely.

Marion Ranchet: I get it. And this goes back to what we did when we were in London, the fact that it's gonna be the same amount of money.

Evan Shapiro: Gonna go to new places. That's exactly right.

Marion Ranchet: You're gonna put it somewhere else. Exactly. And I will say that to me there's, it's not just blind cuts but yeah, let's see.

Evan Shapiro: They're cutting back on the areas that they know have a point of diminishing return, which is a live show on broadcast [00:13:00] telly.

That the audience is aging there and they're, people are not necessarily gonna tune in on the appointed hour, especially in younger generations. And so they wanna move resources to, and specifically as I read it, the digital areas of the business. Which is really working for them right now.

If you talk to anybody there, Ruth and Martin Trickey who we're gonna see at Stream TV next week, those investments are paying off. Also, to your point, read what's actually being said. They very much said, look, we're gonna cut back on the amount of content we make. So the equivalent of around 40% less content in that time block.

Whether that's more vacations and hiatus or fewer hours. Think about the Today Show here. I think it's 17 a half hours long. It's the longest show. It just goes on and on and on. So they're cutting back too, because they have to trim. So the these traditional formats that generated [00:14:00] billions of dollars are no longer working the same way we're gonna reallocate our resources into new areas.

It makes a lot of sense. And the way that both of those companies, Disney and ITV handled it was super adult, you then compare that to Comcast, Cable Town, NBC Universal and Disco Brothers, AKA, Warner Brothers Discovery, and they just look like frigging morons by compare.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Yeah. How about Walmart? Who announced, was it yesterday or today? Over a thousand cuts across stores.

Evan Shapiro: I did not see that.

Marion Ranchet: Advertising. I was actually surprised. To be honest, because we're all saying retail media is the next big thing, et cetera. You didn't see that news?

Evan Shapiro: I did not.

Marion Ranchet: I think it just came out.

Evan Shapiro: I did not see that. And I yeah, no, and I was just redoing my map and by the way, a major revision, like a completely revamping, yeah. I'll break some news here. I'm actually adding the public service broadcasters to the map again. I, they've been on, they've been off, but it's hard to include everybody.

So I created, tell me what you think about this. [00:15:00] I'm sizing them by 2024 revenue.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Just them. And it's denoted that way. And I'm cutting it off at a billion dollars. You have to earn at least a billion dollars in revenue to make the map. Otherwise, it's hundreds and hundreds of public broadcasters.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. It's gonna be too folks. Yeah, that makes sense. You are stacking them as a whole, right? So not just the TV business, but also the studio.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: The studio business.

Evan Shapiro: Total revenue, commercial and governmental. And so PBS which has almost no governmental revenue to be honest with you.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Anymore.

Evan Shapiro: CBC, BBC, ZDF, RAI, France Television. All the notable, ABC from Australia. Again, the cutoff, I just arbitrarily had to decide on a cutoff.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, for sure.

Evan Shapiro: And so it was, 'cause there are, it's very surprising how little money the public service broadcaster in Mexico generates.

I'd love to include them, but it would be.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. [00:16:00] But yet they're gonna look tiny. Huh? 'cause your map is a lot about big guys.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. But they hold their own against the RTLs. And some of the other commer- the M6, Vivendi, those types of folks, the small by Bertelsmann standards, but I they'll be notable and I put a nice halo around them too, because they're doing God's work.

So that leads us to my last wrap up item from the spring, which is the Upfront.

Marion Ranchet: Yep.

Evan Shapiro: And so the Upfront, I think started, I think many people think it starts at CES. And and it culminated as a season in mid-May with all the presentations and not everybody presented. You mentioned Roku did not present.

Now we're in this weird tweener sphere between the Upfronts and Cannes Lion where the deals are supposed to be being made. Now we should note, we're both gonna be at Cannes doing some cool stuff there. We're recording three episodes of our podcast, including with Amelia Dimoldenberg. Whose name is difficult to say. I should speak, my name is Shapiro. About her show this massive YouTube hit Chicken Shop Date.

And we'll be interviewing Dhar Mann, who is really super fascinating. He runs one of the only massively successful scripted studios in the [00:20:00] creator economy.

But we're in this weird area around the Upfront where the deals are supposed to be being made and they're not necessarily being made.

There's a lot of foot dragging going on, and it was gonna be a down year in the Upfront, I think, anyway. And I predicted that early on. But on the other side of it, there's all this uncertainty. If there's one catchphrase. Everybody used the phrase full funnel. Everybody used creator economy during their presentations. Everybody had the same buzzwords.

But if there's one buzzword about this period where we're supposed to be making deals and deals are not necessarily being made, it's anxiety, it's uncertainty. And what I think that's gonna result in is a much more heavy scatter set of budgets this year.

Less big, chunky deal making because who knows what's gonna happen in the world. I don't know if you're seeing that level of uncertainty creep into the business operations of the people you work with in Europe.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, and [00:21:00] it, I will say it is beyond advertising. I was talking to someone from my network and he was saying that he's seeing a lot of RFPs of people who wanna change providers.

In the end, they don't change, or people are shutting down services because the monetization is not there. That applies a lot to FAST channels. Or essentially they want the same quality of service cheaper. There's a lot of that going on.

There's company folding as well. So no, we're seeing a similar trend and everyone is like, it's been rough and it's gonna be known as a rough year.

Evan Shapiro: I think it's driven not by necessarily the economic levers themselves, but more the unknown. We have a lot of things happening in Washington DC that is confusing the planet Earth, and as a result, the markets, all of them are gyrating interestingly. And if you [00:22:00] know that TACO is a thing, do you bet on that?

And, how do you bet on that? And then, doesn't it become a self-fulfilling prophecy that it'll swing back the other way anyway. It's really hampering the ability to move forward in a lot of businesses right now. So my advice right now, if you find yourself or your company in a period where you're uncertain about what to do.

The thing that I have found useful is to have a conversation with all the major stakeholders and listen to the things that are making them most anxious and try to build consensus around the facts and not the feelings. So much of what's happening right now is driven by emotional reactions to actions as opposed to the real data itself.

Marion Ranchet: I have to say that at the end of last year, I lost one of my clients exactly for that because advertising was soft and I, they were a sure thing for this year. In the end, [00:23:00] they were gone and I did not freak out and what I did, and I advised people to do that. And I know sometimes it's difficult in corporate because you feel like you don't control anything.

But it's just to take one day at a time. And one thing that we really talk a lot about that is diversification, right? And if you look at the year that I'm having, I'm trying to future proof my business and not rely overly on consulting and services. Because again, by ricochet I'm hurt by what's happening in corporate. I'm sure to some extent you are too.

And so that's where it's important for me to now have a bit more of a product suite of revenues coming my way. Right? Something, yeah. Less, that is, stronger in the face of all of that uncertainty, the anxiety that people can feel that can make them decide either to not just, work with me or keep me on et cetera, invest.

So yeah, one day at a time. And diversification.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. We did talk about this at the beginning of the year and we both diversified our [00:24:00] businesses despite indications that the market was gonna be uncertain. We launched this podcast into great uncertainty. You and I each have launched other initiatives and changed our product lineup and it's worked out really well.

And that's a data point that I've seen over the years, which is companies who actually invest in themselves in uncertain times, usually make it out the other side stronger than their competition who dumped. And for that reason, I'm really glad to be on this journey with you. This podcast and a joint venture as well.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I love it too. And you know what I launched in 2022, right in the midst of still the pandemic. And people were saying, Marion, you should stay tight in whatever company I was at the time. There's no way you should, start a business now. It makes no sense. See?

Evan Shapiro: There you go, you bet on yourself.

Marion Ranchet: And I'm looking now that if I had to do it this year, which is why I feel really bad for all the layoffs coming up. It's gonna [00:25:00] be, it's gonna be rough. It's gonna be rough in the next few months.

Evan Shapiro: And just on a parting shot on my newsletter, Media War and Peace, you will find a ton of resources I've written a number of times.

Marion Ranchet: I love that.

Evan Shapiro: About this. Places to look for jobs, ways to prepare yourself for what's coming or what has happened. And please check those out. And your newsletter is?

Marion Ranchet: Streaming Made Easy on Substack. I don't talk as much about that, but I do that a lot on LinkedIn and I think perhaps we can say that we're living proof that it's possible to overcome challenging times and come out stronger.

Evan Shapiro: We're at Stream TV this week, but next week we will be at Cannes Lion all over the place doing lots of cool shit. So check us out, hit us up on LinkedIn if you wanna get together for a glass of rose or a pizza.

Marion Ranchet: Stop us in the streets. Take me places, I'm worried about this this event. I've never been.

Evan Shapiro: No. It'll be fun.

Marion Ranchet: I feel like I'm gonna be lost with Mad Men. I don't know what to make it this.

Evan Shapiro: No. It's a lot of fun. All your friends are [00:26:00] there.

Marion Ranchet: Okay. Okay, cool.