"Two of those winners seem clear: Netflix and Disney. The rest, though, are very much up in the air, and while Discovery now has the cachet of HBO, it also has the blessing and the curse of its existing businesses. The blessing of the cable TV business is that it throws off cash, and Discovery, with the addition …
"Two of those winners seem clear: Netflix and Disney. The rest, though, are very much up in the air, and while Discovery now has the cachet of HBO, it also has the blessing and the curse of its existing businesses. The blessing of the cable TV business is that it throws off cash, and Discovery, with the addition of WarnerMedia’s cable channels, should be able to squeeze the cable operators for an even bigger share of the shrinking pie; the curse is that the attractiveness of HBO Max will be proportional to the degree to which Discovery cannibalizes said cable business. Meanwhile, the blessing of owning studios is that Discovery has direct access to original content; the curse is the same one faced by AT&T originally, which is that making content exclusive, particularly to one’s own subscale streaming service, is value destructive."
From today's Stratechery:
"Two of those winners seem clear: Netflix and Disney. The rest, though, are very much up in the air, and while Discovery now has the cachet of HBO, it also has the blessing and the curse of its existing businesses. The blessing of the cable TV business is that it throws off cash, and Discovery, with the addition of WarnerMedia’s cable channels, should be able to squeeze the cable operators for an even bigger share of the shrinking pie; the curse is that the attractiveness of HBO Max will be proportional to the degree to which Discovery cannibalizes said cable business. Meanwhile, the blessing of owning studios is that Discovery has direct access to original content; the curse is the same one faced by AT&T originally, which is that making content exclusive, particularly to one’s own subscale streaming service, is value destructive."