Silicon Valley is disrupting television, turning up the pressure on old-school media companies that have been slow to keep up with shifting consumers trends, said Lorne Brown, the CEO of the ad tech firm Operative.
The battle between new media and traditional content companies is highlighted by Netflix's strong first-quarter earnings. The streaming service reported stronger-than-expected growth in customers in the U.S. and overseas.
The real story, said Brown in an interview on Cheddar, is that the streaming company's U.S. subscribers are "growing at a rate that no one thought was possible."
If Netflix ー or any of its digital rivals ー is going to overtake traditional media, Brown said it will have to overcome a number of structural obstacles.
The streaming service's strategy to pay up to $8 billion for new content in 2018 could pay off, but "it's a bet at the end of the day," said Brown.
Incumbent media companies such as Comcast, the largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue, and Viacom, which owns ad-supported cable networks including MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central, must adjust to meet the challenges from well-funded tech rivals.
In some cases, however, the traditional media firms may find it beneficial to team up with big tech companies, said Brown. He called it “co-mingling."
The emergence of over the top (OTT) viewing options and the acceleration of cord-cutting has been a major concern for cable networks as advertisers trim their TV budgets.
TV ratings are declining, and Netflix and Amazon Prime are paying top dollar for the industry’s most well-known producers. If the trends continue, television advertising will continue to slide, shrinking revenue for traditional networks. As a result, TV's share of total U.S. media ad spending will slide from 33.9% in 2017 to 31.6% in 2018, according to the research firm eMarketer.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/old-media-vs-new-media-the-future-of-tv).
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
It’s an annual tradition: the Fed’s banking ‘stress test.’ A year after the regional banking crisis, there are good reasons to make sure they’re prepped.
Summer is upon us, which means weddings, trips overseas, and trips to see Taylor Swift. Avoid a “Cruel Summer” with these budget-friendly tips and tricks.
While Nvidia's meteoric rise led it to briefly dethrone Microsoft as the world's biggest public company, there's a lot more going on in this market than A.I.
