"What's changed is [ViacomCBS] went from a net short position where there was a squeeze, and not a lot of stock available, and then the company issued a lot of new stock," Bobrinskoy said. "That put a change in the dynamic where there's not the same type of short squeeze."Every media company is juggling how to balance falling cable bundle revenue with rising streaming subscriptions.
Programmers "who appear to abandon their linear programming obligations by rapidly shifting premium content over to their DTC platforms run the risk of getting dropped by MVPDs and/or suffering lower annual price escalators, especially as it relates to growth in retrans," Nathanson wrote, referring to multichannel video programming distributors.
In English: If media companies move too much content over to their own streaming services too quickly, revenue from pay-TV providers could drop more quickly than investors expect, as those providers push to lower payments for less exclusive or lower quality programming. On top of everything, there may be some acquisition premium baked in to ViacomCBS and Discovery. Each remains subscale in the broader media landscape, making both companies potential targets for larger players.
With so many unknowns, even professional media investors -- such as former Disney+ head Kevin Mayer, who is now looking for media and entertainment targets of his own"The market is skewed in many different ways for many different reasons," MayerDisclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC.
Reading the Headline.... I don't need to read the Story. I love Discovery +.... CBS not so much, they only have one major asset March Madness. Discovery + Owns the Paranormal World when it comes to TV. Buy Discovery +.
95% only bad news(