Latest / The Media Odyssey / TWO REPORTS, ONE EPISODE: THE PARAMOUNT INVESTOR DECK & THE STREAM

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TWO REPORTS, ONE EPISODE: THE PARAMOUNT INVESTOR DECK & THE STREAM · The Media Odyssey

• Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Media Odyssey Podcast. That is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: And that is Evan Shapiro Evan Shapiro: We've got a great episode this week. We've got two reports that we're gonna dig into and analyze. One of them is the Paramount investor deck that I got my hot little mitts on, and we're gonna dig into what the assumptions they're making around that acquisition are. But the other is this great new report from Tubi called The Stream, which goes into audience predilections for how they wanna stream content right now. Marion Ranchet: I love that report. I read it every year. It's full of great insights and data on audience behavior in the US. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, and that's because Tubi works with the Harris Poll here, which is this great polling service in the US. Marion Ranchet: The reports out [00:01:00] now, but they gave us an advanced copy and we found a lot of real gems. Let's dive into it. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. One of my big takeaways was that 77% of respondents prefer watching on demand over scheduled linear streaming. That's something I've been saying for a long time, but this data point proves it. Audiences prefer on demand to linear three to one. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. The on-demand mindset, that was a good one. Personally, I was also fascinated by how streaming has really become a social activity. Three quarters of viewers say, streaming together is a form of hassle. Quality time. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. I was just discussing this with someone this past week who works in the kids content space, co-viewing for families, family movie night has become this thing now. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Not just family though. 52% of people say they watch with someone they don't live with. Friends, other family, lovers. Evan Shapiro: We don't say lovers here. That's a French thing. Marion Ranchet: Don't be a prude. Evan Shapiro: I can't help it. But you're right. There's this amazing stat that I found hysterical. Sometimes data can [00:02:00] be funny. Who knew? Almost two thirds of people, 61% say they're more likely to date someone if they share the same movie and TV tastes. Marion Ranchet: Maybe people should start putting their top 10 on their dating profiles. Evan Shapiro: Definitely. Although I've never used a dating app, so I can't really speak to that, but almost one third of respondents. This is really, this cracked me up as I was reading it. Almost one third of respondents have broken up with the person they're dating because they had different tastes in TV or movie content. Marion Ranchet: That's crazy. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it's not you. It's not me. It's your playlist. Marion Ranchet: There's a lot more in this report than who people watch with, right? Evan Shapiro: Yeah, totally. Last year I wrote this piece about Nielsen's Gauge at the end of the year, and it showed that FAST and AVOD platforms on the whole as a group are now outperforming Netflix. In fact, they surpassed Netflix for all of fourth quarter 2025. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. And the data actually shows you why. Evan Shapiro: 84% of audiences, 90% of Gen Z [00:03:00] would readily watch ads if they're getting the streaming service for free. Marion Ranchet: And 80% said they are canceling paid services and signing up for free services to fight that rising cost of streaming platforms. Evan Shapiro: And then there's something that I think is really interesting and that the industry really needs to focus on, which is 76% of viewers now say they'd rather watch a free platform with ads than pay for a premium paid platform that has an ad tier. Marion Ranchet: That can't be great news for the paid ad tiers. Evan Shapiro: It's a hundred percent. I think there's, that's why we're seeing churn rise for premium SVODs. Antenna's Streaming report recently said that for all of 2025, all the paid streaming platforms lost 89% of the gross subscriber ads that they got last year. There's a reason why people canceled cable that the industry seems to be forgetting about. We kept raising the prices of these platforms and having ads too. Now, SVOD is [00:04:00] replicating that same problem that cable created. In fact, 67% of those surveys said they'd skipped a new show because it required a paid subscription. 65% of Gen Z say they have ended a paid subscription because of password crackdowns or because they're being forced to pay for an ad tier. Marion Ranchet: And contrary to what a lot of people, think the data shows that audiences do not mind ads, especially if the ads are contextual. 78% say they prefer ads that cater to their interests. Evan Shapiro: Absolutely. There's this other data point which I found interesting and it reinforces my thesis about the convergence of creator content and mainstream media into the affinity economy. 77% of the people surveyed said they want creator content on mainstream streaming platforms, right alongside movies and television, not just on social media. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, that really, we really dug into that when we had a Tubi GM [00:05:00] of creator Rich Bloom a few months back. Go check that out. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. When he was on the pod, he talked about people skipping between mainstream content and creator content. It's really interesting. Anyway, the Stream, this new report from Tubi and Harris polling is an absolute must read if you're in the content business, the streaming business, the platform business, advertising business, et all. It's up online and the link is in our show notes wherever you're listening to this or watching it, Marion Ranchet: and it's totally free. Evan Shapiro: So go download and digest it and let us know in the comments what you think, what data points you found. Interesting. Marion Ranchet: Okay, cool. Time to go back to Paramount. Let's check out that investment deck. You got your hands on the investment deck that you know the Ellison family is showcasing around. Can you tell us more about that? Evan Shapiro: Yeah, so I, I don't know why there's an investor deck. I theoretically get it, but yeah, apparently the Ellison family is trotting out an investor deck around to investors to justify this $110 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery Disco Bros. Probably to placate some of the investors, and I wanna talk about who those [00:06:00] investors are in a second. But friend of the pod Wim Panet sent me the deck. He had run some analysis and then I did some analysis on top of that. And it just, when you look at this, it looks like the dumbest move in the history of business. There are just no, lemme, do you want me, I'll share you the deck Marion Ranchet: Yeah, sure. Evan Shapiro: Or the analysis that we put together. And you can see what these assumptions are. And everybody makes assumptions, right? When they make investments or they make business cases inside these corporations, everybody puts together a deck to project what's gonna happen. And usually someone in the room goes is this realistic? Here's the analysis on the investor deck. Wim ran an analysis to look at the assumptions and what the investment assumptions are is that starting this year, there's gonna be this major climb in revenues from $66 billion last year[00:07:00] to $84 billion in 2030. Now, the growth is not necessarily crazy town, if anything indicated that they were on a growth trajectory up until this point. But both companies have been losing revenue growth year after year. So if you look at 23 through 25, you can see that combined companies revenue went from $71 billion to 66 billion dollars. And this has not been a rough period of time in the media ecosystem, right? Other companies have had revenue growth. These companies, mostly because they keep cutting down to the bone, frankly, and don't have great strategies have been seeing their revenue shrink. Year after year, and then suddenly magically this year, the combined entity will turn that all around and point up and to the right. When you go to EBITDA, you can see that over the [00:08:00] last three years that the combined. Earnings or profits from these companies have been flat or down and now suddenly, and it's not a rocket ship to the moon, but it is growth versus either flat or down. And once again I just don't see anything in what David Ellison has said. And I'm wondering whether you have, that shows a strategy that's gonna turn this all around. Especially when you look at the fact that they're gonna make these massive cuts. And so these are the synergies projected. They're gonna cut $8 billion in tech, they're gonna cut $6 billion in business services. What they say is that's a firing of agencies. That's a firing of external partners. They're gonna sell $4 billion in real estate. And then these other things like enterprise resource planning. So this is really just, we're gonna optimize the company to [00:09:00] the tune of $3 billion over the next five years. This is a lot of cutting. But what he's also saying out outside out the other side of his mouth is, we're not gonna do massive layoffs. This doesn't incorporate massive layoffs. And I just, to me, that all defies business logic. I don't understand how you're gonna go from flat EBITDA to growth EBITDA. I don't understand specifically. Both of these companies have had real problems in revenue generation, especially when you consider how much of their revenue is tied to old school cable distribution. So CNN's revenues alone have been plummeting both in ad sales and in distribution, and that's gonna be true for every channel they own. Meanwhile, HBO Max, while it's a good service is terrible at selling advertising. Their subscription revenues are okay, but they're still not a profitable business. Paramount Plus has been fine. Pluto has not really been doing well at [00:10:00] all, and they're gonna magically turn this all around in one year to start reversing all these trends. This to me, when you look at all of this and you look at other people's reaction to this, so Bank of America announced this week that they're cutting their rating of Paramount stock from a buy at $13 down to a sell at $11. I think they're agreeing with what I'm saying here, which is, what the fuck are you actually thinking spending $110 billion? There's gonna be 80 plus billion dollars in debt on this business after they merge these two companies. I just. It doesn't make any sense unless there are other reasons you're making this move. Marion Ranchet: Unless there's also a lot of, outside money. Because how do you return to growth by just cutting, right? You're supposed to be investing. Can I [00:11:00] entertain you with the quotes? I think you're gonna love it because it's coming from Jerry Cardinal. Evan Shapiro: I was gonna go to that too. So that's a great minds thing going, go for it. Yes. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, Redbird Capital. And he said, and when I heard it, I was like, you must be choking just hearing this. "It's not deal jockeys playing spreadsheet math." Evan Shapiro: It's not, is that what and then in his, in the next breath, somewhat, the reporter, he was he was being interviewed at this point he said, they were asked like, where's the money coming from? Is it coming from Saudi Arabia? Now there are rumors that a big chunk of this is gonna come from Tencent. Yeah. So the Chinese government, and he was point is money coming from Saudi Arabia money from China. And his answer: pay no attention to that. Marion Ranchet: He said something fantastic. He said we're in global economy. Really? Evan Shapiro: We should be taking money from people who kill journalists. Marion Ranchet: That doesn't justify anything, that doesn't justify that you [00:12:00] should go get money, regardless of where it's coming from without, from the, without, doing the due diligence that's in the background. It's just insane. He was very dodgy when he, I was surprised that he led himself being interviewed like that because that was a tricky one. Evan Shapiro: What the point is when you listen to him avoid all these questions and then you listen to Ellison really shoveling bullshit about the journalistic independence of CNN because we can see what he's gonna do to CNN because he's doing it now to CCBs News with his puppet, Bari Weiss. It, this isn't about, this is about two things. This is about Larry Ellison and the Saudi government trying to placate the toddler in the White House, and it's about David Ellison and the folks at Redbird. Including Cardinal and Jeff Zucker. Proving how big their penises are. This is just about dick swinging. That is, this is about nothing else. It was the same reason Ted Sarandos wanted Warner Brothers [00:13:00] disco Bros. It's because they just, they wanna be moguls. Yeah. There's not a real business rap. I have yet to hear anyone say here's the strategy. Here's the, this is how we're gonna go from shrinking ice cubes. He says, he's, Ellison says they're gonna go from, they're gonna double the output of motion pictures. Do you know how long it takes to develop films? They're gonna get to 30 films per year. That's just not possible. Marion Ranchet: Logical. Speaking about this deck you saw, they had put out a website in this battle to get one of us right, which was called Stronger Hollywood .com. And in there you had you had the pitch right to the WBD shareholders. It's not going into a lot of details like you, but what was striking to your point about the strategy? The entire focus of the presentation, like three quarters of it is our offer is higher than Netflix. Evan Shapiro: We have more money.[00:14:00] Marion Ranchet: It's just about the money. There's no strategy. Evan Shapiro: My dick is bigger than Ted's. That's the entire thing. And I hate to be so crass, actually, I don't, but the, this is what's destroying Hollywood right now. And then you look at what's happening in reaction to this. So all the unions are coming out against this. It's only a moment in time. I don't know if you've heard anything about the EU coming out against this. But they're gonna come out hard against this. The attorney general the state of California is all in against this, and there's only a moments until he's joined by the attorneys General of Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Louisiana, all of these states, Connecticut, New Jersey, who have created tax credits specifically to help the film industry produce more film. And now this is coming along and it's gonna destroy jobs. It's gonna destroy, frankly, the motion picture industry as we know it [00:15:00] today. Now the motion picture industry needs some adjusting. Let's be honest, but this ain't the solution. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, that's what he was saying. Jerry Cardinal saying that essentially, the companies were too fat and then he was saying he was not gonna cut off a lot of ad counts. They said that, he said, how does that work? They would not sell. I know how they said they would not sell the two lots. They would keep both. But you're saying that they're supposed to make 4 billion. Evan Shapiro: $4 billion. What are they selling? They don't own 15. 15 Broadway. They don't own that building. They can't sell that building. They don't own Hudson Yards. They can't sell that building. So the only two pieces of property that they actually own are your right. Those two lots. But they're not gonna sell them. Marion Ranchet: That's what he said. I don't know. Evan Shapiro: It doesn't make any sense. Now let's take, because I do think there's gonna be a massive pushback in the eu, and you had put together a bunch of analysis on the [00:16:00] overlap and why this is, you've actually found some reasons why this might work in Europe, but then there's a ton of reasons I think that you found that, why the regulators would, I think justifiably push back against this. So here are your your images that you created, and you posted some of this on LinkedIn. Here's the overlap that ou found between HBO Max and Showtime, and you're so much more conversant in this. Can you explain this slide? Marion Ranchet: Alright, so one thing that wasn't discussed, and one of the reasons being that it has no traction in the US because it's a very European focused topic is what happens to SkyShowtime and SkyShowtime is a JV between Paramount and Comcast. The question of course is, what happens to it because again, those two. Services cater to pretty much the same audience. They are available in the same market. So we're looking at 22 markets where both SkyShowtime and HBO are in Europe. And you will notice that that overlap actually it's [00:17:00] interesting to see that SkyShowtime, what really stayed clear of, those big Western European markets, right? EU5 markets. The reason being that in those markets, the brands that leads for Paramount is Paramount Plus. So to me SkyShowtime is gone. This JV is gone. We've spoken about Brian Robot from Comcast. He's not into investing in Europe. He's more into divesting what he has in Europe, whether that's, selling Sky Germany to RTL et cetera, cetera. So I think this service will be will be gone. So in a way this merger is just taking out a competitor, right? That's number one. Now, if you take a look at HBO Max, and that's the next slide against Paramount, it's a bit of a thing for me. It's not that I'm so hung up on the HBO Max brand or the HBO brand, it's more why would you decide to make Paramount the tentpole, the umbrella brand, right? When you've been in seven markets in Europe and HBO [00:18:00] Max has been in a total of 34 markets in Europe, right? And so that's number one strategy mistake for me from Ellison saying that HBO would keep operating independently as a studio. And then it would become a brand, within Paramount. HBO has been working hard to make headway in those markets. Why are suddenly offering a new brand to those markets? And especially at this time in 2026 when you know, you are essentially a late entrant streaming, right? Everyone has Netflix prime, et cetera. So you really need to work on those assets instead of starting from scratch. So this thing about making synergies, they're saying there's gonna be one tech stack of course. And honestly, I don't know the two, but I would think that someone who's operating in 34 markets is better suited to be the winning tech stack than one that has been in four, seven, sorry. Evan Shapiro: I wanna make a couple points. First, I wanna start, if you wanna see all the slides that we're presenting, whether it's the financial slides I been [00:19:00] presenting or these slides Marion's been talking about. Go to our Substack or go to the YouTube channel and watch this instead of listening to it. Second of all, yeah it just feels, especially when it comes to the European markets, which is actually where probably the majority of the opportunity is for this merger if it happens. It sounds like Ellison's just shooting from the hip. It sounds like he's making up answers depending on the day of the week and who he's talking to. It does not sound like there's a sound strategy. And I think part of that is these enterprises operations in Europe have been halting and stop and starting. They, HBO is not really in any of the big countries. They're just now launching in the Big Five. Paramount Plus, which has been operating here, it's been halting, like they, their investments have been cut in many cases they're winnowing down. And then I've asked both teams, and they, by the way, if you work at Paramount or you work at HBO Max, please [00:20:00] keep sending me DMs and telling me I'm right or tell me when I'm wrong. But I've talked to people at Paramount and I've talked to people at Disco Bros. And they both say that the tech stacks at both companies suck eggs. That they're terrible tech stacks. They're held together with chewing gum and bandaids. They have no real central tech stack that's worth anything. And that, they're really behind the eight ball when it comes to their integration with regards to. Like Pluto and Paramount Plus don't integrate very well. Why? That doesn't make any sense. And so in my mind, this is gonna be an epic disaster. Even if you combine tech stocks, that's gonna be a nightmare. And that's one of the reasons why Bank of America downgraded the Paramount stock is they said the integration's gonna take years. There's not, you're not gonna find these synergies. You're not gonna find these optimizations for years, and that's accurate. Maybe you'll get to growth, but it's gonna be the end of the decade before you start to see the [00:21:00] upside to, to this combination. But even if you do connect these two tech stacks as you just demonstrated very beautifully, you're still, if you're gonna keep both brands, that's twice the marketing. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: You're not saving any money. Marion Ranchet: I think one brand is ultimately gonna disappear or it's gonna become what we've seen with Disney Plus, where, Disney Plus is the brand and then everyone else is a corner, including Hulu, which we've seen, appear in Europe, which means nothing to us. So I just don't understand that move I, I get it in the US. Don't get it here. And yeah, which one has more gravitas? It matters. Which one, has been, in and out of homes, et cetera. It's HBO. It's not Paramount. And about Pluto. I wanted to do something about Pluto 'cause I think that so HBO is very premium, always had that very paid TV field and therefore never really did anything within ad supported streaming. And I think, there's a great [00:22:00] opportunity there. The same way that Pluto, when they got acquired by Paramount, they managed to mint the library. And I think they will be able to do the same provided that they go dig up what makes sense? Meaning that, there's a lot of HBO content that is, isn't fit for a free streaming FAST channel consumption. On demand, yeah. Yeah. But FAST, not so much. You don't wanna see, Westworld FAST channel. I don't think that has any potential, but, so what would be interesting is, would this be the opportunity where they go and merge another tech stack? I don't know if Pluto runs on Paramount Plus or else. Let's assume it does, but it would make so much sense to have Pluto as the front porch and then, everything premium with ads, because you and I have been saying this thing is with ads anyway. That, that would be, I think that would be, and especially you've said it at the top. Pluto has been struggling. It showed we did this episode on the earnings. So I think that would be having a more 360 approach [00:23:00] would be a great win. But, again, are they gonna be able to be this destination every night because that's what they're fighting for. That's the pitch, right? To be one of those top five companies that are this instant click. Every night when we switch TV on. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And. I will remind you, I think there's a huge opportunity around the Discovery holdings. So HGTV, Discovery, Animal Planet, all that nonfiction, what we call video wallpaper to a certain extent. All the property brothers, all that stuff, very low cost, but very high viewership. HGTV has defied gravity on cable in the United States in a way that very few other channels has been able to. So I think that stuff, leaning into FAST to a certain extent, but as we talked about at the top of this episode, people don't want linear programming, I'm sorry, unless it's live sports or unless it's news or unless it's like maybe the Traitors and really edgy or see cliffhangery stuff. [00:24:00] Live television is dead, linear, television is dead. Marion Ranchet: In the US maybe. Evan Shapiro: Yeah I even, when you survey humans, they'd rather choose their programming themselves than be forced a linear feed that's been scheduled by someone else. Again, there, there are exceptions to that. Traitors being a really good example to that. Love Island is another good example to that. But I don't think that. Leaning into linear schedule programming for maybe for old people, but certainly not for people under the age of 50. Now, talking about, this is the third point I would make talking about the sports you think, and I think you've seen there's a major opportunity here for both companies in sports. 'cause Warner has a massive holdings in sports in Europe that they don't have here in the United States. So I, I think people in America, including myself, go, oh, Warner Brothers, Disco bros. They lost the sports fight here. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, Evan Shapiro: But that's not true in Europe, is it? Marion Ranchet: No it's not. They [00:25:00] were actually stronger in Europe when they were going through losing the NBA. They actually already had a lot of great tier one sports in the region and they've kept, they've been able to invest some more and so did Paramount, right? One of the first new latest move of Paramount after the merger with Skydance was to go after the Champions League in the UK, Germany, and Ireland. That's a biggie. So that's city clubs competing, at a European level. And yeah, we've, we're right in the midst of this right now. It is a very strong asset for Paramount. And so if you look at what they have now, they would have combined, you have the Olympics until 2032. They have a lot of tennis, all of the major tournaments they have. All the major cycling tours. They have winter sports and again, they have football thanks to that deal with Paramount. I think what you've shown us at the beginning where you know it, it's hard to see how, [00:26:00] one plus one equals two. You see here how the two can actually click and make this a bigger destination. And even more so if you compare with fellow competitors in the region. So Netflix has barely any in Europe or when they do, it's very US focused. We don't care about your American football. WWE, yes, ut it's not mainstream. And so those are really a difference. Disney has been investing a little in the region, but there's not much left to grab. And Amazon, they've been very, it's a bit of, yeah, we're gonna invest, and then they go back and forth. So they are going to be a great premium sports destination in Europe. And so that could be, I think a draw for European consumers. Evan Shapiro: And when you look at this slide again, if you're listening, take a trip over to either one of our Substack, all this stuff will be there or look at the YouTube channel. When you look at this, you can see like Paramount in the US is really the sports play and a lot of these rights in the EU rest under the [00:27:00] Warner Brothers. So there's a really complimentary mix here. Two points I wanna make, one's a point and the other's a question for you. The first is, this shit's gonna get more expensive every year. Like Amazon, Disney, Apple, Netflix, they're all bidding up these sports rights at, over the last couple years it's up 300% the NBA, not to compliment Zaslav, but he backed out of the NBA bidding. And it seems by a lot of analysts assessment that. Overpaid for the, yeah, just not worth 75 billion deal. So if sports is a major, this is gonna get, that again, goes to the EBITDA projections that they're making. Maybe you'll generate more revenue by having more sports, but your profit margin's gonna get eaten away by paying more. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, Evan Shapiro: and more and more every year. Now my question, and this isn't about this merger. Netflix is now free, right? They don't bound by this stupid acquisition jaunt that [00:28:00] Ted Sarandos went on, and they've got $3 billion from Paramount that they just got burning a hole in their pocket. Do you think buying I, I was part of an article that Adweek did about what should Netflix buy now and DAZN came up. Do you think Netflix goes after DAZN now that they've got $3 billion in cash sitting in a piggy bank in Ted's office? Marion Ranchet: That makes Sense. You know how when DAZN launch it was set to be, it was subtitled the Netflix of sports. Yeah, I could see that because the challenge right for Netflix is everyone is locking in rights. So even if they wanna invest more in sports, those deals are long and everything is locked for the next five to eight years on major major tier one sports. So they can go niche, right? And be very local, et cetera. But that does really, that doesn't really look like Netflix. So DAZN would be an amazing get that would make sense. The only thing is that the reason why Ted and team didn't wanna be in live sports is exactly what you were saying. [00:29:00] The price keep increasing. Except that the, there's consumers are not always following right. And we've seen this with DAZN, which has, been buying rights. So they did it in France, they did it in Belgium, and then they put a price tag to the consumer, and the consumer says, thanks, but no thanks. Then DAZN goes back and says to the leagues, I want out. I went out of my contract and they did that in those two countries recently, which is I'm not sure Netflix would be buying, they would be buying a headache, but, could they fix it perhaps? Dunno, but that's a good idea. Evan Shapiro: And they're, and since they backed out, and again, I was yelling out as loud as I could that this was a terrible deal for Netflix. And the market agrees because they drove the stock down while the bidding was happening. And then since they got out, their stock has rebounded dramatically. They're back over $400 billion. They're headed back to the $500 billion valuation mark. So they have more capital on hand and less debt and DAZN. What would it cost? [00:30:00] About probably about three or 4 billion. Like you can't charge much more for something that's cash like that, but their Russian oligarch owner is probably a little frustrated with as much capital as Les has to keep putting into that enterprise. So getting out now and selling to Netflix makes him look like a winner and it stops the bleeding of his bank account at a time when I'm sure his bank account is under a little bit of pressure for global political reasons. So yeah I think it'd be interesting to see what happens. Sports in Europe, sports in America is almost predictable on a cycle, but sports in Europe because of the country by country rights. It's not like Texas has a set of sports rights and New York has a different set of sports rights. It's national, but that's not true in the European Union. This is gonna be one of the most fascinating components to track over the next year. What happens to all these leagues, right? Marion Ranchet: Absolutely. Evan Shapiro: And the Olympics. Yeah and you took a hard look at the cinema. Now I the [00:31:00] European box office is actually someone interesting compared to the US. First of all, I think Europeans like cinema more than Americans do. Marion Ranchet: We love it. Yeah. Evan Shapiro: They like actually gonna the theater. I think part of the reason is European movie theaters are great and American movie theaters are awful. They're just terrible experiences. But when I show this chart, and again, you can see this on YouTube or our Substack, what whatcha meaning to show here with regards to these slides on the Cinema and box office,. Marion Ranchet: we had initial numbers, right? The full numbers will get in May during the Cannes Film Festival. That's when they do, the full 2025, the full year results, right? But we're starting to see some numbers and we're down 5.5% when it comes to ticket sales, but stable in terms of revenue figures and the reason being that, aha price of tickets went up, right? Yeah. So it's an okay year. But the reason why I wanted to show this is that close to, in [00:32:00] between. It depends of the year, or let's say, let's go ballpark around 70% of the box office in Europe is actually made of US movies. We're very reliant on how good you guys are doing, right? So in 2024, it was a bit more balanced. I think it was like 63 US and 33 European and the rest global. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And 2024 in American movie making was not a great year. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly. And so I think, let's see what happens this year. 2025 wasn't great for you guys, which means it's not great for us in terms of attendance. And that means that when you are not doing great, unless we have our own great local hits we have a year like this where the attendance is is down. So there's a lot of concern coming out of this year on that front, although we're starting to see some estimates and it said that, we'll be returning to growth. So estimated to generate $10 billion next year, a 7% increase. But of course, when [00:33:00] you put this in light of this deal where Paramount WBD are saying we're gonna keep the way was before, yes, we're gonna do 30 movies a year, and then you are starting to see organization, cinema organization throughout Europe saying, and this could be something that the EU pays attention to, maybe a bit more than streaming perhaps. But let's see. They're gonna be saying. Oh, are they gonna keep, good on that promise? And they're gonna look at what happened with Disney and Fox and, I dunno exactly, what happens in the US but what we've seen is you used to have, I think 25 Fox was like, very prolific 25 movies. Disney in be never had that many, maybe 15. Last year combined: 19. Evan Shapiro: Right. Marion Ranchet: So who says 30 is even possible. So everyone is bracing themselves for less movies, less American movies. But that means that we're gonna, we could have a shit [00:34:00] show, let me use that word of yours, shit show years to come because we're over reliant on you guys. So that was the idea behind that slide. And I think it's gonna be very much talked about in the next few months because we're gonna have festival season kicking off. Evan Shapiro: I think you're absolutely right. It's, I'm getting inundated with people from the film industry. Ted Hope as recently as yesterday saying, please help spread the word about how bad this is gonna be for the film industry. And despite that attendance is down around the world you're right, we keep driving up the price of tickets and that saves the the revenue numbers. But, they, despite the fact that attendance in theaters is down, people love movies. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: They absolutely, they, it's a huge point of conversation. It's a very family oriented activity here in the United States and the fact that this seems to be a torpedo headed at the [00:35:00] heart of the cinema industry worldwide, I think you're gonna see tremendous pushback. Again, especially from attorneys general here in the United States where states have created tax credits to help the film industry. And then especially in Europe where cinema is, it's considered a national treasure in each one of these countries. And so I, I think your resistance is gonna be incredibly high. And then you have the CNN of it all. The fact that. One of the largest news organizations on the planet Earth is now gonna be controlled by this Nepo baby and this anti woke Substack writer. And we're both Substack writers, so you know, respect that she got paid $150 million for her newsletter, but she's not a journalist and she clearly doesn't give a shit about journalism the way she's treating 60 Minutes. There is a chill, an absolute chill coming over the journalistic world. Around the globe about the effect that this is gonna have [00:36:00] on, frankly just news and information and press freedom. And America is now falling off of the highest rated democracy list on the planet Earth because of its treatment of journalists and its treatment of the press. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, absolutely. Completely agree with you. It's been a fascinating episode. I think there's a lot going on right now. We've had those two amazing reports. Actually one is full of insights to build a strategy. The other one we're questioning whether there's a strategy to it. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's right. The Tubi The Stream report. Thank you to them for giving us access to that early so we could dive into it. Go check that out. The links in the show notes here. You've got a tremendous amount of information if you are either a producer or a platform provider. I think the report shows where consumers are headed and what their predilections are for how they consume streaming content, both from the perspective of combining creator [00:37:00] content and mainstream content on the same platform, but also how they watch together. In fact people are breaking up with their significant others because they can't share a taste set. But the family movie time is now a thing. And so catering to that, but also the fact that the on-demand mindset is truly implanted in the minds of the consumers now, I think that's clearly evident from this report. Tons of insights to drive your business. So go check that out. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Wherever you are listening to this podcast, go check out for the link. It's gonna be on our substack as well, and go download, our link to this report. Evan Shapiro: So this was a great episode. I'm coming to you from my new office, finally, which is still unfinished. But yeah, I'll see you next week. Marion Ranchet: See you next week.