I suppose I ought to be grateful that entertainment titans such as Walt Disney chairman and chief executive Bob Iger and Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, are making it clear that Georgia’s restrictive new abortion law could be bad for the state’s up-and-coming film industry. Iger said Disney would be unlikely to keep filming in the state if the law went into effect, because “many people who work for us will not want to work there.” Sarandos went a step further and said Netflix would join the legal efforts to block the law.
Still this latest counterattack in the culture wars makes me feel more cautious than celebratory. Watching some of the biggest players in Hollywood issue mild statements that hint at commitments they may not have to fulfill for years, if ever, is a reminder of just how low we’ve set the bar for what constitutes meaningfully ethical behavior by corporations.
From ethically sourced diamond engagement rings to nationwide Starbucks closures for diversity training, companies have never seen greater opportunities for profit — or at least, a greater need for political damage control. But the dream of a corporation so politically pristine that it can turn our consumption decisions into ethical acts is a myth, or worse, a diversion. In the entertainment field, we can celebrate “Black Panther,” “Captain Marvel” or Netflix’s big deals with black, female and gay artists all we want. But those of us who look to giant corporations to be political allies are setting ourselves up for disappointment. They are merely in the fight to monetize our political enthusiasms.
Consider Netflix. Sarandos got the company out in front of its peers by suggesting that the Georgia abortion ban would drive Netflix productions, which include Dolly Parton’s anthology series and Michael B. Jordan’s superhero series “Raising Dion,” out of state. WarnerMedia has announced that it will reevaluate whether to produce new projects in Georgia, and Kristen Wiig’s Lionsgate comedy will find a new location for its shoots.
But Netflix weighs its values differently when there’s a question of gaining access to lucrative foreign markets. Earlier this year, the company complied with a “take down request” from Saudi Arabia’s government, pulling an episode of “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj” that criticized Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman so that it would no longer be accessible to Saudi viewers.
Marvel, a Disney subsidiary, changed the ethnicity of a character from Tibetan to Celtic to placate Chinese censors and audiences. Iger may express concern about employees who are reluctant to work in post-abortion restriction Georgia. But he was willing to discuss the possibility of opening an amusement park in Saudi Arabia during the prince’s 2018 goodwill tour, despite the fact that, at that time, the country still banned women from driving cars.
Even if entertainment companies tear themselves away from Georgia, it’s unlikely to be a major sacrifice. There are plenty of incentives to be found elsewhere, even if Georgia’s was among the richest. Some state lawmakers may even decide to sweeten the pot for studios that decide to do the right thing: This month, California Democratic Assemblywoman Luz Rivas introduced a bill that would provide tax incentives to companies that pull their productions out of states with abortion restrictions and move them to California. Principle is nice. But it’s even better if you can get paid twice to embrace it, once in the form of corporate welfare and a second time by viewers who want to endorse your politics.
When that’s not an option, the pursuit of tax incentives can become an overriding concern. As Judd Legum reported in his Popular Information newsletter, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings gave $143,000 to Republican legislators in Missouri — 13 times as much as he gave the state’s Democrats — likely in an effort to revitalize the state’s film production tax incentive program. That same Republican-controlled legislature passed a restrictive abortion bill this month.
Since this column was published, Hastings has said that his donations to anti-abortion lawmakers in Missouri were aimed at boosting charter schools, not at restoring tax credits for film production. Additional reporting by CNN suggests that the company is mounting a lobbying effort to restart Missouri’s tax incentive program.
Conservatives who criticize Hollywood as liberal may take the industry’s approach to Georgia’s abortion ban as further proof that the movie and television businesses are hopelessly biased. But inasmuch as the entertainment industry is actually liberal, its decisions about where to take stands are driven as much by the desire to retain vocal young employees and to avoid the sort of entanglements that make for bad headlines. In this environment, conservative criticism actually serves as a sort of subsidy to Hollywood with liberal observers; it’s easy to believe that a business that spends so much time angering the sanctimonious must be doing something right, and doing it for the right reasons. That perception allows executives to get credit for waving in the direction of sacrifice, while pursuing profit and market access in other areas of their business.
If Hollywood wants to monetize its perceived liberalism and make arguments for its social significance by pointing to the values it exports overseas, it ought to offer more than vague promises, throwaway efforts at representation, and late-breaking expressions of horror about abusive workplaces. The corporations that dominate the entertainment industry are in the business of entrancing, not saving, us. We’ll have to do that ourselves.
Everybody Should Be Very Afraid of the Disney Death Star
The first episode of the Streaming Wars is over. The rebels won. Now the empire strikes back.
Disney also acquires a majority stake in the TV product Hulu, which it may use to kickstart its entry into the streaming wars.
These additions would enrich an overflowing treasury at Disney, whose assets includes Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, ABC, ESPN, the world’s most popular amusement parks, and, of course, its classic animated-film division
.. The deal allows Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire patriarch behind 21st Century Fox, to consolidate his own kingdom—and his legacy—around the very place where he got his start: news.
.. Streaming video has conquered pay TV and created a generation of cord-cutters; the youngest Millennials (those in their late teens and early 20s) watch 50 percent less traditional television .. than people that age did in 2010.
.. For media and entertainment companies, there is one big existential question: Get big and stream, or give up and sell?
.. Traditional television is a pure gerontocracy. The only age demo watching more TV than in 2010 are eligible for Medicare.
.. You could say Disney is spending $60 billion for a risky makeover to appeal to a younger demographic, while Murdoch is using the money to install a golden stair lift.
.. Disney’s long-term strategy is, like Netflix, to own the means of distributing its content. What’s more, this deal is a “horizontal” merger
.. With this deal, Disney would control as much as 40 percent of the the U.S. movie business
.. Its control of the sports-television landscape, between the regional sports networks and ESPN, might be even more concentrated
.. Hollywood studios should be afraid to compete with a corporate Goliath that could earn half of all domestic box-office revenue in a good year.
.. Every tech company should be afraid to get into a content war with a company that combines the
- top blockbuster movie studio, with a
- top prestige-film company, with a
- world-class television production company, with the
- most valuable franchises—Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and X-Men—in the world.
.. In the last fiscal year ending in October, Disney’s made $55 billion in revenue, with about 60 percent coming from television and film (the rest came from parks, resorts, and merchandise). That 60 percent is endangered: Box-office ticket sales have been flat or declining for years, and television is in obvious structural decline
Nolte: Want to Destroy ESPN and CNN Forever? Cut the Cord, Dummy
Without this bundle, almost every institution determined to destroy everything you hold dear — faith, family, country, individual liberty, self-reliance, prosperity, racial harmony, and moral decency — would disappear entirely or at least be much weaker than it currently is. Of course, I am talking about CNN, ESPN, Comedy Central, Disney, MTV, MSNBC, and the like — institutions you — yes YOU — are subsidizing against your will.
.. Do you honestly believe CNN could survive at the level it does with fewer than a million total viewers? No, really, CNN averages throughout the day fewer than a million TOTAL viewers, which in a country of 330 million, is a ratings point of ZERO.
.. With so many viewers, how, then, does CNN afford to make millionaires of all these
- smug serial- liars like Jake Tapper; these
- five-foot bullies like Andrew Kaczynski; these
- breathtakingly stupid crybabies like Don Lemon; all these
- left-wing panelists; these
- Trump-hating pundits; these
- bitter, little dim-witted George Costanzas like Brian Stelter?
.. If CNN or ESPN or a whole bunch of other networks dedicated to your destruction are part of your cable package, every single month, YOU are cutting them a check, empowering them with cold hard cash, funding the very superpower these super-villains have dedicated to annihilating you and yours.
.. It is called a “carriage fee,” and this hidden fee is why your cable bill is so obnoxiously expensive.
.. No, the reason your cable bill is so expensive is because — whether or not you watch these left-wing networks — the game has been rigged to the point where you are paying for them anyway.
.. this carriage fee is the aforementioned one-legged stool. And this means that YOU have the power to kick that single leg out from under this rancid institution. You have the power to bring this entire dirty world crashing to the ground. You have the power to destroy CNN and ESPN. And that power resides within a single act…
Cut your Pay TV cord.
.. Cord-cutting affects stock prices, has resulted in massive layoffs (including — tee hee — Keith Olbermann), and has forced Disney, ESPN, HBO, and a host of others to do what they said they would never do — either license their product to streaming services or launch standalone streaming services.
.. And guess what a standalone streaming service survives on and only survives on? Customers who actually want that service. In other words, MERIT, not a rigged Pay TV system that forces 87 million who do NOT watch CNN to still enrich CNN.
.. My pay TV bill went from $140 a month to just $25 (Netflix, Amazon, Acorn — which, unlike cable, do NOT oppress you with 20 minutes of ads per hour).
One of Disney’s most popular brands has investors really worried
But ESPN remains one of the world’s most profitable sports networks, and its struggles raise troubling questions about the entire TV ecosystem. Long considered the linchpin of the traditional bundle, live sports is often what compels viewers to stay with their cable provider rather than cut the cord. But as more consumers defect in the face of growing cable bills, what is happening at ESPN could end up affecting channels up and down the lineup.
.. ESPN and its siblings, such as ABC, account for the biggest chunk of Disney’s businessby far, pulling in $24 billion in revenue this fiscal year. The company’s next biggest segment, theme parks, made $17 billion.
.. It wasn’t that long ago that observers were calling ESPN “the most valuable media property in the United States,” estimating its value at 20 times that of the New York Times Co. and five times the size of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
.. analysts say ESPN faces a steeper challenge than most because of the rapidly rising cost to the network of acquiring sports broadcasting rights.
.. The rights to broadcast live sports cost cable companies a collective $16 billion last year, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers — up 50 percent from 2011. That figure is expected to grow another 30 percent by 2020.