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Post by mattpricetime on May 17, 2021 13:39:10 GMT -5
Well folks, this one is a sort of surprise. By sort of I mean news only leaked a day before but the major reason why they did it was talked about for a while. Namely that AT&T was way in debt by this move and after the pandemic their finances only just got worse. I'm seeing contradictory reports so i will update once i'm sure which way the "sale/merger" is.
So basically this means we're going to get a whole new top management over everything. And what exactly this means is we're going to have to wait and see how this new period looks. Namely we will watch to see what changes brought on in the AT&T period will continue on in the new one.
But I doubt this will mean too much to Scooby. He's still one of the biggest properties in the company regardless who owns him.
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Post by Ark on May 17, 2021 14:58:15 GMT -5
Discovery... as in the Discovery Channel?
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Post by mattpricetime on May 17, 2021 15:26:11 GMT -5
Discovery Inc owns Discovery Channel, Animal Planet. Science Channel, Investigation Discovery, TLC, HGTV, Food Network and Travel Channel.
if i'm reading the reports right, AT&T is planning on becoming just a tech company again and it intends to work with this new Entertainment company that is going to be born from merging Warner Media and Discovery Inc into one company. The initial board is going to have both AT&T people and Discovery people on it.
The guy in charge of Disoovery Inc right now is going to be the head of this new company and he is talking to the head of AT&T. The current head of Warner Media right now is probably going to be exit.
Discovery Inc usually works on non fictional tv (or at least alleged non fictional in some cases) so it will be interesting to see how this goes. When the AT&T merger happened I brought up that change usually occurs when people from outside the "normal" get control over entertainment companies. This is likewise going to be a big change for some people, it may produce some interesting changes.
Mind you, the pandemic seriously damaged AT&T's long term plans. We were still sitting here wondering how a couple things were going to play out as they were playing some areas of business pretty much by ear. And the huge debt they had wasn't making things better. So this new arrangement is likely to fix some of that.
One thing that is going to be very interesting is that Disoovery Inc's channels are some at the best at reruns in all of cable. They air episodes of years old documentaries multiple times every year. If we can get that kind of idea of Warner Media channels that may be a welcome change.
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Post by russm on May 17, 2021 15:58:26 GMT -5
...One thing that is going to be very interesting is that Disoovery Inc's channels are some at the best at reruns in all of cable. They air episodes of years old documentaries multiple times every year. If we can get that kind of idea of Warner Media channels that may be a welcome change. Some of their stuff is probably nut-crunchingly expensive to make so they'll make sure they get their money's worth. But it'll be years before the impact is felt and ny then I'll be a gabillionare and own the rights to Scooby Doo so, all's good.
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Post by Ark on May 17, 2021 18:34:07 GMT -5
I'd love to see new Scooby stuff with a different twist. Honestly, I'd like to move away from the "Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe" too. It wasn't a bad idea, but it wasn't executed the best-- plus the pandemic hit and soured it further. If we get less Scooby stuff but they put more time into it, that could be a great thing.
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Post by mattpricetime on May 17, 2021 18:45:24 GMT -5
By the looks of it Jason Kilar (current head of Warner Media) is indeed on his way out, as he only learned of this on Saturday and by today has hired a legal team, which is the exactly the thing to do if you are unexpectedly leaving a big corporate company.
Hollywood circles are apparently feeling happy AT&T i winding out, but they've been ticked off ever since the HBO Max theatrical releases. But there's the one major elephant in the room. Discovery shows typically do hire actors for reenactments, but those are usually indy actors and indy talents rather than mainstream Hollywood ones. Big names main exposure to Discovery Inc are usually just hosts or narrators.
While Discovery may be a little less risky than AT&T, I think this new entity may still be a little against the Hollywood grain but a little closer due to the new boss having more entertainment experience.
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Post by Dyland on May 17, 2021 20:17:15 GMT -5
Maybe they'll cancel Velma now. jk Well, this certainly was unexpected! Wonder what this means going forward? Presumably different management top-down, but as you've said, likely not a lot of change to Scooby, since's the franchise is a bit of a crown jewel. What this means for the other smaller properties under HB and Warners, though... many may go dormant for a while. Or, they might start using them like crazy in an attempt to "modernize" some characters and rake in some extra dough. Who knows?
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Post by Doo on May 18, 2021 10:04:24 GMT -5
I would have never expected this to happen. I wonder if this means more crossovers with celebrity chefs or personalities from Discovery Channel shows, like they did with Gourmet Ghost?
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Post by Ark on May 18, 2021 10:33:43 GMT -5
A haunting in a House Hunters mashup could be fun! Gourmet Ghost wasn't bad.
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Post by mattpricetime on May 18, 2021 21:45:54 GMT -5
It really does leave us wanting to know more because it is an unexpected news. But like I said there is a lot of potential that could be brought in by the Discovery Inc people that have influence in the new company.
I don't think Discovery's ever had a built in full scale home media division before either. Some of their stuff got licensed out. But the MOD part of the Warner system may be seen as of use to them for their binge docu series.
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Post by vakanai on Jun 2, 2021 15:38:23 GMT -5
A haunting in a House Hunters mashup could be fun! Gourmet Ghost wasn't bad. Gourmet Ghost was actually surprisingly good! I didn't expect much from it, but it became one of my favorite Scooby films of the past decade.
I don't know what all this news is ultimately going to mean going forward, but if there's no Scooby Doo and the Ghost Shark or some other shark themed mystery for Shark Week we riot!
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Post by Ark on Jun 2, 2021 17:34:01 GMT -5
A haunting in a House Hunters mashup could be fun! Gourmet Ghost wasn't bad. Gourmet Ghost was actually surprisingly good! I didn't expect much from it, but it became one of my favorite Scooby films of the past decade.
I don't know what all this news is ultimately going to mean going forward, but if there's no Scooby Doo and the Ghost Shark or some other shark themed mystery for Shark Week we riot!
Agree and agree!
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Post by wileyk209 on Jun 3, 2021 11:34:29 GMT -5
The way they are now called Warner Bros. Discovery reminds me of how in the late 1960s, they were called Warner Bros.- Seven Arts... (From the Looney Tunes cartoons produced during this era, basically being like a precursor to "What's New, Scooby-Doo?") I just hope this doesn't end up like AOL Time Warner or the AT&T/Warner merger did...
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Post by mattpricetime on Jun 4, 2021 10:34:01 GMT -5
We have to see how Discovery handles this transition. The worst decisions of those respective mergers were appointing people who weren't the best for the job. But they kicked Kilar to the curb before he could do as much damage as Kellner did in his day.
The old pre-AT&T hierarchy still needed to be broken down so any of the HB, LT or DC shows could even get a fair shake on tv again. I blame most of the later problems on the pandemic and letting Kilar be the one to pick which things could be slashed.
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Post by mattpricetime on Aug 10, 2021 14:58:55 GMT -5
I'm going to use this thread to basically do a catch up on all the issues that were covered in the three topics. 1. The Warner/Discovery deal is apparently going well and the head of Discovery doesn't expect any anti-trust problems from the deal. A not-so-insightful reporter asked if they were going to keep the theatrical movie side of the business, which he obviously said yes. Kilar clearly hasn't done anything too major since that announcement because he knows he's done. 2. There is considerable less news about the sale of Crunchyroll to Sony. I'm not sure if no news is good news or bad news in this case. EDIT: Apparently i missed the article from last night that said they closed it but the news that came out today changes a lot.
3. The reason for the Adult Swim re-releases is clear now, they are making DTV movies for Aqua Teen, Venture Bros and Metalacolpyse. These are going to dvd/digital first before tv or streaming. According the press release. 4. While there's no official statement on Warner Archive there's two things i noticed that may be relevant. WB has released a couple modern shows to dvd and/or bluray mod these last couple months. The posts on Warner Archive's facebook page for the month aren't mentioning them. I'd wager these are indeed reflecting the post Feltenstein management, while the older catalog releases are still the old team's pipeline. I'm not sure about the bluray question given that some of the mod releases were dvd only, others were both bluray and dvd. Same with the store releases. Though anything that went to stores dvd only these last few months did not get a Warner Archive bluray. 4. While I didn't see the full interview apparently jerry Beck mentioned that the third Tex Avery volume is still on hold. Which he origially said was because they wanted the old lab back but given what we also believe is that the old WA pipeline only runs until some time in 2022, it's not clear how much time they'd have left to complete that if the pipeline is the end. Which might also be evidence that the new team is still working on older releases given they are pushing it back more? 5. No one talks on the Cartoon Network situation, any source i tried didn't take the bait. I really can't wait to see that back cover of the Scooby/Courage dvd.
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