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With ‘Knives Out’ Deal, Netflix Signals It’s in the Franchise Business
The streaming gold rush of 2017-18, when Netflix scooped up big-name television creators, now seems to have migrated to the film world. More
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- in Movies
The Oscars Are a Week Away, but How Many Will Watch?
TV ratings for awards shows have been in free fall, especially during the pandemic, and Hollywood doesn’t want the viewing public to toss its premier showcase into the entertainment dustbin. More
- in Music
Dominic Fike Video Shows Paul McCartney and New York Times
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.At a New York Times printing plant in College Point, Queens, the soundtrack is usually the rapid thwap, thwap, thwap of blank paper turning into the next edition. But one night in February, thanks to a famous Beatle and the singer Dominic Fike, things got a little more musical.“Have you,” Mr. Fike sings in a music video shot at the plant, “read the paper?” The song is a cover of Paul McCartney’s “The Kiss of Venus,” and Mr. Fike is shown at the plant taking in the 14 miles of conveyor belts ferrying copies of The Times all around him.With the presses rolling and assembled copies sailing overhead, he glances at the dizzying activity and sings, in verses he added to the track, about people’s differences on issues and the media. “What’s your take on it?” he asks.The 78-year-old former Beatle himself makes a cameo at the end of the video, seated on a bench outside London. He whistles the tune as the camera zooms in on the copy of The New York Times International issue he is perusing. Mr. McCartney slowly lowers the paper to reveal wide eyes and a shock of gray hair. Then he raises his eyebrows and grins.“Paul whistled that perfectly the first time,” Jack Begert, who directed the video, said. “He’s elite.”Mr. Begert added that the image of Mr. McCartney enthusiastically poring over a copy of the paper underscores that he, ultimately, is the source of the music. “Even though Dom reimagined that song, at the end of the day, it’s a Paul McCartney song,” Mr. Begert said.Last year, Mr. McCartney wrote and recorded “The Kiss of Venus,” a smooth acoustic ballad, for his recent solo album “McCartney III.” Mr. Fike’s reimagined version — an R&B pop earworm — is part of the album “McCartney III Imagined,” out Friday, which features A-listers covering “McCartney III” tracks.So how did The New York Times score a starring role in Mr. Fike’s video?Mr. Begert said that he considered “The Kiss of Venus” a reflection of the stop-and-go energy of modern life — and that when the time came to conceptualize a video, his first thought was New York. “It’s still and beautiful, but also crazy,” he said.The video’s creative director, Reed Bennett, suggested the Times printing plant. “I was like, ‘That’s perfect,’” Mr. Begert said. “I wanted to link back to the theme of one person feeling small but also like they have a really important place in the universe.”The cavernous, 550,000-square-foot plant — about the size of 11 and a half football fields — prints copies of The Times each night, along with copies of Newsday and USA Today.At College Point in Queens, the presses are several stories tall. Clayborne BujorianThe presses are generally quiet during the day, but at night, the seven cerulean blue behemoths — each several stories tall — roar to life. “It gets your adrenaline pumping,” Nick D’Andrea, the vice president of production at the College Point plant, said. “You get that excitement as they start up to get the paper out.”The late edition of the paper goes to press at about 10:15 p.m., so a video crew of eight showed up a little before then on a Friday night in February to scout potential shots, Mr. Begert said. After that, the pressure was on: They had a few hours — max — until the presses shut down for the night.“We just knew we had to move as quickly as possible to get all the different shots we wanted,” Sam Canter, the executive producer of the video, said.Once they began shooting, Mr. Fike marveled at the organized chaos happening around him.“I don’t know what I expected, but it was surreal,” he said in an interview. “It felt like the North Pole, like Santa’s elf factory on the evening of Christmas.”Although Dominic Fike isn’t a frequent consumer of the news, he was struck by the machinery required to print it. Clayborne BujorianThis isn’t the plant’s first on-screen appearance. It got around two minutes of time in a scene in “The Bourne Legacy” — which took three days to shoot — and has been featured in episodes of “30 Rock,” “Elementary” and a couple of commercials.Mr. D’Andrea, who has worked at Times production facilities for 46 years, said visitors were often taken aback by the plant’s team of laser-driven robots, which glide around replacing rolls of paper on the presses.“People are always like, ‘I didn’t know you could do that,’” he said.But Mr. Fike had the opposite reaction. “I was surprised by all the original machinery and how old it was,” he said. “Everything that ever happened was printed there, recorded and written down.” Maybe not quite everything, but still plenty of history. Mr. Fike said he was particularly taken with a page (printed at a different plant) showing the 1969 moon landing.Although Mr. Fike is not an avid news consumer, the experience of seeing the presses and sensing some of the history there might have had an influence on him. “I’m not a news guy. But I love the NYT and I’m going to start reading the news,” the 25-year-old singer said. “That’s what people do when they get older.”Well, perhaps, but reading the news can help keep you young, too. Just ask a 78-year-old whistler. More
- in Theater
Setting the Stage Once Again for Shakespeare, and Live Theater
With coronavirus restrictions easing in England, several venues have plans to give classic plays new life.LONDON — Shakespeare is coming back, and I can’t be the only person who has missed him.There are signs of renewed activity at Shakespeare’s Globe, and talk of at least one star-studded production that is, after many delays, scheduled to be performed — can you believe it? — live. This comes after a year of a pandemic that has affected in various ways what has, and hasn’t, been staged, with Shakespeare a particular casualty.Understandably so. Amid a theatrical state of affairs dominated by Zoom and a brief return of live performances of small-scale shows in London that came to an abrupt halt in mid-December, the logistics of Shakespeare have seemed pretty daunting. How do you accommodate a writer whose capacious narratives depend on size, scope and dimension in these strange, socially distanced times? It’s far easier to return to the two-character environs of, say, “Love Letters” or “The Last Five Years,” to name just two titles that could be (and were) easily married to coronavirus rules.A lining of sorts to this bleak cloud came in the form of theatrical archives. With playhouses less inclined to revive Shakespeare, recordings of past productions were made available, giving theater fans a new chance to see or revisit notable performances. Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theater were among the venues in Britain that drew upon a sizable back catalog. The Globe reported an increase of nearly 500 percent in its video-on-demand GlobePlayer service.What better chance was there to be reacquainted with the National’s thrilling 2018 production of “Antony and Cleopatra,” which remains among the few productions of this play in my experience with an Antony, in Ralph Fiennes, worthy of his Cleopatra, the sinuous Sophie Okonedo. The R.S.C.’s extensive archive offered up a 2015 “Othello” that, in a first for that company, cast a Black actor, Lucian Msamati, as Iago, opposite Hugh Quarshie as Othello; the result was both riveting and revelatory.The actress Rebecca Hall, right, rehearsing opposite Luisa Omielan for an online presentation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by Hall’s half sister, Jenny Caron Hall.But it wasn’t until the start of this year that theatermakers appeared to find a way to present Shakespeare afresh, even if the same few titles seemed to be under consideration. (My visions of numerous anxious Hamlets subjecting their best “To be or not to be” to the vagaries of YouTube went unrealized.) Sam Tutty, who won an Olivier Award for the West End production of “Dear Evan Hansen,” widened his range in a newly conceived “Romeo and Juliet” that was streamed online in February. In accordance with pandemic-era requirements, the play was filmed with the actors in isolation for the most part, then joined up in the editing. For all its best intentions, this approach just couldn’t deliver the reactive thrill that comes from performers sharing a scene in real time and space.The Royal Shakespeare Company offered the tech-intensive “Dream,” which filleted the multiple plot strands of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” into a brief if ambitious exercise in interactivity that was arresting to look at but didn’t reveal much about the oft-revived play itself. The result may have suggested new ways of looking at Shakespeare, but it didn’t help us hear him anew.A direct contrast was the rehearsed reading this past Wednesday of the same play, directed by Jenny Caron Hall, whose father, Peter Hall, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company and was Laurence Olivier’s successor running the National Theater. As might be expected from such a lineage, Jenny Hall’s emphasis on her starry reading of the play via Zoom lay very much with the text, which looked to be in safe hands at a rehearsal I eavesdropped on the previous week: It helped, of course, to have doubling as Titania and Hippolyta the supremely accomplished Rebecca Hall, Jenny Hall’s younger half sister, who brought clarity and a welcome playfulness to some of Shakespeare’s most ravishing verse. (Rebecca Hall played Viola in her father’s final production for the National, a mortality-inflected “Twelfth Night,” in 2011.)Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor as the young lovers in a coming screen version of “Romeo and Juliet.” Behind them is Lucian Msamati as Friar Laurence.Rob YoungsonLooking ahead, audiences have every reason to anticipate a marriage of sumptuous visuals and textual expertise from a new screen version of “Romeo and Juliet.” For this heavily cut rendering of the play, Simon Godwin, the director of the National’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” is refashioning on film a production that had been intended for the National stage. The change means that the leads, Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley, will be joined by a heady lineup that includes Tamsin Greig, Adrian Lester, Deborah Findlay and Msamati — deft Shakespeareans all. (This “Romeo and Juliet” will air on Sky Arts in Britain and PBS in the United States.)As for breathing the same air as the actors, even through a mask, that enticement draws nearer daily. Shakespeare’s Globe has announced a mid-May reopening, albeit with a capacity of up to only 500 in a popular auditorium that can hold as many as 1,700. The coveted standing places that allow the so-called Globe groundlings to jostle one another, and on occasion the actors, will be replaced by seats; a lack of intermissions will further limit unwanted contact. The idea is to return to normal practice, assuming restrictions ease as the summer season continues.Not to be outdone, the West End’s most recent Lear, Ian McKellen, is opening his deliberately age-blind Hamlet in a repertory season that will include “The Cherry Orchard” and is due to start at the Theater Royal Windsor, west of London, on June 21.That’s the very day long earmarked as the end to the social restrictions in England that have been in place to varying degrees since March 2020.Will these productions go ahead, returning actors and spectators alike to the mutual discourse and interplay upon which the theater thrives and that no degree of technical finesse or Zoom-era sophistication can replace? As ever, time will tell. But the London theater seems poised for action, and the readiness, as Shakespeare knew so well, is all. More
- in Movies
Is Livestreamed Stand-Up Here to Stay?
Two online business models see a future post-pandemic, but success might depend on cooperating with actual clubs.The cultural legacy of the pandemic may not only be shows canceled, careers derailed and theaters and clubs closed. There has also been innovation, like the emergence of the virtual comedy club.What began out of desperation has matured into a new digital genre that has drawn sizable audiences in the habit of buying tickets to livestreaming stand-up from the comfort of their own homes. As clubs now start to reopen, and comics and patrons return to their old haunts, the next few months will be a key test of this business. Was it a pandemic-era fad or will it be an enduring part of the landscape?On a video call from her San Francisco home, Jill Paiz-Bourque, the chief executive of RushTix, perhaps the biggest digital comedy club, made the case that the lockdown only accelerated an already inevitable revolution. “Why did Netflix eclipse television?” she rhetorically asked. “It’s streaming, unlimited, global. Why did Spotify eclipse terrestrial radio? It’s streaming. It’s global. It’s unlimited. And that’s why livestreaming with RushTix eclipses Live Nation eventually because it’s streaming, it’s global, it’s unlimited.”Many are skeptical, including fans who badly miss being surrounded by echoing laughter and stand-ups who are exhausted by performing for screens and who widely prefer telling jokes in the same room as crowds. While conceding that nothing replaces the traditional comedy format, Paiz-Bourque said the doubts will look as shortsighted as early mockery of Twitter, podcasting and so many other now common internet forms. She has good reason for such swagger. Paiz-Bourque’s business, which she calls “a Silicon Valley start-up,” regularly sells over 1,000 tickets to see comics like Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt and Maria Bamford. In February, she sold 15,000 tickets to eight shows, bringing in close to $280,000 in revenue.“Once we got our first taste of 5,000 ticket shows, that was intoxicating,” Paiz-Bourque said (Colleen Ballinger, the popular YouTuber best known for “Miranda Sings,” was the breakthrough artist).As touring resumes, Paiz-Bourque is tweaking her vision, moving away from a tight focus on those headlining and radically increasing volume. By the summer, her goal is to produce five shows a day, every day. In other words, to live up to the slogan that appeared on her site before a recent show: “The biggest comedy club on the planet.” She said she wasn’t worried about clubs reopening because “I have way more supply than they have access to.”Laura Silverman and Jonathan Katz from “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.”RushTixIn the next month and half, she’s rolling out nine original, interactive series, including competitions (“Very Punny With Kate Lambert”), a cooking show (“Baking It Better with Tom Papa”) and a dating one (“Find Your Boo With Reggie Bo”). She’s also adding closed captioning, a subscription package and new technology that allows patrons to move around the “club” and hear different levels of laughter.The overall vision is to produce new work with emerging artists during the week while doubling down on headliners on Friday and Saturday nights. How will she compete when stars are eager to tour and return to live stages? Simple, she says: Make comics offers “worth their while.” After previously offering 80 percent of tickets sales, she’s recently started guaranteeing up to five figures. She says six figures will become common among an elite few. “I’ve gotten pushback on this from Day 1,” she said about enlisting comics. “Then you start wiring thousands and tens of thousands of dollars and they were like: I get it.”RushTix is hardly the only player in this market. Nowhere Comedy Club, a smaller, scrappier operation that was started by the comedians Ben Gleib and Steve Hofstetter, has booked a stellar lineup of comics, including Mike Birbiglia, Gilbert Gottfried and Nikki Glaser. In something of a coup, Bill Burr recently performed in a benefit production from a studio that Gleib built in his home, a booking that Paiz-Bourque said she was “devastated” she didn’t get a chance on. (She just announced that Burr will be appearing at RushTix on May 16 in a live version of the animated TV show “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.”)Gleib, who began Nowhere after ending a presidential campaign in 2019 that left him nearly broke, also performs his own show online every week. And while he is optimistic about the future of livestreaming, he sounded more anxious than Paiz-Bourque about losing comics to touring. “I think we can peaceably coexist,” he said. But as he approaches Nowhere’s anniversary next week, his strategy is not to rebrand or recast so much as make Nowhere fit more seamlessly into the existing ecosystem.He recently started geotargeting, a technology that restricts consumers from certain areas from buying tickets, a tactic he called potentially “game-changing.” This enables a comic heading out on a tour to block the places he’s visiting so as not to depress sales there.Emilio Savone, the co-owner of the New York Comedy Club, which begins indoor shows on Friday, when the city will begin allowing indoor shows at 33 percent capacity with a limit of 100 people, said such digital theaters have a future. “Do I think it can sustain as a seven-night-a-week type of thing? Maybe not?” he wrote in an email. “But I do think it’s a good tool for comedians to work on material, and it offers another way for the comic to engage and reach their audience.”Ben Gleib in soundcheck on Sunday.Nowhere Comedy ClubFelicia Madison, who runs the West Side Comedy Club in Manhattan — which will begin outdoor shows on April 14 but not indoor shows until the city allows for 50 percent capacity — also sees a future involving a hybrid of traditional and digital clubs. “If they’re smart, they’ll work with clubs” to livestream from there, she said.RushTix is already doing that, with the stand-up comedian Godfrey performing from the Gotham Comedy Club on April 7. But neither Paiz-Bourque nor Gleib sound enthusiastic about the economics of such arrangements. Gleib argued that strength of Nowhere was in the relationships it has developed with new comedy audiences. “We’ve reached huge demographics that have never been serviced by comedy clubs,” Gleib said, pointing to patrons who live in remote areas or those with disabilities or social anxiety. “Then there’s the lazy,” he added. “We’re great for lazy people who don’t want to go out.”Nowhere puts fans’ faces onscreen and allows everyone to talk, laugh or even heckle (though they can muted for that, too). This creates a freewheeling show that emphasizes the community of audience and performer. By contrast, RushTix keeps the audience to a chat room and limits laughter to 20 people. Gleib called this “elitist,” saying the RushTix approach didn’t resemble live stand-up.Paiz-Bourque doesn’t argue, saying that since no online show can duplicate a live one, her goal is to produce the best experience. “We gave up on trying to emulate the live experience and the more we gave up on that, the more we started opening up barrels of creativity,” she said.Maria Bamford on her livestream show, “Vindicated.”RushTixIf anything, she wants to move away from a dependence on conventional stand-up, while still booking big names. It’s why one of the first comics she recruited was Bamford, a natural experimentalist who is putting on an unusual show on April 17: after doing a set, she will film herself sleeping for the next eight hours. You can watch and join her for breakfast the next day.Bamford already has a dedicated audience that will follow her wherever she goes. The real test for these clubs will be whether they can develop enough loyalty to get audiences to try less established talents. These platforms tend to benefit those who already have large and engaged online fan bases. When clubs and theaters return, they are going to be booking acts that they know can sell tickets, which may make them more wary of adventurous or emerging comics.There is a real danger right now that we are entering a very cautious moment in comedy as institutions struggle to rebuild, and Paiz-Bourque, a former comic gifted in the art of selling a premise, argues now is the moment for her to fill another niche.Pointing to a logjam of early- and midcareer stand-ups whose careers have been slowed by the pandemic, she said, “Not only is this going to be a business that works. It needs to creatively for all these comedians.” More
- in Theater
Theater to Stream: ‘Broadway Backwards’ and Starry Readings
Among the offerings are a well-matched double bill, Ute Lemper’s tribute to Marlene Dietrich and a virtual revival of Michel Legrand’s musical “Amour.”Theater audiences have become more like movie fans and television bingers: They can settle in for a double bill. Before the pandemic, they might have scheduled a matinee and evening performance back to back, but there were those pesky hours to kill in between. Now it’s possible to simply queue up a couple of streaming shows and hit play.A natural pairing this month combines two engaging autobiographical shows written by gifted actors looking back on their childhoods. Round House Theater of Bethesda, Md., is presenting Colman Domingo’s “A Boy and His Soul,” which played Off Broadway in 2009. Domingo, who portrayed the bandleader Cutler in the film adaptation of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” looks back at his connection to music and family while growing up gay in the 1970s and ’80s in Philadelphia. This new production is the first major one in which he himself does not appear, with Ro Boddie taking on the role. Through Apr. 18; roundhousetheatre.orgAcross the Potomac River, in Arlington, Va., Signature Theater is presenting “Daniel J. Watts’ The Jam: Only Child.” Under Lileana Blain-Cruz’s direction, Watts (who played Ike Turner in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” on Broadway) recalls growing up with his single mother in the 1980s and ’90s. The title refers to fruit spread, but sound and music energize the show, with DJ Duggz spinning onstage and acting as Watts’s occasional sidekick. Through May 7; sigtheatre.org‘Broadway Backwards’Along the lines of MCC Theater’s beloved “Miscast,” in which stars perform songs they would never get to sing in real shows, this Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS annual fund-raising series features gender-reversed performances. This year’s concert mixes new numbers — hold on to your hats during the opener with Stephanie J. Block, Deborah Cox and Lea Salonga — with ones from previous editions, featuring the usual array of starry participants. Through April 3; broadwaycares.org‘Inside the GPO’The GPO of this docudrama title refers to the General Post Office in Dublin, which was central to the 1916 Easter Rising of Irish Republicans against British rule. Created as a centennial commemoration, Fishamble’s production takes place at the actual GPO, which in 1916 had been occupied by the rebels for several days. The company is now streaming a remastered digital version in partnership with various Irish organizations around the world, including the New York Irish Center. April 1-5; newyorkirishcenter.org‘What the ___ Just Happened?’The monologuist Mike Daisey returns to the stage in a new piece livestreamed from the Kraine Theater in New York — in front of an in-person, fully vaccinated audience. The title (you can guess which word was omitted) neatly encapsulates many people’s stunned take on the past year. April 2; frigid.nycClockwise, from top left: Debbie Allen, Heather Alicia Simms, Alicia Stith and Phylicia Rashad in “Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous.”via Spotlight on Plays‘Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous’The Spotlight on Plays series has pulled off a fun feat with its latest reading, the first time the sisters Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad have acted together since the PBS movie “The Old Settler” 20 years ago. Rashad plays a grande dame of the stage, and Allen is her friend and director, in this 2019 comedy by Pearl Cleage (“Blues for an Alabama Sky”). April 8-12; broadwaysbestshows.comOne Year of Play-PerViewWhen many theatrical institutions curled up into the equivalent of a fetal position in March 2020, some people got to work. Among them was the enterprising reading series Play-PerView, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a mix of new and old works. In the first category is “Babette in Retreat” by Justin Sayre, who in the past year has been cultivating a high-camp sensibility in a steady stream of comedies like “Drowsenberg,” “When Sunny Went Blue” and “The Ducks.” There should be some choice bon mots and slapstick for Becca Blackwell, Nathan Lee Graham (as the title character), Randy Harrison (“Queer as Folk”), Bradford Louryk and Mary Testa. April 10-14; play-perview.comRandy Harrison, left, and Scott Parkinson in “Cockfight Play.”via Studio Theater‘Cockfight Play’Randy Harrison also takes on the lead role of John in Studio Theater’s fully staged digital production of Mike Bartlett’s “Cockfight Play.” (The actual title is just one word, so use your deductive skills). John is in a relationship with M (Scott Parkinson) when he falls in love with W (Kathryn Tkel). “Love?” a startled M says. “She?” Bartlett’s deceivingly simple premise explores the vagaries of romantic attraction, and the director David Muse makes good use of a split screen to overcome the actors’ need to maintain their distance. Through Apr. 18; studiotheatre.orgThe cast of an online revival of Michel Legrand’s musical “Amour,” presented by Art Lab and ShowTown Productions.via Art Lab‘Amour’Michel Legrand’s only Broadway musical was a flop, running for only 48 performances in 2002 — which is a shame because the poetic, surrealistic “Amour,” in which a civil servant realizes he can walk through walls, has plenty of the gorgeous melodies you’d expect from the French composer. Now, Art Lab and ShowTown Productions are presenting a revival starring Derrick Baskin (a Tony Award nominee for “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations”), Drew Gehling (“Waitress”), Kara Lindsay, Adam Pascal, Christiani Pitts and Rachel York. It is high time “Amour” gets some love. April 2-4; stellartickets.com‘Period Piece’Don’t expect costumes of yesteryear. This project, conceived by Susan Cinoman, has enrolled an impressive roster of playwrights — among them, Ngozi Anyanwu, Bekah Brunstetter, Lisa D’Amour, Kirsten Greenidge, Lauren Gunderson, Theresa Rebeck, Sarah Ruhl and Caridad Svich — to create monologues about periods. The works, directed by Karen Carpenter (“Love, Loss, and What I Wore”), are spread over three evenings, and each has a unique cast; participants include Geneva Carr, Judy Gold, Julie Halston, Jessica Hecht, Mia Katigbak, Beth Leavel, Lauren Patten and Julie White. April 12, 19 and 26; periodpieceplay.com‘Hype Man: a break beat play’This play with music by Idris Goodwin revolves around the relationship between a white M.C. (Michael Knowlton) and his Black hype man (Kadahj Bennett). Their friendship goes from complicated to adversarial as they react differently to a case of police brutality, while their beatmaker (Rachel Cognata) is stuck in the middle. The show ran in New York in 2018, but Company One’s version, presented by the American Repertory Theater, is freshly urgent, considering the past year’s debates around policing and the appropriation of historically Black art forms. April 8-May 8; americanrepertorytheater.orgUte Lemper in “Rendezvous With Marlene.”Russ Rowland‘Ute Lemper: Rendezvous With Marlene’One night in 1988, Marlene, as in Marlene Dietrich, phoned her fellow German chanteuse Ute Lemper, then starring in a production of “Cabaret” in Paris. The two women chatted for hours. Three decades later, Lemper wrote and starred in a cabaret tribute that dives into Dietrich’s life and songs. The York Theater, which hosted the show in 2019, is presenting a virtual version that was filmed at the beloved East Village boîte Club Cumming. April 8-10; yorktheatre.org More
- in Television
ViacomCBS stock tanks, losing more than half its value in less than a week.
Shares of ViacomCBS, the media goliath led by Shari Redstone, took a nosedive this week, with the company losing more than half of its market value in just four days.The stock was as high as $100 on Monday. By the close of trading on Friday it had fallen to just over $48, a drop of more than 51 percent in less than a week.There’s no better way to say it: The company’s stock tanked.What happened? Several things all at once. First, it is worth noting that ViacomCBS had actually been on a bit of a tear up until this week’s meltdown, rising nearly tenfold in the past 12 months. About a year ago, it was trading at around $12 per share.That rally came as the company, like the rest of the media industry, had made a move toward streaming. It recently launched Paramount+ to compete against the likes of Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and others. The service tapped ViacomCBS’s vast archive of content from the CBS broadcast network, Paramount Film Studios and several cable channels, including Nickelodeon and MTV.That shift matters because ViacomCBS has been hit hard by an overall decline in cable viewership. The company’s pretax profits have fallen nearly 17 percent from two years ago, and its debt has topped more than $21 billion.But the stock rose so much that Robert M. Bakish, ViacomCBS’s chief executive, decided to take advantage of the boon by offering new shares to raise as much as $3 billion. The underwriters who managed the sale priced the offering at around $85 per share earlier this week, a discount to where it had been trading on Monday.You could say it backfired. When a company issues new stock, it normally dilutes the value of current shareholders, so some drop in price is expected. But a few days after the offering, one of Wall Street’s most influential research firms, MoffettNathanson, published a report that questioned the company’s value and downgraded the stock to a “sell.” The stock should really only be worth $55, MoffettNathanson said. That started the nosedive.“We never, ever thought we would see Viacom trading close to $100 per share,” read the report, which was written by Michael Nathanson, a co-founder of the firm. “Obviously, neither did ViacomCBS’s management,” it continued, citing the new stock offering.Streaming is still a money-losing enterprise, and that means the old line media companies must still endure more losses over more years before they can return to profitability.In the case of ViacomCBS, it seemed to hasten the cord-cutting when it signed a new licensing agreement with the NFL that will cost the company more than $2 billion a year through 2033. As part of the agreement, ViacomCBS also plans to stream the games on Paramount+, which is much cheaper than a cable bundle.As the games, considered premium programming, shift to streaming, “the industry runs the risk of both higher cord-cutting and greater viewer erosion,” Mr. Nathanson wrote.On Friday, an analyst with Wells Fargo also downgraded the stock, slashing the bank’s price target to $59.But the market decided it wasn’t even worth that much. It closed on Friday barely a quarter above 48 bucks. More
- in Music
Olivia Rodrigo's Hit 'Drivers License' Has the Best Part of a Song
Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThis episode contains strong language.Wesley has made his pick for song of the year: “Drivers License” by Olivia Rodrigo. This record-breaking track makes him nostalgic for his favorite part of a song — the bridge.Bridges used to be a core feature of popular music, but they’ve become an endangered species, right next to the sitcom laugh track.With today’s pop songs increasingly devoid of bridges, how do we form emotional, heart-swelling connections to pop songs? For Jenna, the answer lies in the earthquake that hit the world in 2018: TikTok.Today, we listen back to iconic bridges and look ahead to the new ways TikTok allows us to experience the best part of the song.On today’s episodeA bridge at its bestWesley thinks that “Drivers License,” the debut single from an 18-year-old Disney actress, will be song of the year for one key reason: It’s got a bridge!“What I love about some bridges is you are dropped into the middle of a totally different song,” Wesley said. “And the bridge on ‘Drivers License’ basically does that.”The bridge begins around the two-and-a-half-minute mark, when Olivia Rodrigo starts belting, “Red lights / stop signs / I still see your face in the white cars.”Writing songs for TikTok-ificationIn an episode of “Diary of a Song,” Olivia Rodrigo told the culture reporter Joe Coscarelli that she wrote “Drivers License” with TikTok in mind. Her vision has held up, as swarms of TikTokers have captured the song’s transition into the bridge. “They’re really just playing into the cathartic release that the bridge offers,” Jenna said. “Like, here are the contents of my heart emptied out.”
@spoiledmel can this be a trend? 😳 ##oliviarodrigo ##driverslicense ##fyp @livbedumb stream drivers license!!!! ♬ drivers license – Olivia Rodrigo Jenna discussed a few other song-based TikTok challenges that have gone viral, including “Buss It” by Erica Banks, “Mood” by 24kgoldn and “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion.“I think what a lot of artists have done, and have really enjoyed doing, is seeing not just where these songs live in people’s bodies,” Jenna said, “but what their bodies do with them and what their minds do with them.” She added, “It is such a vehicle for creative expression, unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.”Jenna and Wesley’s favorite bridgesIn the episode, the co-hosts treat us to some of their most treasured bridges — like the breakdown in Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” and the well-earned apex of “I’m Your Baby Tonight” by Whitney Houston.Here’s a playlist of all the songs mentioned in this episode.Hosted by: Jenna Wortham and Wesley MorrisProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Hans BuetowEdited by: Sara SarasohnEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Editor, Newsroom Audio: Wendy DorrAssistant Managing Editor: Sam DolnickSpecial thanks: Nora Keller, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani and Desiree Ibekwe.Wesley Morris is a critic at large. He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his criticism while at the Boston Globe. He has also worked at Grantland, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner. @wesley_morrisJenna Wortham is a staff writer for The Times Magazine and co-editor of the book “Black Futures” with Kimberly Drew. @jennydeluxe More
