News Bits & Rumors

[ctaulbee]

AT&T to Shut-Down the WarnerMedia FilmStruck Subscription-Streaming Service

In AT&T’s latest move to streamline WarnerMedia, Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks announced Friday that the FilmStruck indie-film streaming service will shut down next month.

The FilmStruck business will cease U.S. and international operations on Nov. 29, 2018. A Turner rep declined to comment on how many employees will be affected by the closure, or provide info on how many employees work on FilmStruck.

In a statement, Turner and WB Digital Networks said, “We’re incredibly proud of the creativity and innovations produced by the talented and dedicated teams who worked on FilmStruck over the past two years. While FilmStruck has a very loyal fanbase, it remains largely a niche service. We plan to take key learnings from FilmStruck to help shape future business decisions in the direct-to-consumer space and redirect this investment back into our collective portfolios.”

The shutdown of FilmStruck, which debuted in November 2016, comes after other WarnerMedia digital units have gotten the axe.

Warner Bros. Digital Networks’ DramaFever, a subscription VOD service specializing in Korean dramas, was abruptly shut down on Oct. 16. One week ago, Turner announced that it was pulling the plug on edgy digital-content and TV studio Super Deluxe.

AT&T earlier this month signaled that it would move to restructure the WarnerMedia video-streaming portfolio. As part of announcing plans for a broad subscription-streaming entertainment service anchored by HBO that would pull in content from other parts of WarnerMedia, AT&T said it would be “consolidating resources from sub-scale D2C [direct-to-consumer] efforts.”

A source familiar with AT&T’s strategy said the telco is looking to eliminate peripheral projects that aren’t major producers of revenue. “They felt Time Warner overall had too many initiatives,” the exec said. “[AT&T] have their hands full. They have no time to think about, ‘What do we do with this growth property?'”

For those who did not know, this was the Criterion Channel's exclusive streaming host platform, they have not said if they will be relocating it or just ending it for now.

[VincentLupo]

You can bet that Netflix and Amazon will be after that market. Let the bidding war begin.

[Jazzy]

[alienmem]

It's no surprise. The average Joe Popcorn doesn't like indie films. Throw them anything that is indie and they just ignore it. I've even seen people who don't watch foreign films because they're so lazy to read subtitles.

All in all there are very few people who like cinema as art. The Criterion and Indie films are for such people. So if a very small niche of people really like films then it probably won't make a profit.

All Joe Popcorn wants is some Superhero BS and he or she is fine.

If you look every single week at the US boxoffice the top 10 is all crap.


You can even see that what I said also translates to bluray/dvd covers. All we see is 99% crap movies being made. The covers might be great. The movies themselves not.

[chouette]

You can bet that Netflix and Amazon will be after that market. Let the bidding war begin.

I was thinking the same but isn't Netflix billions of dollars in debt? Is that a good strategic move for them?

[VincentLupo]

The more debt the better.  Isn't that the way it works in big business?

[ctaulbee]

Yup, big business is circular, there really is no such thing as "XYZ Co" closed so that's the end of that, the pieces just get moved around or onto new playing boards...

[chouette]

You would think that over 8 billion dollars in long-term debt is a lot of frigging money, lol

It will be interesting to see how it all pan out.