Bidenflation has been blamed for many financial hardships in 2022. From the cost of gas and food to high heating bills, Americans have watched their savings dwindle while paying more for life’s necessities. So, is it any wonder that other businesses and industries have suffered too, especially in the entertainment world? Who has the extra money to spend on movies and other luxuries when eggs have quadrupled in price? Hollywood has lost more than $500 billion in value this year. But is Joe Biden’s budgeting carelessness to blame, or have people simply grown tired of all the wokeness forced on them?
Hollywood Suffered a Devastating Blow in 2022
Disney’s stock sank by about 45% this year, the largest fall since 1974. Netflix suffered more than a 50% loss in its stock, and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN’s parent company) saw a whopping 60% drop. “It’s been a perfect storm of bad news,” Michael Nathanson, media analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson, told the Financial Times. “I’ve been covering this sector a long time and I’ve never seen such a bad collection of data points before.”
Part of the problem, some believe, is that advertisers just aren’t promoting their products as much. While streaming services enjoyed extra business during the pandemic, when people were forced into seclusion and self-isolation, now those companies are seeing a flip in viewership. People are not as interested in home shopping, especially when they have to be concerned with paying rent or mortgage, so marketing companies are not as enthusiastic about spending thousands of dollars to promote a product or service that might not sell.
Then there are the “cord-cutters,” customers that cancel multichannel subscriptions in favor of cheaper venues, such as Roku, where viewers can watch free movies and television shows. There are also those who subscribe to a channel or network for a month, then cancel and join another, and so on and so on, trying to get the most for the least amount of money. Just how severely has media stock been impacted in 2022? Here’s a list of the top services and their losses:
Roku: 81%
Spotify: 69%
Warner Bros. Discovery: 63%
Charter Communications: 53%
Netflix: 52%
Walt Disney: 45%
Paramount Global: 42%
Comcast: 31%
Is Wokeness to Blame?
John Nolte wrote an interesting article for Breitbart in which he surmised that not only are these companies losing viewership because of their wokeness, but also because the system they have benefited from all these years has changed. He said: “About 3.5 million people are canceling their cable/satellite packages per year.” Then Nolte explained even further:
“Whether you watch the Disney Grooming Channel, MTV, CNNLOL, TBS, TCM, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, or all those other well-known networks, the providers/studios that own those networks all get a piece of your monthly bill. For example, just because you (like the rest of America) do not watch CNN, because it is still part of your cable package, you are subsidizing CNN. Every month, something like a dollar of your cable bill goes to CNN’s parent company. Same with all the other networks you don’t watch. Now do the math. Twelve dollars a month times 100 million households equals $1.2 billion for CNN per year, even though no one watches CNN.”
(Photo by: Michael Siluk/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Executive Chairman of AMC Networks James Dolan said in a November 29 memo there was the need for “a large-scale layoff as well as cuts to every operating area” in the company. “It was our belief that cord-cutting losses would be offset by gains in streaming. This has not been the case,” He explained. “We are primarily a content company and the mechanisms for monetization of content are in disarray.”
Streaming has become so popular that other media giants need to step up if they plan to support Hollywood. Inflation definitely plays a part in the industry’s profit loss, but then so does the woke agenda. Disney took on Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, over the so-called “Don’t Say Gay Bill” and didn’t come out smelling like roses. It is currently working on its diversity programs in an attempt to build better relations with customers; however, going so progressive with such a woke agenda doesn’t seem to be doing any of the media giants much good, if the stock numbers prove anything.
