Hollywood studios lost over $500 billion in market value in 2022, with $120 billion of losses coming from Disney alone.
The American movie industry, which once dominated the globe, is facing tough times ahead.
Woke politics in entertainment and artistic interference from foreign regimes like communist China have taken a toll on viewership, creativity, and finances.
Entertainment losses last year surpassed those in other sectors, such as banking, which saw a 14.5 percent drop, and telecommunications, which witnessed an 11.2 percent decline in revenue.
Major studios, streaming services, cable providers, broadcasters, and other media groups, lost a combined $542 billion in market value in 2022.
Economic Uncertainty Hits Entertainment Subscription Services
Many investors have pulled out of the once booming streaming service market, as increasing competition and rising costs, combined with inflation taking a toll on consumer spending, have led to a slowdown in advertising and increasing subscriber cancellations.High inflation and economic uncertainty have taken a toll on American household budgets, with the price of essential items such as food and energy increasing.
Consumers historically cut down spending in worsening economic times on non-essential items such as movie theaters, cable and streaming service subscriptions, music concerts, and album purchases.
Streaming companies had seen a gain in subscribers with the onset of the pandemic, as lockdown restrictions boosted audiences, with shares in the sector witnessing a two-year boom in gains.
But Netflix saw an unprecedented two consecutive quarters of subscriber losses this year, which led the company to slash its workforce, with its stock falling down 52 percent by December, reported the Financial Times.
Legacy Movie, TV Studios Losses
Legacy entertainment companies have faced the worst losses in 2022.At the same time, Paramount Global saw its stock value drop 42 percent, while Warner Brothers Discovery witnessed its shares tumble 62 percent.
Warner Brothers Discovery is in the process of integrating Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia into a single conglomerate at one of the worse times in the industry’s history, as it reportedly faces as much as $5.3 billion in restructuring and other costs related to the massive merger.
Meanwhile, shares of the Walt Disney Company have fared quite badly across the board, with the value of the once mighty brand tumbling 45 percent last year in its worse stock performance since 1974.
Investors say the entertainment giant is facing weak numbers for the foreseeable future, which saw the firing of CEO Bob Chapek last year along with the return of its former CEO, Bob Iger.
Traditional broadcasters like Comcast, the parent of NBC, MSNBC, and Universal, saw its shares fall down 31 percent for the year, while Charter Communications tumbled 53 percent as customers increasingly cut their cable content.
Increasingly “woke” content is also affecting many viewers’ willingness to watch TV.
The Oscars, which is broadcast on ABC, saw only 15 million viewers in 2022, a fall from when 46.33 million people tuned in back in 2014, according to viewer data.
It was a modest improvement from the year before when just 10 million watched.
At the same time, films like “Top Gun: Maverick”, grossed $718 million at the U.S. box office alone, earning $770 million worldwide, making it the most successful release of the year.
It appears that patriotic and heartwarming films are still popular with most American audiences.
