The year in film and television: 2016 edition

The Business

KCRW

Tv & Film

4.6 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Banter buddies Matthew Belloni of The Hollywood Reporter and Michael Schneider of IndieWire and Variety join Kim Masters to mega-banter the year that was 2016. There were major mergers in play while others went away, Disney ruled the box office, Megyn Kelly took down Roger Ailes, and traditional TV ratings declined while thanks to Netflix, the number of shows continued to rise.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.
0:09.8	The AT&T Time Warner merger.
0:12.3	The end of Roger Ailes.
0:13.8	Disney wins movies.
0:15.3	Netflix aims for world domination.
0:17.6	It's a mega news banter year in review.
0:20.0	Stick around.
0:20.7	It's the business from KCRW.
0:26.5	I am here with my regular banter partners, Matt Bellany of the Hollywood Reporter and Michael
0:31.2	Schneider of Indywire and Variety. A lot of ground to cover, guys. So much happened this year. So much may yet happen with the little teeny bit that's left. Let's start with murder activity because this industry is going through big changes. As both of you know, there's consolidation underway. And in some cases, there was maybe going to be consolidation. I'm talking about CBS and Viacom, a deal that is not going to happen. But we'll start with AT&T, Time Warner. We don't quite know if that deal is happening yet, but certainly it looks
0:59.8	like it will, and that is a huge change. Yeah, I think ultimately it will happen in 2017, and if so,
1:06.7	this would be an $85 billion merger of AT&T, one of the big telecom companies, and Time Warner, perhaps the most prolific of the pure content companies with HBO, Warner Brothers, the Turner Networks.
1:20.7	This gives an enormous amount of power to the AT&T shareholders, but as AT&T argued in front of Congress, they feel they need this power in order
1:30.0	to go up against the even bigger powers of the tech community. And of course, this kind of thing
1:34.0	puts a shiver through anybody who's not gigantic. Yeah, I mean, it one-ups this whole race to get big.
1:41.0	And the question is, how is that going to play out in the rest of the industry?
1:45.0	You've already seen this year, Stars and Lionsgate agreed to merge. That's a large television
1:50.6	company merging with, you know, perhaps the largest mini independent studio to better compete with
1:56.0	the majors. You've seen a lot of activity in the China front where these Chinese companies
2:00.7	like Wanda are coming in to try to put together a bunch of assets like legendary pictures and Dick Clark Productions to create its own big company.
2:09.2	You would have seen it with CBS and Viacom, which many believe would be merged back together.
2:13.3	They were once. The Redstone family has declared that they're not going to pursue that.
	...

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