Television Paramount writes off TV channel worth billions
Paramount has become the second US media group to write off billions on its TV channels in two days. The company, which owns MTV and the children's channel Nickelodeon, among others, pointed to falling profit expectations and subscriber numbers in US cable television.
09.08.2024, 00:32
SDA
The write-down amounts to just under six billion dollars. Just the day before, competitor Warner Bros. Discovery had written off 9.1 billion dollars on its TV channels such as CNN and Discovery.
US cable television was once a reliable money maker for Hollywood. However, viewers and advertising dollars are now increasingly going to streaming.
Paramount achieved an adjusted operating profit of 26 million dollars in its streaming division in the last quarter, following a loss of 424 million dollars a year earlier.
At the same time, the number of subscribers to the Paramount+ streaming service fell by 2.8 million to 68 million within three months, mainly because a bundling deal in South Korea ended.
Group revenue fell by eleven percent to 6.8 billion dollars due to the decline in the American cable TV business. Analysts had expected more. The bottom line was a loss of 5.4 billion dollars, following red figures of just under 300 million dollars in the same quarter of the previous year.
