'Walking Dead' Ratings Plunge is Hurting AMC's Bottom Line
by EG
The AMC network is hoping that The Walking Dead franchise is the key to the future, but in the present, the faltering series is having a negative impact on advertising revenues. It doesn't help that another one of the network's hits, Better Call Saul, is behind schedule in starting its new season. Read on for details.
AMC Networks, the cable networks company that operates AMC, IFC, WE tv, BBC America and SundanceTV, on Thursday surprised Wall Street with slightly higher third-quarter earnings that exceeded analysts' estimates. But its U.S. advertising revenue fell 2.6 percent amid lower ratings and a lack of new episodes of original series Better Call Saul, which AMC had aired in the year-ago period.
On an earnings call, Sapan said the company's focus on streaming services with "specific, targeted" offerings zooming in on appealing genres differs from industry giants. he said the company has been looking to position itself to do well in the age of cord-cutting and the streaming wars.
In that context, he also shared that AMC Networks won't license the recently unveiled third series in the Walking Dead franchise. "Today we are in a position to optimize our content by using it in different ways without a one-size-fits-all approach," he said, "strategically windowing each series." Said Sapan: "The monetization plan for the new upcoming third series of the Walking Dead universe is this: we did a deal earlier this month with Amazon to distribute that series internationally outside of territories where our AMC global channels will air it. However, in the U.S., we are holding back rights that we have traditionally sold to third parties. So domestically we will not sell the SVOD rights to this third Walking Dead series, but rather the series will be used to fuel our own platforms, both streaming, as well as linear as we window it and take full advantage of the opportunities that it presents to us."
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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