Blogs And Ends: The When Did I Start Running a Business News Blog Edition?
Okay too many things to get cranked out too fast. So I’m doing an anthology post.
FIRST
Iger is thinking about selling Hulu
On the face of it, this is nuts.
Hulu is one of Disney’s few real money makers. Its annual gross revenue is $9.6 Billion.
However, it’s less crazy when you dig into to it.
Currently one third of that gross revenue has to go to Universal. Here’s a quick refresher on the background.
Hulu started as an equal partnership between Disney, Universal and FOX. But when Disney bought out FOX, Mickey the Great and Terrible acquired a 2/3’s majority in Hulu. That was not what Universal had signed up for, rather than go to war with Comcast/Universal Iger agreed to buy out their remaining stake in Hulu in 2024 for the low, low price of $27.5 billion.
Which Disney simply does not have now.
This was before the plague hit town and Iger was convinced that Disney+ was going to be making $20 Billion a year like Netflix. As WDWPro pointed out, Disney’s quarterly losses on Disney+ are the equivalent to one of their cruise liners sinking every three months.
Yeah, Hulu is in the black now but that is going to change in 2024 when Disney has to fork over $27.4 Billion to Comcast. Sure, the revenue goes up by a third but Disney can’t afford another $27.5 Billion in debt.
Especially for a streaming service that has begun to lose value as Universal pulls its content off Hulu to put on its own Peacock service. The few things that Discovery had licensed out are getting pulled too as they get transferred to whatever HBOmax is going to be renamed. Sidenote: Zaslav has come to the unsurprising conclusion that buying Sesame Street reruns wasn’t enough to make parents forget what HBO has been for 50 years now.
Bottom line: Hulu is at peak value NOW. It’s going to go downhill from here but it’s worth a lot of money that Disney could use retire some its monstrously huge debt. Instead of adding to it. It simply isn’t worth keeping even if it is making money.
NEXT
First Impressions: Hogwarts Legacy
Any kind of review of this game seems to require a ritual denunciation of J.K. Rowling.
Who am I, to break this iron clad rule?
J.K. Rowling is a completely hypocritical Mercedes Marxist. She has repeatedly undermined the universe she created just for the approval of the trained barking seals of Twitter. She retconned Dumbledore into a gay man years after the last novel was published merely because the Tumblrinas had been demanding it. She had the nerve to claim she never actually gave Hermione a race when she repeatedly described her as “pale” in her books. She has happily and vicioulsy attacked anyone on the right, again and again for the approval of the Left. She even likes to pretend she’s not all that wealthy, despite having a piece of everything the biggest franchise on the planet sells. I don’t like her but I do find it hilarious that the people who were her most devoted followers turned on her when she got too old to accept the latest version of “there are 5 lights.”
Her story of being a welfare mother is bullshit because it was her business plan, not her court of last resort. And she only got the ungodly success she did was because some nameless editor at Scholastic Books in America, changed one critical word on the title of her book from “Philosopher” to “Sorcerer.” No American child except my cousin Egbert would have bought a book named Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Luck is nothing to be proud of.
And this game is boring. It’s exactly the kind of game I don’t like to play. The kind that is actually an interactive movie. I hate those and all Darklings know it.
However, I freely and willingly admit I am absolutely not the audience for this game.
About the third time I had to ask Eldest Darkspawn why something just did what it did, I noticed her skipping frantically from one foot to another as she gazed longingly over my shoulder. I decided to just turn the game over to Eldest Darkspawn and pepper her with questions while she “played” it.
The game is gorgeous, no question about that. Warner Games always does a fantastic job with art design. It will push your PC to its limits, a 4090 card will be groaning with the effort of keeping up with Ultra settings. It is however playable on a mid tier PC. A five year old budget build might have trouble. There are reports of skipping and freeze frames. It doesn’t sound like anything unpatchable. The consoles (its native habitat) have reported no real troubles to speak of.
The settings have an aimbot function, which you will not need due to the game’s obese hit boxes. The character generator doesn’t let you build from scratch, you have to customize presets, but there are plenty to choose from. It does allows you to create a Trans character (of fucking course).
The story itself I’m reserving judgement on until I have seen more of it. There does seem to be a great deal of respect for Wizarding World lore. During the introduction a dragon attacks and eats half of a flying coach being drawn by invisible thestrals, after the attack they become visible to the rider because he has now seen death.
Respect for the lore was the big selling point of this game. As well as an immersive experience at Hogwarts.
I will grant there is something to be said for a slow game, this one definitely is. The tutorial and first act takes better than two hours.
I’ll say this much for Hogwarts Legacy, it’s probably the best game I’ve ever watched.
LAST
I had literally never heard of Sam Smith until last week.
It turns out he’s been around for a while and at first was trying to get by on what turns out to be considerable talent.
Seriously, give it a quick listen.
Regardless, he’s given that up to be The Guy Who Drank Pee. Here is “Morgan Freeman’s” hot take.
Okay, I’m done here.
