By Cynthia Littleton
Hot August Nights withdraws registrations of some participants after viral incident
It may not have been as big as the moon landing, the finale of “MASH” or the conclusion of Season 1 of “Survivor,” but it was an incredibly important week for television.
The parade of second-quarter earnings reports for major showbiz conglomerates has made it crystal clear that there is no escaping the £800 gorilla on Big Media’s balance sheets. It has been a long time since the valuations long applied to old-school cable channels had to be slashed by double digits.
And that’s what happened this week when Warner Bros. Discovery took an eye-watering $9.1 billion write-down on the valuation of its core cluster of ad-supported channels (think TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Discovery, Animal Planet, Food Network). Paramount Global did the same a day later, shaving $6 billion off the valuation of its MTV group channels (think MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Paramount Network). AMC Networks closed out the week on Friday by taking a $97 million write-down to reflect the decline in revenue from BBC America and its international cable channels.
