From 1988 to the present, the main revenue from Daenerys' TV business has always come from a series of reality shows called "Who Will Be a Millionaire".
Over the past five years, these reality shows have experienced a significant decline in popularity.
Daenerys TV Company has accumulated enough experience in the field of reality shows, and coupled with many classic ideas in Simon's mind, it stands to reason that the TV department can actually continue to innovate.
Simon did not do this.
Mainly waiting for Daenerys Entertainment to get its own PBS network.
Moreover, even if they have run out of stamina, the profits from these reality shows are still very generous, so there is no need to rush to eliminate yourself.
On the other hand, Daenerys TV has also done very well in TV series in recent years. Just one "Seinfeld" is enough for the TV department to last for many years.
This sitcom, which has become increasingly popular in the past two years, once had a status no less important than "Friends" in the history of North American television.
Even after the first round of broadcasts is completed, Daenerys TV will be able to continue to earn very considerable profits relying on the syndication rights of the TV series. Just like "Friends" in memory, in the original time and space, in order to retain the broadcast rights of "Friends", Netflix even had to pay a huge copyright fee of US$100 million a year.
After the merger with MCA, Daenerys TV’s operational focus began to shift toward cable television networks.
Relying on the two trump cards of the housewives reality show series and "Desperate Housewives", the USA Television Network, jointly owned by Daenerys Entertainment and Paramount Communications, has become one of the highest-rated basic cable networks in North America and has firmly occupied the professional market. Location of female channel.
Fashion TV, which was launched at the beginning of the year, although it does not have the momentum of Daenerys's rapid rise through several phenomenal reality shows, nor does it have the scale of the USA TV network, its development momentum has been very stable since its launch, and it basically has a limited base in North America. Television is firmly established.
After the rise of the cable TV industry, many cable TV stations were born in North America every year, while a large number of cable TV stations also died.
Fashion TV's ability to gain a foothold across the country is definitely not as easy as it seems on the surface.
After spending two days over the weekend carefully sorting out the TV business of Daenerys Entertainment, Simon flew back to the West Coast on Sunday afternoon, but his destination was San Francisco.
The delay until now is mainly to improve its own email system, which is a great tool for the portal website to attract fixed customer groups.
The reason why Microsoft, which has obtained the authorization for commercial operation of e-mail technology, has not yet launched the MSN portal that is under consideration is also to improve the layout of e-mail and other technologies. As a competitor in this field, although Igret has granted technology authorization to the two companies, it will not provide any more support.
Moreover, AOL has a big advantage over Microsoft.
The company itself has a huge user base of tens of millions, which can be directly converted into email accounts. The AOL team even skipped the activation step and automatically opened AOL emails by default.
Of course, the two companies that are about to launch the portal business also need to face another very important issue, how to win customers from Igret, who controls the IE browser software, an important Internet portal.
In this regard, AOL also has certain advantages.
After revamping its own network login software, in addition to logging into the World Wide Web, this software has also been expanded into a mini portal interface, which can be used to open the IE browser and jump to the AOL portal by clicking on the information content on the interface. .
Obviously, this kind of mini-portal interface is obviously suspicious of borderline browser software.
This is actually true.
If Igret and AOL were not controlled by a parent company, and it was just this portal interface, it might trigger a war of infringement lawsuits.
Simon personally stepped in to coordinate the matter.
The teams of the two companies finally reached an agreement after repeated negotiations.
AOL can continue to promote this interface, but this interface must not directly use the browser to display content, and the link must jump to the IE browser software. At the same time, 50% of the recommended information on the mini interface must come from the Igret portal.
Finally, when it comes to related patents, AOL must regularly pay Igret's expensive patent fees.
Using a dual-class share structure, Simon firmly controls AOL and Eagle.
The results of the negotiations between the two teams are, to a large extent, a reflection of Simon's personal will.
AOL will definitely not develop into an Internet media company in the original time and space. Instead, it will firmly lock in its position as an Internet service provider and develop towards a broader goal of a comprehensive telecommunications operator. This is what Simon has planned for a long time ago. This company sets the tone.
Now, the reason why this company is allowed to develop portal business is mainly to ride on the wave of new technology.
In the increasingly turbulent Internet bubble, having a portal business is just a gimmick, which is enough to increase AOL's stock price by a large margin.
Not only that, AOL's portal business can also share the potential monopoly pressure of Ygriet Portal.
Therefore, AOL will gradually open most of the content-related businesses involved in the Igret portal. AOL will not develop the core online payment system, search engine system, social network system and other tools independently. Instead, it plans to directly use Igret's on-site products to embed them into its own site. This is also the most important part of the cooperation agreement reached between the two parties. terms.
Therefore, for Simon, a latecomer, AOL's portal is basically an empty shell without its own core product.
Of course, the capital market does not see it that way.
In the eyes of many investors in the new technology field, this is already a potential development trend in the media industry, from print media to television media to online media. Therefore, the concept of Internet media is more sought after by the capital market than the concept of technology.
AOL was able to find a new way to break the content monopoly of Igret, even if there is a boss behind the two companies, this is a very rare thing.
As a result, on Monday, with the release of the AOL portal, AOL's stock price rose rapidly. As of the afternoon close on the East Coast, the single-day increase reached 2.9%. The market value also hit a new high, reaching $37.1 billion. The market value increased throughout the day. $1.056 billion.
According to Westeros' 66.1% shareholding ratio in AOL, after the market closed that day, a Goldman Sachs analyst posted a chart of AOL's stock price on his Facebook page, along with the sentence "Westeros" Day: Oh, made another $698 million'.
It was originally an inconspicuous one among many similar sentiments on the Internet platform.
However, due to the intentional or unintentional operation of the Facebook operations team, this news was directly labeled as a hot topic.
Subsequently, a retweet and comment by Sandra Bullock triggered a wider discussion.
The actress, who everyone knows is Simon's personal friend, retweeted it with a face-covering, laughing and crying emoji: 'Forget it, it will take me 175 years to earn so much.'
Immediately a series of queues were triggered.
Both celebrity certified users and ordinary users have joined the discussion.
'Forget it, it will take me 3826 years to earn this much. '
'Forget it, it will take me 861 years to earn this much. '
'Forget it, it will take me 99 years to earn this much. '
'Forget it, it will take me 12,663 years to earn so much. '
'Forget it, it will take me 26,453 years to earn this much. '
'Forget it... '
'… '
In the following days, the discussion quickly spread from the Internet platform to traditional media. Whether it was serious financial newspapers or humorous talk shows, they were all discussing how long it would take to earn $698 million.
The result is that everyone is a little sad.
Feeling of powerlessness.
It’s almost everyone’s most real feeling.
If it had been anyone else, it might have triggered a widespread controversy about the gap between rich and poor.
However, in the eyes of many people, Simon is already a complete anomaly, completely unable to be inferred using common sense.
If the skyrocketing net worth belongs to a group, such as Wall Street bankers or Silicon Valley upstarts, perhaps tax adjustments can be used to 'rob the rich and give to the poor'.
Now, this is just one person.
It is impossible for the federal government to introduce restrictions on one person too directly.
After years of accumulation, not only his personal wealth, Simon Westeros also has considerable influence in federal politics, which can be seen from the last visit of the new president to Silicon Valley. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible for this young man to be someone who can be manipulated by others.
Therefore, some media can only call on a certain guy to use more funds for charity and give back to the society.
The Simon & Janet Westeros Foundation has been very vigorous in promoting charity in recent years. Compared with many wealthy people who hurriedly start charity plans to maintain their reputation after being targeted by the media, the Westeros couple is definitely worthy of their reputation. Called generous, this aspect is really beyond reproach.
The final result of this small public opinion storm is still just to attract more capital to the new technology field.
This side of Hollywood.
Another week of summer vacation has passed quickly.
From May 21st to May 27th, this week’s most blockbuster Sylvester Stallone’s new film “Jumping Hill” disappointed the producer Columbia Pictures at the box office in its first week. Compared with the $35 million to $40 million, According to box office expectations for the first week, in fact, it only took in US$25.02 million in the first seven days.
Taking into account "Superman" on June 4, even if the decline in the next week can be maintained within a relatively good range, the total North American box office of "Jumanji" will probably only reach between 70 million and 80 million US dollars. .
However, the production cost of this blockbuster alone reached 70 million US dollars.
Colombia is relatively stingy in publicity, but it also invested 20 million.
With a total production and distribution cost of US$90 million, it will require a global US$250 million to US$300 million to recoup the initial investment through box office.
The North American box office is only expected to be US$70-80 million, and it is unlikely that the global box office of "The Last Stand" will reach US$250 million. You know, in the past, Sylvester Stallone might still have strong box office appeal in overseas markets, but now, especially this summer, the competitiveness of "Superman" is even stronger, not just in North America, but also in North America. This superhero blockbuster will also inevitably squeeze the overseas survival space of "Jumanji".
Although it is not difficult to recover costs through omni-channel operations, for Colombia, this project is basically in vain.
Relatively speaking, Sylvester Stallone comfortably received a huge salary of US$15 million, making him the biggest winner of this project.
Of course, whether it is in this time and space or in Simon's memory, Stallone's popularity was greatly reduced after "The End of the Hill", and he never made any heavyweight movies until many years later when he gathered a group of old men to create the "Suicide Squad" series. , and finally regained some vitality.
After "The Last Day", the comedy movie "Made in America" starring Whoopi Goldberg took second place on this week's box office list, with a box office of 14.1 million in its first seven days.
"Made in America" is far from comparable to last year's "Sisters" in terms of both word-of-mouth and box office. The total box office in North America is expected to be between US$40 million and US$50 million.
In addition to the two new films, Simon is more concerned about "The Legend of Bruce Lee" released by New World Pictures on May 14.
This biographical film, which cost US$14 million to produce, earned US$12.96 million in its first week. The box office dropped 37% in the second week, which started on May 21, and took in another US$8.12 million. The total box office in two weeks was US$21.08 million. The total box office is expected to be around US$35 million, and the cost can be roughly recovered by just releasing it in North America.
Moreover, this movie was actually developed in conjunction with the fighting game of the same name.
The two series of works also launched promotion at the same time.
At the same time as it was released on May 14, the fighting game of the same name "The Legend of Bruce Lee" on the Nintendo platform was also officially launched in North America and Asia at the same time. Relying on Bruce Lee's widespread popularity in North America and Asia, the game cartridge sales reached 260,000 boxes in the first week, and the total is expected to Sales volume can reach 1.5 million, and sales are approximately US$90 million.
Obviously, Daenerys Entertainment has made much more profit from the game of the same name than from the movie project.
On May 28, a new week, North American theaters once again had two heavyweight films opening, namely "Super Mario Bros." produced by Disney and adapted from Nintendo's phenomenal video game, and another film produced by an independent animation company. "Fairytale Ending" developed by the company's Filmation studio.
The story of "Super Mario Bros." needs no introduction.
However, the high production cost of US$48 million was a huge pitfall in Simon's eyes, because he didn't have much information about the movie in his memory.
Another one, "Fairytale Ending", is actually quite interesting.
This is an animated film about the follow-up of Snow White. The plot is about the story of the prince and the princess living together.
"Fairy Tale Ending" has actually been developed in 1990. It was originally intended to be called "Snow White: Fairy Tale Ending", but of course Disney did not agree, thinking that it might be misunderstood as a sequel to Disney's classic animation "Snow White", so After more than two years of litigation with Filmation Studio, the final result was that the film was renamed "Fairytale Ending" and has not been released until now.
The two films that were almost destined to hit the streets did not attract much attention from Simon. What attracted Simon's attention this weekend was that Canada's Seagram Group quietly launched a trial acquisition of Paramount Communications.