No, Richard Greenfield is not headed to Disney to become a special assistant to Bob Iger.

But the high-profile technology-media-telecom (TMT) analyst is leaving equity research company BTIG Research, along with fellow analysts Walter Piecyk and Brandon Ross to form a new, unnamed TMT venture.

The news was announced earlier this afternoon by BTIG, which said it will partner with the new company.

“We are excited to work with Rich, Walt and Brandon as their business takes shape in the coming weeks. Their team will produce innovative independent investment research and create a new media company that is expected to fully assess the disruptive forces across the technology, media and telecommunications industries,” said Steven Starker, co-founder of BTIG.

According to the announcement, the new company will "offer inventive ways of accessing intriguing TMT portfolio companies, both public and private, and will offer thematic research.”

BTIG said it plans to collaborate with the new firm on a variety of important strategic initiatives.

“This new venture will enable Rich, Walt and Brandon to be even more entrepreneurial, an attribute which has driven the success of BTIG since inception,” said Scott Kovalik, co-founder and CEO of BTIG. “Rich, Walt and Brandon have always pushed to provide unique and thematic views; while we will miss having them on our platform, we are happy to be aligning with their new efforts.”

On LinkedIn, connections to Greenfield were messaged that they should congratulate him on his new position, “TBD,” at “TBD.”

“We are looking forward to this next chapter and appreciate the support we have received from the BTIG leadership team and our BTIG family,” Greenfield said. “We are proud to have initiated TMT coverage at the firm nearly a decade ago, and we continue to believe in the quality of its research, products and the value it delivers to clients.”

Greenfield has achieved somewhat of a celebrity presence among TMT analysts, notably sparring at times with Disney, a company he has covered for years.

In 2016, he was the subject of a Michael Wolff takedown in The Hollywood Reporter headlined, “Michael Wolff on Digital Media's Favorite Analyst: Often Quoted ... and Often Wrong.”

While severe fourth-quarter losses for DirecTV Now may have led some to believe that the once fast-growing virtual pay TV sector was in its fifteenth minute of fame, these services now control an ever-larger marketshare of U.S. pay TV homes.

According to BTIG Research, there were around 7.7 million subscribers to Sling TV, DirecTV Now, Hulu+ Live TV, Sony PlayStation Vue, YouTube TV, fuboTV and other live-streamed pay TV bundles at the end of 2018.

With linear pay TV subscriptions declining to 79.6 million at the end of Q4, vMVPDs controlled nearly 10% of the U.S. pay TV market.

At the end of 2017, BTIG estimated that there were around 4.7 million vMVPD subscriptions in the U.S. accounting for only around 5% of the domestic pay TV market.

Certainly, the sector ended 2018 on a downer note, with AT&T’s DirecTV Now reporting the loss of 267,000 users in the fourth quarter—a loss the company said that stemmed from having around 500,000 users end steep promotional discounts last year.

So other than DirecTV Now’s promo hangover, how is the vMPVD market really doing? Since there’s still so little in the way of self-disclosed subscriber data, it’s kind of tough to really say definitely.

The only other vMVPD besides DirecTV Now to publicly report subscriber data is Dish Network’s Sling TV, which said it grew by 208,000 subscribers in 2018. Since Dish didn’t start breaking out Sling TV numbers until the beginning of 2018, we have only the guesses of analysts to suggest that’s a deceleration of growth.

Leichtman Research, for instance, estimated that Sling TV grew by around 700,000 users in 2017.

Related: Sling TV Adds 50K Subscribers in Q4

How about the rest of the sector? From Hulu to YouTube TV to Sony Vue to fuboTV, none of the other major vMPVD services has announced a subscriber count recently.

For its part, BTIG estimates that Hulu+ Live TV had around 1.8 million customers at the end of Q4—a benchmark that would surpass the 1.59 million users DirecTV had when it stumbled into the New Year.

Research company The Diffusion Group also believes Hulu has surpassed DirecTV in subscribers.

(Our question: While Hulu recently boasted the addition of 8 million users across its streaming platforms, it notably did not toot its horn about its vMVPD being in second place. Wouldn’t that be something they’d brag about?)

In any event, outside of DirecTV Now, the widely unprofitable vMPVD sector does appear to be still growing in market share, and dragging down ARPU as it does.

At Dish, for example, pay TV average revenue per user (ARPU) dropped from $86.43 in 2017 to $85.46 last year. In 2016, the operator’s pay TV ARPU was $88.66.

Meanwhile, one analyst estimated last year that YouTube TV was losing around $60 million a year for Google.

Related: Google’s Pichai: YouTube TV is ‘an Exciting Product’

The U.S. vMVPD market is so competitive and low-margin right now, that David Gandler, CEO of fuboTV, predicted that “one or two” competitors could hang it up this year.

However, with operators convinced that the financial fortunes of these platforms will improve dramatically once they get to scale and get supported by advanced advertising, none of them seems close to calling it quits.

For example, Google CEO Sundar Pichai called out YouTube TV as an “exciting product” during the company’s Q4 earnings call earlier this month.

fuboTV—which operates more advantageously under the tough market conditions as a well-funded start-up—just announced a major carriage deal with Viacom.

Meanwhile, PlayStation Vue—which has quietly crept along since the vMVPD category was first created back in 2015—doesn’t appear set to throw in the towel.

With Sony on the cusp of releasing the fifth generation of its PlayStation gaming console, the company appears to be beefing up staff for its vMVPD at its Los Angeles operational headquarters. 

About one year after abandoning its effort to become the uber-dominant distributor in the country when it walked away from its $67 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable, Comcast has turned its attention to programming, with its NBCUniversal unit's $3.8 billion deal to buy DreamWorks Animation, a move that will help boost its content library while potentially seeding its theme park business with new characters to build attractions around.

In DreamWorks Animation, NBCUniversal gets access to a film library that includes Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon, as well as a growing TV production arm that has churned out programming like Dawn of the Croods, Turbo and more for Netflix and other distributors. In NBCU, DreamWorks Animation finally gets the deep-pocketed parent that can help it produce more films and, with its cable and broadcast networks, provide another outlet for content.

Reaction to the deal was mixed. DreamWorks stock soared 24% (up $7.75 each) on April 28 to $39.95 per share, while Comcast shares fell 15 cents each (down 0.24%) to $61.15 per share.

Some analysts criticized the deal as being too pricey – it represents a 50% premium to DreamWorks’s stock price before rumors of a sale began to surface. Others said the benefits included additional theme park revenue from high-profile attractions and potential cost-savings on the animation side. NBCUniversal’s animation arm – Illumination Entertainment, under which DreamWorks would fall after the deal closed – farms out production of most of its animated movies to Japanese companies for a third of the price that DreamWorks pays.

“[T]o us, this deal makes a lot of sense, less because of the added animation heft to Illumination Entertainment (the studio that created The Minions) but more for what it could mean for the Universal Theme Parks,” Telsey Advisory Group media analyst Tom Eagan wrote in a note to clients. “It's easy to imagine a Shrek, Kung Fu Panda or Madagascar ride at the Universal parks."

BTIG Research media analyst Rich Greenfield took another approach, arguing in a blog post that DreamWorks has been on the block for at least three years, hasn’t traded above $40 per share since 2010 (the Comcast deal values the shares at $42 each) and has no other potential bidders besides NBCU.

“While we believe Comcast acquiring DWA is a mistake, [Comcast chairman and CEO] Brian Roberts clearly believes the acquisition is a good use of Comcast’s capital,” Greenfield wrote.

The analyst added that what could be attractive to Comcast is DreamWorks's 51% stake in Awesomeness TV, but said he believes that is overvalued, too – Verizon bought a 24.5% stake in the short-form video company earlier last month for about $159 million. And Verizon plans to develop content with AwesomenessTV for its go90 mobile video service, a potential Comcast competitor.

“DreamWorks will help us grow our film, television, theme parks and consumer products businesses for years to come,” NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke said in a statement. “… The prospects for our future together are tremendous.”

DreamWorks will be headed by Illumination Entertainment CEO Christopher Meledandri, wile current CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg will become chairman of a new digital arm – DreamWorks New Media, comprisig the company’s ownership interests in Awesomeness TV and NOVA. Katzenberg will also serve as a consultant to NBCUniversal.