MGM Plus will bring back its sci-fi/horror series From for a third season, the network announced. 

The series will continue to follow the mystery of a nightmarish town that traps all those who enter, according to the premium service. The 10-episode third season is expected to return in 2024. 

“The first two seasons of From captivated critics and terrified and engaged fans, who have formed a thriving online community that is trying to put the pieces together week by week as the secrets of the nightmarish town – and possibly beyond – are slowly revealed,” MGM Plus Head Michael Wrights said in a statement. "We can’t wait for fans to see the surprises ahead in season three, which promises more scares and mysteries but also more answers.”

From stars Harold Perrineau as well as Catalina Sandino Moreno, Eion Bailey, Hannah Cheramy, Simon Webster, Ricky He and Chloe Van Landschoot. 

Also: ‘From’ Producers Promise More Frights  

The series is executive produced by Jeff Pinkner, John Griffin, Jack Bender, Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec, Scott Rosenberg Joe Russo. Mike Larocca and Lindsay Dunn.

Chris Ottinger didn’t exactly go all out on a media blitz in May after he was given the distribution reins for Amazon and MGM’s combined libraries. 

But Next TV was more than happy to host the longtime MGM distribution executive Tuesday afternoon at the Next TV Summit, part of Future’s two-day L.A. TV Week event, held at the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. The events continued Tuesday with the Advanced Advertising Summit and 40 Under 40 Awards.

Interviewed by The Ankler's Elaine Low, Ottinger gave us a unique perspective on how the occupied southern ranks of the conquered operate under the rule of their strange northern technology overlords.  

The values differ profoundly, but the good news is that basic content distribution instincts and skills are still useful to these bloodless, binary benefactors of the digital future. 

For now. 

Here are excerpts from the discussion between Ottinger and Low. 

Elaine Low: Chris, tell us how it's all been going for you.

Chris Ottinger: Sure. It's been a crazy year and a half. We closed the merger with Amazon, I think it was in March of last year. And, uh, in that time we’ve become ‘Amazonian,’ which is saying a lot more than it says in just those words. It’s a wildly different corporate culture than what we were exposed to in any of our prior roles at studios. I've worked at MGM, I've worked at Fox, I worked at CBS, I worked at Paramount. Nothing was remotely similar to working at Amazon. Really, really different company.

EL: Has anything surprised you? I wonder, being under the Amazon Studios umbrella now, culturally, how does it vary in a legacy story space like MGM? 

CO: Yeah, I think the biggest kind — and I’m sure everyone here will understand when I say the biggest changes with — you know, Amazon is a giant global, I think the biggest employer in the world. It is a tech-driven company, that it comes out of Seattle, but it comes out of Silicon Valley culture. And that culture is just a lot different. A lot of the things that we assumed coming out of the studio space, everything was driven by our catalog and our legacy. At Amazon, it's really driven by an obsession with our customers. So it’s really how do we, as quickly as possible, drive value for customers inside our service? It’s a really different viewpoint.

EL: Tell us a little bit about your work at Amazon MGM Studios distribution, now that it’s not just distribution of the more than 4,000 film titles and 17,000 TV episodes under the MGM catalog, but now also inclusive of Amazon Originals — which, as I understand it, are now able to be licensed to third-party platforms?

CO: Absolutely. So it has been, it’s a change, I think, in the business. One of the main reasons that Amazon bought MGM was to get distribution. We didn't understand this when we were being purchased, but it's become clear on the other side of the deal. Our work in the last six to nine months has really been driven about, how do we bring Amazon original programming out into the third-party distribution environment? And that’s been a giant challenge. They always had their fingers in it. If you go back and look at some of the decisions they made, they’ve been touching distribution, but the mandate going forward is very much to build a proper distribution business around all of the Amazon original content. And it’s a shocking amount of content. I had no idea the catalog was as big as it is.

EL: Tell me about any other kind of, are there any other interesting business experiments that you’re looking at, especially now that you’re looking at a screening environment? I know we talked a little bit before this panel about, uh, sort of the test and learn environment and I’m sure everyone would want to hear more about that.

CO: Sure. You know, one of the key things that Amazon is really into is this concept of test and learn. And we love two-way doors, and test and learn is part of that same concept. So we’ll do stuff where we know that if it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake and we can just move on. We’re not going to have committed the company in a way that there could be a lasting challenge. So most recently, we had two really, I think, interesting examples. One was Air. 

EL: I think I find the valuation question so interesting. Because especially when you see all these other streaming services out there that are starting to cull content, a lot of that based on the valuation and how they’re performing. So when you are having conversations with your peers, what is the vibe right now? 

CO: I think it’s the Wild West, I really do. I think everybody is interested. The level of interest from clients in our original product was incredibly high and that was super encouraging. But we’ve got to expect that these models have [to be] tested and we just don’t know, right? We’re looking for a breakout story. What's that story that performs really well? I think there’s a really positive view of the future of, you know, what kind of product can work and different launching methodologies. My real hope and my expectation is that things like Air, this hybrid model where we’re doing a theatrical release, tells the consumer that this is a real movie. It's not a direct-to-service title, and there's real long-term value with that. That's really the model that I'm most hopeful about. But it is a really big market. There’s so many buyers with so many different interests. Everything will find its home and will find its place. But what I’d love to see is real success with some direct-to-service originals.

EL: I think business model-wise we're in for an interesting couple of years.

CO: Yeah. We’re not gonna know the answers. Maybe this time next year, we’ll have a good idea of what it all means, but we’re not gonna know for a little while.

Pioneering reality TV producer Mark Burnett has become the latest MGM executive to depart following Amazon's $8.45 billion purchase of the studio earlier this year. 

Burnett is known for creating influential non-scripted TV hits including Survivor, The Apprentice and Shark Tank, among many others. 

“After months of collaborative transition efforts, we have thoughtfully reorganized our teams so that they all have the opportunity to prosper under the leadership of Mike Hopkins, Jennifer Salke and Christopher Brearton,” Burnett wrote in a memo to Amazon staff Monday. “In these days of media layoffs I am proud to say that everyone in the TV division has been offered a way to continue to contribute. No one was left behind.”

Also read: Amazon Just Paid a 40% Premium to Buy MGM — What’s It Really Getting?

Burnett, who said he expects to return to a hands-on creative producing role, follows film executive Mike De Luca, who departed MGM earlier. 

Burnett joined MGM in 2014, when the studio purchased his One Three Media and LightWorkers Media companies. He became president of MGM Television and Digital Group in December 2015 and moved up to chairman of the studio’s Worldwide Television Group three years later. 

He had a significant equity stake in MGM at the time of Amazon’s purchase. ▪️

Epix, the commercial-free subscription service acquired by Amazon when it bought MGM for $8.45 billion, is getting a new name, but not a very original one.

Starting January 15, 2023, the service will be called MGM Plus, falling into line with Disney Plus, Discovery Plus, AMC Plus, Apple TV Plus and a fairly long list of others.

In its announcement, Epix calls itself a streaming service, but at last count it reportedly had about 85 million subscribers, mainly through cable, satellite and telco distribution, getting a big boost from Comcast during the cable operator’s distribution battle with Starz.

The release, which doesn’t mention Amazon, said MGM Plus will continue to be available in the U.S. on Prime Video, cable, telco, satellite and digital distribution services.

Epix belatedly launched a standalone OTT service, Epix Now, in 2019. That will also be known as MGM Plus. ▪️

Epix 2 will become MGM Plus Hits, Epix Hits will become MGM Plus Marquee and Epix Drive-In becomes MGM Plus Drive In.

The launch of the new brand coincides with the Season 3 premiere of Godfather of Harlem. The network said Season 2 set records for single-title streams in a single day across Epix’s digital channels.

Two new original series have been greenlit to run on MGM Plus: Hotel Cocaine from Epix Studios, and Belgravia: The Next Chapter, a Carnival Films co-production with Epix Studios, distributed by NBCUniversal Global Distribution.

Epix has also greenlit orders for two docuseries, one about the unsolved haunted house Amityville murders from Sony’s B17 Entertainment, the other about the San Francisco music scene from 1965 to 1975 from Jigsaw Productions in association with Amblin Television and the Kennedy/Marshall Co.

“MGM is one of the most iconic and beloved brands from the golden age of entertainment,” said Michael Wright, head of MGM Plus. “This rebrand is a promise to existing and new viewers that MGM Plus is the place to find television that reflects and celebrates the legacy of the iconic MGM brand - cinematic programming with sophisticated storytelling that entertains, delights, surprises, and transports. MGM is television for movie lovers.”

The company said the new MGM Plus logo “will embody the rich legacy of MGM, while at the same time orienting the brand toward the future. It reimagines the rich, 100-year history of MGM’s classic art-deco typeface in a contemporary and forward-facing fashion. The typography and brighter palette combine the rich legacy of the classic MGM brand with the forward-learning spirit of the next generation streaming service."

Imaginary Forces helped with the branding. ■

Critics of the Ring doorbell surveillance technology have written MGM asking it not to debut its new syndicated reality series, Ring Nation, hosted by Wanda Sykes.

The show is a Ring take on Candid Camera and other video-clip shows that have a long history on TV.

In a letter from Fight for the Future and over 40 groups including Media Justice, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, and the Tech & Immigration Policing Project, they asked Mark Burnett, chairman of MGM Television, and Barry Poznick, president of MGM Unscripted Television, to pull the plug on the show before it debuts later this month.

They said that while the show does get the consent of those appearing on the program, that “in no way protects against the harms stemming from Ring’s surveilling communities at large, especially marginalized communities targeted by police.”

Ring Nation is a synergistic play from MGM parent Amazon, which also owns the Ring product.

Amazon had not returned a request for comment at press time. ■

At a pricey Brentwood coffeeshop this past week, I sat down over iced tea with two long-time Hollywood dealmakers to talk about the crazy business of Hollywood amid the 20 different tectonic shifts transforming everything. 

Dealmaker One rather suddenly exclaimed that the two should put together a fund to buy up streaming shows that have been in the market more than two or three years. After all, he said, most shows that “old” are basically dead, lost in the algorithm, invisible to most customers when they page through a service’s interface. Yes, the old shows are findable if you’re really looking, but otherwise they’re out of sight, out of mind. Might as well be sitting in a vault in Santa Clarita.

Dealmaker Two quickly chimed in that maybe the fund would only need $500 million to scoop it all up. After all, the “old” shows are mostly worthless to a streaming service once the algorithm forgets them. Somebody new, or maybe the original creators, could take the shows back and sell them to TV networks in Rwanda and Malaysia, or as NFTs in a virtual-reality theater, or build a FAST channel, or really, whatever. At least the shows would have a chance at another audience, and to make money in a different way. 

The two were joking, I think, but their observation is a pungent one. In the age of streaming, where content access is near bottomless, how much content is enough? How long is that tail? And what do we do with the slightly older stuff no one is looking for or watching? 

Amazon spent more than $8 billion last year to acquire MGM’s storied library. But other than the James Bond franchise, the real value wasn’t in showing that stuff on Prime Video or even Freevee. Instead, executives enthused, the deal was all about the spinoffs, sequels and reboots the company will generate from that giant pile of intellectual property. 

Lionsgate, meanwhile, is trying yet again to sell itself, touting its library of decades worth of movies and TV series. It still hasn’t found any takers. At least the company appears close to redeeming its bad decision to buy the undersized premium channel Starz for $4.4 billion in 2016 by selling at least a piece of it to some Next Greater Fools. 

Apple, of course, could scoop up Lionsgate, and reportedly looked closely at MGM, to flesh out Apple TV Plus. It didn’t bother, and still found/made original projects that won a Best Picture Oscar and a Best Comedy Emmy in the past year. We don’t know yet what counts as success for Apple with TV Plus, but spending its zillions of billions on only new stuff seems to have worked out. 

Meanwhile. billions of dollars worth of content is sitting on all the streaming services, without big viewership or obvious next lives. More still could be headed for oblivion as Netflix, HBO Max and Disney cancel projects and signal more “discipline” in their programming choices. 

Disney Plus almost certainly rocketed to 100 million subscribers in its first year thanks to that admirable collection of vintage Disney and Pixar animation, Star Wars projects, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s double-dodecahedron of interlocked films. But everybody who was deeply into watching those shows during lockdown probably has by now. What’s next? A bit fewer of those shows and a bit more adult-friendly new stuff to appeal to a broader audience, Bob Chapek has decided. 

On Netflix, of course, only a few shows avoid quickly sinking into the Great Red Sargasso Sea of Stuff. The company itself acknowledges this with its near-ironclad policy about killing off series after three seasons. 

Sometimes, the demise comes even quicker. This week, First Kill, a high-school vampire series that attracted more than 100 million viewing hours in its first 28 days this summer, didn’t generate the right secondary metrics. Netflix effectively renamed the show First Season Kill, and cancelled it.

Only a few sturdy franchises get a fourth season, like record-setter Stranger Things or, believe it or not, flyover-land-friendly Virgin River.. Everything else seems to quickly fall through algorithmic fissures into the Netflix equivalent of Stranger Things’ Upside Down. 

But how long to keep a show is a more urgent question elsewhere in Streaming Land. Warner Bros. Discovery’s eventful earnings this week led to news that the company is not only mashing together its two flagship streaming services, but making them thinner too. 

Under synergy-seeker David Zaslav, WBD seems determined to eradicate any trace of the previous regime’s handiwork, including plans to make 10 direct-to-HBO Max movies a year. The company cancelled two nearly finished HBO Max movies, including Batgirl, to take advantage of a briefly available tax write-off. Then the news trickled out that WBD also quietly defenestrated several other HBO Max-first features and series, including projects from Robert Zemeckis, Melissa McCarthy, Doug Liman, Seth Rogen, and (twice!) Anne Hathaway.  

The reasoning: it costs more to keep the low-performing shows alive and online, paying out contract provisions, than it does to mothball them. That has to be a bitter pill for Hollywood creatives who did business with streamers but now must wonder if a fat but limited upfront paycheck is all there is even for those near the pinnacle of their craft. It’s piece work, cost-plus-15%, like delivering a widgets contract for the Defense Department.

Perhaps it’s time for some new deal provisions that acknowledge the evanescent lifespans of many streaming projects.

Creatives working for streamers have already given up much of the back-end bonanza that once came with a Hollywood deal. It used to be you made a series, and if it stuck around on U.S. broadcast or cable outlets for enough episodes, you had an asset you could sell elsewhere in the world, or into syndication, for a lot of money. That Lotto ticket is now mostly gone.

And among movie makers, even an indie film with a modest budget once could piece together production financing, and possibly a substantial return, by selling into dozens of overseas territories. There are projects (including some from my two dealmakers) that still do that, but fewer of them have that chance in an era when most streaming contracts buy out global distribution rights in perpetuity.

We might need to an expiration date on all those global, perpetual deals. Maybe the movie busines can, once again, take a page from the music industry, where some artists have retaken control of their masters from labels 35 years after the original recording, thanks to provisions of a 1978 U.S. copyright law. 

That’s way too long a window for the streaming video business, where relatively few shows have the long-running appeal of, say, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead,  Fleetwood Mac, U2, Radiohead, or Taylor Swift.

Swift, of course, didn’t wait 35 years to take back her masters after growing upset at the way rights to her hit early albums were sold to a new label. Swift began recording new versions of those albums, and instructed her ardent fans to only buy and listen to the newer versions. 

It’s difficult to imagine, say, Robert Zemeckis calling on his fans to watch only a remade version of his mothballed HBO Max remake of The Witches. 

But as streaming services  continue to right-size their programming, spending, ambitions, and expectations, we need to figure out a different way to handle the old shows that didn’t become big hits. Free the orphans! Clear the shelves! Unlock the algorithm!

Now it's a little clearer why Amazon overpaid in buying MGM for $8.45 billion ... and why it was in a rush to get the deal closed.

The e-commerce giant just announced the first Amazon Prime Video title tied to the purchase, reality competition series 007's Race to a Million.

As first leaked to Variety, the series will be produced by Britain's 72 Films, in collaboration with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, guardians of the long-running "James Bond/007" franchise, as well as MGM, the studio that owns the venerable spy-thriller saga.

The series is described as "a Bond-style spin on a race around the world."

Also: Amazon Just Paid a 40% Premium to Buy MGM — What’s It Really Getting?

Outflanking the FTC, Amazon closed its MGM purchase just last week. But 007's Race to a Million has reportedly been in development for four years ... which, of course, leads to speculation that Amazon already has many more plans up its sleeve for what is MGM's signature franchise. ■

This story originally ran back in June of 2021, shortly after Amazon announced an agreement with MGM to purchase the century-old Hollywood studio. Amazon closed that acquisition this week. 

Amazon on Wednesday formally announced that it has agreed to pay $8.45 billion to acquire MGM.

The purchase price represents a 41% premium over earlier valuations made by Apple and Comcast, after each company considered their own potential acquisitions of the studio assets baring a 97-year-old Hollywood brand. (MGM put itself on the market back in December.)

“The acquisition’s thesis here is really very simple: MGM has a vast, deep catalog of much-loved intellectual property. With the talented people at MGM and Amazon Studios, we can reimagine and develop that IP for the 21s Century," Amazon founder and soon-to-be ex-CEO Jeff Bezos told investors Wednesday. 

The purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is somewhat of an outlier for Amazon. The company with a market capitalization of more than $1.65 trillion is far from willy nilly in the M&A market. It’s only bigger acquisition was Whole Foods, which it paid $13.7 billion for in 2017. 

We know Amazon is getting a library with more than 4,000 film titles, including the James Bond and Rocky movie franchises, as well as a TV library of more than 17,000 episodes, from series including Fargo and The Handmaid's Tale. 

But what’s Amazon really getting?

Well, it’s not the studio of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain, which Louis B. Mayer himself once bragged, had “more stars than the heavens.” We can tell you that.

A Brief History of MGM

Kirk Kerkorian, a former amateur boxer and WWII pilot, who bootstrapped himself into becoming an airline mogul, purchased the aging musical factory known as MGM in 1969 as a decided Hollywood outsider, a true barbarian at Tinseltown’s rusting gates. 

Kerkorian also purchased United Artist in 1981 for $380 million, in a fire sale after the studio’s Heaven’s Gate debacle, combining it with MGM. 

In 1985, Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner paid Kerkorian $1.5 billion to buy MGM/UA Entertainment. Three months after that deal closed, Turner turned around and sold the 44-acre MGM studio property, along with its film processing lab, to Lorimar-Telepictures Corp. for $190 million. That Culver City lot is now owned by Sony.

Turner then sold the MGM name, its Leo the Lion logo, along with the MGM motion picture, television production and distribution, and home video businesses, back to Kerkorian for $300 million. 

Turner kept the pre-1986 MGM film library, which included classic titles such as Gone With the Wind, as programming grist for Turner Broadcasting. Turner’s empire was absorbed by Time Warner Inc. in 1996 in a $7.5 billion deal. Those older MGM titles remain in the WarnerMedia vault, which has been sold several times since, including last week. 

As for the late Kerkorian—the man often accused of “killing” MGM—he sold MGM/UA again in 1990 to Giancarlo Parretti’s Pathe Communications for $1.36 billion, keeping the MGM name to license to casinos and theme parks. In 1996, Parretti defaulted on his loans. The MGM studio ended up in the hands of French bank Credit Lyonnais, which sold it back to Kerkorian. 

In 2005, Kerkorian sold MGM to a consortium led by Sony. By this time, the studio’s status had been devalued down to greener film and TV libraries, and desperate real estate holdings, all weighed down by debt. 

MGM emerged from 2010 Chapter 11 restructuring, with the executives behind Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, in charge of a holding company called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

That company now produces films and TV shows, many under the heading of valuable franchise brands.

What’s Really in the Bag for Amazon?

Perhaps most notable is the James Bond franchise—the 25th film in the series, No Time to Die, starring Daniel Craig as the title character, is set for a pandemic-delayed Oct. 8 theatrical release. 

The Bond franchise is still vital. Its last film, 2015’s Spectre, grossed more than $880.6 million in global box office. 

Bond will undoubtedly be a boost for the Amazon Prime Video service, which touts 175 million active users worldwide. But Amazon will now control only 50% of the Bond franchise—the duo of Barbara Broccoli and her half brother, Michael G. Wilson, the offspring of Bond producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, controls the other half.

Amazon is also getting a Bond franchise facing inflection: Craig, who is the seventh actor to play the iconic British spy, is now 53. 

Rocky is another storied film franchise under the MGM banner. The franchise has been revitalized under the “Creed” name, with Michael B. Jordan playing a youthful boxer, the bastard son of old Rocky Balboa nemesis-turned-ally Apollo Creed, now trained by Rocky himself, still played by the franchise’s original aging star, Sylvester Stallone. Creed II earned more than $214 million in global box office receipts in 2018, with a third film due out in 2022. 

Other active film franchises flying the MGM flag include RoboCop, Stargate, Legally Blonde and The Pink Panther. 

Outside of established film brands, MGM’s pending film slate also includes Ridley Scott's House of Gucci, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver; an untitled ‘70s-era film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) and starring Bradley Cooper; and the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect starring Jennifer Hudson.

On the TV side, MGM has a prolific production engine, headed by reality mogul Mark Burnett. MGM produces a range of active titles, with Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale probably the best known. However, the studio also makes Peacock’s Hannibal Lecter-themed Clarice, History Channel’s Vikings and FX dark comedy Fargo. 

Notably, Amazon is also getting the raw footage and everything else associated with The Apprentice, the mid-aughts reality show starring Donald Trump. It’s widely speculated that Amazon might take control of a treasure trove of unreleased behind-the-scenes footage and outtakes that are potentially embarrassing to the former U.S. president. It’s unclear, however, as to whether Amazon has the rights to release this footage. ■

Defying a broadly held initial belief that it would be stymied by regulators, Amazon has successfully closed its $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM.

"The storied, nearly century-old studio — with more than 4,000 film titles, 17,000 TV episodes, 180 Academy Awards, and 100 Emmy Awards — will complement Prime Video and Amazon Studios' work in delivering a diverse offering of entertainment choices to customers," Amazon Studios and Prime Video chief Mike Hopkins said in a statement.

Amazon didn't announce any executives decisions or any details on how integration of the studio might work. 

Also read: Should Amazon Even Be Allowed to Gobble up MGM?

From the moment the deal was announced in May of last year, doubters suggested that the Federal Trade Commission, now under the watch of noted antitrust-buster Lina Kahn, would stand in the way. 

But Amazon made a key strategic move, forcing the FTC last month to certify that it had provided all the antitrust information about the deal that had been requested of the company. That put the FTC on a short timeline to respond -- a deadline the federal agency ultimately couldn't meet -- and freed Amazon to move forward with its deal. 

The FTC can still go after Amazon retroactively in court to try to unwind its MGM deal.

Just like the FCC, the FTC is deadlocked with two Democrats and two Republicans, with President Joe Biden nominee Alvaro Bedoya pending a full Senate vote on approval. This followed a 14-14 vote to approve his nomination in the Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month. 

Also read: Amazon Just Paid a 40% Premium to Buy MGM — What’s It Really Getting?

Thursday's deal closure announcement followed Tuesday's approval news from the European Commission, which said the deal "would not significantly reduce competition" and that "the overlaps between Amazon and MGM are limited."

“MGM has a nearly century-long legacy of producing exceptional entertainment, and we share their commitment to delivering a broad slate of original films and television shows to a global audience,” said Hopkins, whose title is senior VP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios. “We welcome MGM employees, creators, and talent to Prime Video and Amazon Studios, and we look forward to working together to create even more opportunities to deliver quality storytelling to our customers.”

Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos also lent word to his company's press release, nothing that Amazon will “help preserve MGM’s heritage and catalog of films, and to provide customers with greater access to these existing works.”

So how much does closure of an $8.45 billion deal move Amazon stock? Not much. The stock is up 1.28% as of afternoon trading on the Nasdaq Thursday. The company's market cap stands at around $1.578 trillion. 

Amazon reported sales of $470 billion and a profit of $33 billion in 2021. ■ 

Faced with the tough regulatory hurdles that come as a tech giant already in the crosshairs of federal regulators, Amazon appears to have gotten the drop on the FTC in its effort to close its $8.45 billion purchase of MGM.

Amazon, which announced the acquisition of the studio behind the James Bond series and other venerable titles way back in May of last year, recently filed with the Federal Trade Commission to certify that it has provided all antitrust information required and asked for by federal regulators. 

Also read: Should Amazon Even Be Allowed to Gobble up MGM?

As first detailed by the Wall Street Journal, that action puts the FTC under a tight mid-March deadline, one it might not be able to make. And the FTC's failure to do so would allow Amazon to close its deal. 

That doesn't totally ameliorate Amazon's situation with the FTC, now under the direction of antitrust-busing chairwoman Lina Khan, and which can still investigate and impact mergers after they've closed. 

Khan has spoken openly in the past about the need for the government to curtail Amazon's power. More broadly, the FTC has recently stated its willingness to intervene in closed deals through actions including lawsuits.

So it may be with Amazon and MGM, but closing the deal would allow Amazon to at least move forward with founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos' stated goal of getting more vested in video streaming, and exploiting an MGM library that includes 18 Oscar Best Picture winners, the Rocky/Creed franchise, the Pink Panther franchise and around 4,000 other movies. There’s also 17,000 episodes of TV and, of course, nearly two-dozen James Bond movies.

It's notable that Netflix is touting this week the ratings success of spinoff series Vikings: Valhalla, a new series produced by MGM that might have debuted on Amazon Prime Video under another ownership scenario. ■

A group of 34 trade groups, labor unions and consumer activist organizations jointly sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission Wednesday, asking it to block the Amazon's proposed $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM. 

"We urge the FTC to block Amazon’s purchase of MGM Studios in order to slow Amazon’s growing dominance," said the groups, which included The Writers Guild of America West, the Center for Popular Democracy Action and Public Citizen. 

The FTC is conducting the antitrust review of the proposed purchase under new chair Lina Khan

"This deal would give Amazon control over MGM’s library of content, including popular franchises like Rocky and James Bond," the groups said. "This acquisition is not simply a one-off deal for streaming content; it is the latest move in Amazon’s overarching strategy to create numerous interconnected points of dominance over businesses and consumers. We applaud the Commission’s investigation of this merger because it is a clear example of Amazon’s larger pattern of monopolistic practices."

Most of the group's on the list of 34 are low-profile and far left on the political spectrum. 

Khan, however, is a noted critic of concentrated, anticompetitive market power. She was the lead counsel on a House Antitrust investigation into Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple that concluded that those companies had captured control of key distribution channels and function as internet gatekeepers, including by buying up potential competitors.

"Through the MGM acquisition, Amazon will gain control over additional levers of power in the digital economy," the group's letter added. "This is certainly a problem in the streaming market where MGM and Amazon overlap. But the issue is much larger. With the MGM acquisition Amazon will gain control over must-have content, as well as control over additional advertising and IP rights that allow it to stretch its dominance over consumers and other businesses. This increases Amazon’s ability to lock consumers into its sprawling platform and punish businesses and workers that do not accede to its demands."

While the rest of the entertainment world tries to get its head around the idea that Lebron James could sell his one-year-old production company, The SpringHill Company, for $750 million and Reese Witherspoon is considering unloading her Hello Sunshine production company for about $1 billion, Barclays media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote Friday that streaming distribution has turned the way companies value programming on its ear.

James reportedly started SpringHill with a $100 million investment and has been fielding interest from several possible suitors, including Nike, according to The Information. Best known for the just-released Space Jam: A New Legacy film and the HBO series The Shop (it also owns a small marketing arm) a $750 million sales price represents a more than robust premium, even for an NBA legend. 

Academy-Award-winning actress Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine has produced the hit HBO series Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere for Hulu and The Morning Show for Apple TV Plus. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Hello Sunshine is working with investment bankers to determine its options, and there is no guarantee a sale will take place. No revenue figures were available, but other reports have said the production company is expected to turn its first profit this year. AT&T is part owner of Hello Sunshine, through its Otter Media unit.

But whether a sale happens or not, the lofty valuations placed on these assets seems to fly in the face of tradition. It used to be that a company had to accumulate a big library, establish a proven track record of hits and have a management team that could practically foretell the future before attracting Lotto-type valuations. Now, in the streaming era, that model is quickly becoming obsolete.

In his research report, Venkateshwar notes that every content library is valued differently, and rightly so. Volume alone doesn’t determine value, but the analyst said another factor -- distribution channels -- also is rising in the mix. But Venkateshwar added it isn’t the number of distribution channels available to a piece of content that determines its value, but the type of distribution. 

“Unlike legacy channels for content distribution which were purely focused on content alone, today, the consumer value proposition of a given content distribution channel may actually have nothing to do with content,” Venkateshwar wrote. “In fact, the value of content may ironically be higher in channels where content is only a secondary offering, unlike the past where the more focused a distribution channel was on content, the more it could charge (theatrical, TV bundle etc.).”

He used Amazon’s Prime Video offering as an example. While Prime Video has a lot of content -- which should increase after Amazon agreed in May to buy movie studio MGM at a price ($8.5 billion) some have estimated is 37 times its annualized cash flow -- it’s main function is to serve as a complement to the Amazon Prime service, which offers customers free shipping on their Amazon retail orders. According to Venkateshwar, the real value of the video offering is in its ability to increase the value of the platform as a whole.

“Other emerging content distributors like Apple are also more oriented to use content to enhance the value of their broader platforms rather than as an end in itself,” Venkateshwar wrote, adding that the same holds true for audio, which has taken advantage of new distribution channels like Peloton, Fortnite and Tik Tok which is becoming an increasingly important driver for music labels.

“However, not every new distribution channel is a platform and therefore most new streaming services will have to justify the economics of a given piece of content or a library based on its ability to drive subscriber growth, engagement or pricing power. This is why it may make more sense for Netflix to spend $8 billion-plus on creating more local language programming across its footprint rather than buying a company like MGM.”

Specific windows for theatrical, pay per view, premium, cable and broadcast content were also a key factor in the way programming was valued previously. But streaming threw theatrical windowing, well, out the window as distributors either ignored them totally, like Netflix, or created a new day-and-date release strategy for movies like Disney Plus.

While Venkateshwar wrote that the new strategy could be good for consumers, who can switch between distributors for specific content without penalty, it ultimately will hurt lifetime valuations for that content.

The analyst pointed to Disney’s latest day-and-date release, Black Widow.  While that film had a strong opening box office weekend of $80 million in North America and generated more than $60 million for Disney Plus, the drop off in box office after opening day (40%) was significantly greater for Black Widow than any other Marvel film, Venkateshwar said. 

“Therefore, what will be interesting to watch is the overall collection for Black Widow across its entire theatrical and Disney Plus run and its impact on Disney Plus sub growth once the movie hits the normal subscription window (although Disney may not make these numbers available),” Venkateshwar wrote.

The elimination of multiple windows also could affect the cultural import of certain content, the analyst said, wondering aloud if Star Wars would have been as culturally significant over the past several decades if it had been released exclusively on Netflix rather than in theaters. Venkateshwar argues that marketing plays a huge role in not only promoting films but letting potential viewers cut through the clutter to discover programming they want to watch. 

“A movie release tends to be akin to a high-profile new product launch, with franchise movies spending $100 million-plus on marketing alone,” Venkateshwar wrote. “Netflix’s movie releases, on the other hand, rely significantly on its own content discovery algorithms. While the latter may be more efficient in the short term, it limits the duration of cultural relevance of a given piece of content, especially in a world with significant content clutter. This is why we believe Netflix’s strategy of shunning theatrical windows may drive a lower return on investment for its franchises than, say, Disney.”

Venkateshwar goes on to consider ad-supported streaming (best to monetize library content) and the benefits of binge-watching (which highlights the value of original programming), but it all boils down to the fact that valuing content is hard. And you can’t point to one deal or even a series of deals as a blueprint for the rest of the business. So Lebron James and Reese Witherspoon may indeed have hit the content lottery with their respective content endeavors, or maybe not. Amazon may be spending too much on MGM -- there is still the question of regulatory approval -- or it may end up being considered a bargain 10 years down the road. Venkateshwar pointed to how many analysts thought Disney paid way too much for Pixar and Marvel back in the day. 

The key, he wrote, is being willing to continually reinvest in what you buy, no matter the price. Buying a studio or a production company or what have you has to be the start of the investment cycle, not the end.  

“In hindsight, however, the last decade of Disney’s growth including its streaming pivot and therefore its valuation has largely been fueled by these anchor assets,” Venkateshwar wrote of Pixar and Marvel  “Valuation context, in other words, is a function of the post-deal strategic path of these assets more than a point in time estimate of asset value of a given studio.”

 The pressure is mounting for programmers, in the wake of the pending $43 billion merger between AT&T’s WarnerMedia and Discovery and Amazon’s $8.45 billion purchase of movie studio MGM, to look for similar hookups. But even as some stocks have risen along with hopes for a stream of big deals, most are telling investors they will resist the temptation.

Warner Bros. Discovery, as the new venture will be named, will be a streaming and linear content powerhouse with more than 30 iconic brands, including CNN, HBO, HGTV and Food Network. While the pairing will likely help drive up affiliate fees for those networks — at least for the short term — the long-term benefit from the deal is expected to be in streaming video. HBO Max, launched about a year ago and with around 44 million subscribers, should get an added boost from Discovery’s own streaming offering, Discovery Plus, which has about 11 million subscribers to its mostly reality-based programming.

Amazon said on May 26 that it would buy MGM in a deal worth $8.45 billion, bringing iconic film content like the James Bond franchise, as well as streaming and linear TV series like The Handmaid’s Tale and Fargo into the online retailer’s fold. Most analysts see the deal as a way for Amazon to quickly bolster its content library, and subsequently its Amazon Prime Video subscriber rolls.   

Heavying Up for the Arms Race

Several analysts have speculated that those deals will beget others. In a research note earlier this month, Wells Fargo media analyst Steven Cahall wrote that he expects ViacomCBS to at least explore monetizing its Paramount and CBS TV studios, as scaled production operations are considered “rare gems” in today’s climate. 

“DTC is a content arms race, and scale is most necessary,” Cahall wrote.

Investors apparently believe the same. Stocks for small and large programmers all have risen in the three weeks after the Warner-Discovery unveiling on May 17. The biggest gains were at Lionsgate Entertainment, the movie studio that also serves as home to premium channel Starz, up about 20%, followed by AMC Networks, up about 16% and ViacomCBS up 10%. The Walt Disney Co., which owns industry-leading streaming service Disney Plus, saw its stock rise about 4% in the weeks after the Warner-Discovery deal. 

Lionsgate Entertainment CEO Jon Feltheimer said during its May 27 conference call with analysts to discuss fiscal Q4 results that the WarnerMedia and Amazon deals are a “resounding affirmation” of the continued value of content, IP and brands, but said he didn’t want his company to get distracted by the “concept of scale.”

Feltheimer was a bit miffed that its Starz premium offering, with about 30 million subscribers, was being called a “niche service” in articles speculating about future M&A.

“We don’t think 30 million subscribers is a niche service,” he said, adding that the goal is to make Starz a market leader in premium content. 

“And that’s how we’ll build our value,” Feltheimer continued. “So obviously, we talked to everyone, we listened to everything, but our main job right now is to create outsized value. And the way we’re going to do that is by keeping our head down, having all of our businesses talk to each other 10 times a day, which is what they do.”

Comcast’s Options    

Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal as well as the largest traditional cable distribution arm in the country, has been under pressure to spin off its content arm to unlock value. While that could still happen, Cahall wrote that Comcast has three choices: selling/merging its studios, getting more aggressive with its Peacock streaming service or doing nothing. In his research note, he said option three would be most likely.

At its annual meeting of shareholders on June 2, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said there was no need for a buying spree, adding that the company is “pleased with our talent, our assets, our culture, our resources.”

But Comcast has been no stranger to M&A in the past, and the company was said to be looking at WarnerMedia earlier this year but backed off because of regulatory concerns. While its size may ultimately dictate its options, Roberts said Comcast and AT&T are distinctly different companies with disparate needs. 

“What AT&T does sort of speaks for itself,” Roberts said. 

All the news in Streaming Land this past week seemed focused on Amazon’s pricey but wholly rational $8.5 billion acquisition of century-old Hollywood studio MGM. 

Less noticed in virtually the same news cycle was a potentially huge antitrust case filed by the attorney general of Washington, D.C., against, yes, Amazon. The case focuses on Amazon’s use of “most-favored-nation” clauses in contracts with its countless third-party vendors, preventing them from charging less for a product on other sites than they charge on Amazon. 

The clauses ensure upstart challengers to Amazon can’t undercut the e-commerce giant on prices, at least for products from companies that also want access to Amazon’s vast market. 

It’s, again, wholly rational for Amazon to want to impose those restrictions on its vendors. But those clauses are inexcusably bad for customers, who have to pay more than they might otherwise. And those motivations are exactly why antitrust laws were created, because pricing controls like that are also really bad for competition.

That’s the thesis of the D.C. case, though legal observers suggest it represents a novel legal interpretation. To my mind, the A.G.’s case represents a wholly rational extension of our antiquated, century-old antirust statutes. It attempts to rebalance the unfair ways tech giants use their market power, network effects, free products, and globe-girdilng reach to disadvantage those who would provide an alternative. 

Not mentioned in the same breath as the AG’s suit, though maybe it should have been, was that MGM deal. 

In announcing the deal, Amazon executives praised the quality and quantity of the MGM library, which includes 18 Oscar Best Picture winners, the Rocky/Creed franchise, the Pink Panther franchise and around 4,000 other movies. There’s also17,000 episodes of TV and, oh, yes, nearly two-dozen James Bond movies, including one that’s been on the shelf for more than a year because of the pandemic. 

Those films and shows have been licensed widely, on TV networks around the globe. It’s been a very nice business for a small company that doesn’t make a lot of new content, doesn’t have a backlot, and owns only the undersized Epix streaming service/premium cable network. Expect all of that to change dramatically with Amazon backing.

Now, presumably, all those old series and features will start appearing on Amazon’s Prime Video and ad-supported IMDb TV as outside licenses expire. If all those shows ultimately move fully to Amazon outlets, that’ll put a crimp in the offerings of a lot of competitors, in a double win for Amazon in the streaming wars.

Something similar happened seven years ago, when Amazon swooped in to buy Twitch for about $1 billion after Google had appeared to have the deal all but cinched. It got a prized asset, and a top competitor didn’t. Google’s been trying to catch up in the game streaming space ever since. Win-win.  

This time, the asset is perhaps even more valuable, the impacts on competitors even more substantial, at a time when the market is rapidly overheating.

“A lot of the chess pieces are off the board,” Greg Boyer, a PWC US partner in tech, media and telecommunications, told me. A handful of the biggest services are “going to have such massive scale, but everyone else is going to have less assets to go after, and paying a really big premium for it” if they want to keep up. 

Amazon is certainly one of the giants. And the real opportunity, Amazon executives said, is to mine all those films and series for spinoffs, reboots, and remakes to fill out its Prime offerings, instead of buying them from outside providers.. 

It’s not like MGM executives weren’t already doing that sort of IP mining (the Creed spinoffs of Rocky are perhaps the most successful and well-regarded examples). It’s just that with Amazon’s $1.6 trillion market capitalization, the level of self exploitation will put even Disney’s endless waves of remakes and reboots to shame. 

And that’s the point. Amazon has a vast array of video assets, and occupies a near-unique position in the business. We’re at the point with the tech giants where we need to consider whether to allow them to make any new acquisitions in areas where they already have a dominant position. Video should probably be on that no-buy list for Amazon.

Subscription service Prime Video is the highest profile asset, with Oscars and Emmys, billions of dollars in annual programming, and 175 million users, second only to Netflix. 

Now, the company will add that IP and money to some really talented film and TV executives, including three-time Oscar nominee Mike DeLuca (Captain Phillips, Moneyball, The Social Network) and reality show kingpin Mark Burnett (nine-time Emmy winner for shows such as The Voice, Survivor, and Shark Tank).

Amazon also owns IMDb TV. It runs the Channels service that carries more than 150 other companies’ subscription services. It owns Twitch, which dominates the live-streaming space in the gaming sector but is increasingly prominent in other sectors too. 

Amazon’s advertising unit already generates 2.4 times more revenue—some $22 billion last year—than Snap, Twitter, Roku and Pinterest combined. And it sells the Fire TV streaming devices and TVs, which are used by 50 million U.S. households.  To all that, Amazon now gets to add the biggest single available library of original content still in the market. 

Even if our kludgy old antitrust laws haven’t kept up (and the Justice Department dumped those 1948 Paramount decrees preventing vertical integration in the industry last fall), shouldn’t we figure out some way to leave an ounce or two of competition in what is rapidly becoming a Big Four of Streaming (Amazon, Disney, Netflix, Warner-Discovery)? It does seem, to me at least, to be wholly rational. 

The  Amazon deal does generate other questions, like why didn’t Apple pull the trigger on a similar deal a year ago, when it first started looking for a library to shore up the single biggest shortcoming of Apple TV Plus? 

The company reportedly talked with MGM about buying rights to No Time To Die, the pandemic-delayed latest James Bond film. The asking price reportedly reached a stratospheric $600 million, though given the titanic box office of immediate predecessors Skyfall ($1.1 billion) and Spectre ($880 million), wholly rational. 

Apple balked at the price, whatever it was. But I couldn’t help thinking, why buy temporary rights to one movie for $600 million when you could buy the whole library for $6 billion or thereabouts? Even at a lush $8.45 billion Amazon valuation, that’s still only roughly half the revenue that Apple’s subscription businesses generates every quarter. 

In other words, even $8.45 billion is a rounding error on a company valued at $2 trillion. 

Apple has its own antitrust suit, which concluded arguments this week in a civil court. Epic wants a break on the fees it pays Apple to have Fortnite and other mobile games on the iOS App Store. But Apple at least doesn’t have the breadth of TV holdings, or even the device market share, of Amazon. 

MGM represents a badly missed opportunity for Tim Cook and Apple, and more reason to puzzle over the company’s broader plans for subscription video. 

Apple certainly has the resources to go very big. They’re creating some excellent original programing. But they’re still giving away TV Plus subscriptions for at least another month, a year and a half after launching the service. That suggests things aren’t working. As they like to say at Auburn University, where Cook went to college, go big or go home. 

There’s been a whole lot of buzz in the trades this week about how the Amazon/MGM deal is the latest salvo in the streaming wars, and how it makes Amazon a real competitor to Netflix and all that.

To which my response has been, “Yes, but...”

As in, “yes, but it’s not like anyone was ever going to dump their Prime membership and give up that free two-day delivery just because they didn’t like the free video programming Amazon had on offer.”

Which is really the point: programming on Amazon Prime has always been a lucky strike extra, a reward of sorts for being wise enough to sign up for free two-day delivery. 

That free two-day shipping is what makes Amazon such an outlier among all the Flixes. Because it’s pretty fair to say that the $119/year most people pay for Prime comes from a very different budget than the $156 they pay for Netflix. 

Prime customers are paying for the convenience of not having to run to CVS at 8 p.m. on a winter night because they realized they’d forgotten to buy toilet paper, not for the ability to binge The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. As a result, they don’t see the money spent on Amazon as part of what they’re spending on television.

Which may explain why Amazon’s content strategy has been all over the map. 

In the early years, they made programs like Transparent, Mozart In The Jungle, and Red Oaks that appealed to HBO viewers and award show judges. It was a way to get them on viewers’ radar but then a new regime came in and began making shows with broader appeal like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel that still managed to win awards. 

TV series are only one part of Amazon’s greater content strategy though, as they’ve also branched out into making original movies like Manchester By The Sea and Borat, both of which also won awards.

Those award-winning shows are just window dressing, however, ways for Amazon to prime you (pun intended) to go where they feel their real money lies: subscribing to other services via Prime.

It’s a very clever plan, given that anyone who has Prime already has their credit card stored in the Amazon system, and so adding a monthly subscription to anything from PBS Masterpiece to Showtime to Paramount Plus and Discovery Plus is just a simple click. And boom! You can start watching whatever show it was that lured you there in the first place.

Not only is this lucrative for Amazon (they get a cut of the subscription fee) but it’s well received by viewers, who like that they can actually get all the services they subscribe to from a single source and (this is really key) from a single interface.

While I understand why the various Flixes want viewers going directly to their apps, where they can both track their viewing and recommend shows to keep them on the platform longer, I also understand why consumers find having to switch from app to app to be a the worst thing ever, and why they’re happy to consolidate all their viewing on Prime.

But Amazon’s TV plans don’t stop at selling subscriptions. That’s because Amazon, as you might expect, has an incredible amount of data on their viewers, given that those viewers do a significant amount of their shopping on Amazon, buying everything from groceries to clothing to computers to sporting goods to vitamins.

This means Amazon can help advertisers target people who buy their products, or their competitors’ products, or products whose users tend to like the advertisers product as well.

To accomplish this, Amazon has rolled out its very own FAST, IMDb TV. 

Now, here’s where it gets really clever: because Amazon has a large TVOD business (transactional VOD, aka rentals), it can offer viewers a choice when they search for one of the many movies and TV series that are not included with Prime: pay $1.99 to watch a single episode … or watch for free with ads.

The viewers who choose the latter option are likely unaware that they are being transported to IMDbTV, thinking instead that they’re on some new ad-supported section of Prime, and given that they’re not paying for the show they wanted to see and only getting a relatively light ad load, they’re usually not too chuffed about it.

So where does MGM fit in?

It’s part of the lure.

Amazon now has an even wider selection of popular free shows and movies that a viewer might want to watch. While they’re making their way through the Bond movies, Amazon can recommend other shows about British secret agents, ones that just happen to require a subscription to BritBox. 

Or it recommend shows they can watch for free with ads. 

Amazon can also remind them that their home team is playing on that Thursday night’s NFL game. And if the viewer takes Amazon up on that offer to watch the game, they may well find some mugs with the team’s logo “based on your browsing history.”

This is all a gateway into a whole other area that Amazon is exploring--T-commerce, because really, who is better suited to sell you the ingredients to the recipe Giada just prepared on Discovery Plus (which you subscribe to via Amazon) than the company that just happens to also own Whole Foods?

The point being: While the MGM sale may seem like it’s a part of the so-called “streaming wars,” the game Amazon is playing is a whole lot bigger than just TV.

A whole lot bigger.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chair of the powerful Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, said the Justice Department will need to scrutinize carefully Amazon's proposed purchase of MGM.

PTC Pounds Proposed AT&T/Discovery Merger

Amazon has agreed to pay $8.45 billion for MGM assets, which include a library of 4,000 movies, including the Bond franchise, and over 17,000 episodes of TV.

Klobuchar, who has been no big fan of big media mergers, called the deal a major one that could impact millions of consumers--certainly that is what Amazon is hoping. 

"The Department of Justice must conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that this deal won’t risk harming competition," said Klobuchar. Amazon would argue it is only trying to make its Amazon Prime more competitive with the 800 pound "King Kong vs. the Streamers": Netflix.

But if, as some analysts predict, other efforts to combine streamers with traditional studio assets--NCBU, ViacomCBS-- ensue, that yellow flag for D.C., particularly Democrats but also Republicans not looking for Big Tech to get more powerful, could turn to red.

Klobuchar called the proposal a reminder of why antitrust agencies--DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission divvy up antitrust reviews--need more funding so they can investigate such multibillion-dollar deals. "Our government cannot ensure major corporations are playing by the rules if enforcement agencies are chronically underfunded," she said.

Klobuchar Introducing Big Tech Antitrust Bill

She took the opportunity to plug her legislation, which has passed the judiciary committee and would boost the resources needed to conduct the kind of vigorous review she wants of the Amazon-MGM deal.

Amazon said it agreed to acquire MGM for $8.45 billion, giving the tech company a foothold in Hollywood as it takes on competitors in the video streaming wars.

The acquisition gives Amazon access to more than 4,000 films and key franchises including James Bond and Rocky, plus 17,000 TV shows including Fargo and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Read Also: Amazon-MGM Deal Talks Advance

“The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling,” said Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios.

Hopkins is a former Fox, Hulu and Sony executive. Amazon has its subscription streaming business in Amazon Prime Video, which comes as part of the Amazon Prime shopping and delivery service, as well as ad-supported channels Twitch and IMDb TV.

Read Also: Amazon Reportedly in Talks To Buy MGM for Around $9 Billion

“It has been an honor to have been a part of the incredible transformation of Metro Goldwyn Mayer," said Kevin Ulrich, chairman of the Board of Directors of MGM. "To get here took immensely talented people with a true belief in one vision. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank the MGM team who have helped us arrive at this historic day. I am very proud that MGM’s Lion, which has long evoked the Golden Age of Hollywood, will continue its storied history, and the idea born from the creation of United Artists lives on in a way the founders originally intended, driven by the talent and their vision. The opportunity to align MGM’s storied history with Amazon is an inspiring combination.”

The Amazon move comes with Netflix established as the leading player in the streaming business, with The Walt Disney Co. charging hard on its heels with Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus. Media observers with long memories noted that Ted Turner jumped at the chance in the mid 1980s to buy MGM from investor Kirk Kerkorian, using the film library to launch Turner Classic Movies.

Last week, AT&T made a deal to spin off its WarnerMedia unit and merge it with Discovery to create an entity large enough to compete with the leaders. Between WarnerMedia, which runs HBO Max. and Discovery, which launched Discovery Plus earlier this year, the combined company spends $20 billion on content.

Speaking at the  J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference, Discovery CEO David Zaslav said he was happy with the Amazon-MGM deal because of the value it puts on content.

“It’s all about the IP,” Zaslav said. He recalled people saying that Disney overpaid for Pixar and Star Wars, but that those business have both generated billions in revenues and become pillars supporting the success of Disney Plus.

“So we look at what Warner has, and it’s the greatest treasure of global IP that’s loved by everyone in the world, with the treasure we have, and you look at the value of MGM and you say ‘wow.’ What does that mean we’re worth if we can make this all come together? And I think we can,” he said.

Scott Schiller, chief commercial officer at digital media company Engine, said the Amazon-MGM deal is the tip of the iceberg as tech companies take a stepped-up approach to content and streaming video.

"The next likely scenario is a more aggressive merger or acquisition of one of the remaining traditional assets, like an NBCUniversal  or ViacomCBS,” Schiller said.

Talks between Amazon and MGM for a $9 billion agreement that would put the legendary Hollywood studio under the control of the e-commerce giant have reportedly advanced to the "near deal" point.

The Wall Street Journal, citing humans close to the negotiations, said a sale could be announced as soon as this week. The MGM was said to have been briefed on the deal terms Sunday evening. 

Should the deal occur, it would be Amazon's second biggest acquisition ever, trailing only the 2017 purchase of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. 

Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the 97-year-old studio home to film franchises including James Bond, Rocky, RoboCop, The Pink Panther and Chucky the killer doll, has been on the block since December. The studio hired investment banks LionTree LLC and Morgan Stanley to begin a formal sale process.

Apple and Comcast have already kicked the tires and valued the company at around $6 billion. MGM also owns the Epix premium programmer.

Now, MGM’s majority owner, New York investment firm Anchorage Capital, reportedly wants around $9 billion, and that’s the price Amazon is said to be negotiating around.

Amazon’s ties to an MGM purchase have been rumored for several months, but The Information reported last week that Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Amazon Studios and Prime Video, is indeed leading an acquisition discussion. 

With AT&T agreeing to divest its WarnerMedia division and have it merge with Discovery Inc., media consolidation is certainly top of mind. Much of the discussion around that deal revolves around the opportunity for WarnerMedia and Discovery to jointly compete with the runaway likes of Disney and Netflix, which have more global scale than anyone right now. 

But with 175 million Amazon Prime members worldwide using Amazon Prime Video, according to a recent company disclosure, Amazon’s scale is pretty impressive, too. 

MGM, which has a library of around 4,000 films, would add heft to Amazon Studios at a time when it’s not only programming the subscription Prime Video service, but also is trying to expand the ad-supported IMDb TV platform. 

Amazon is in talks to buy MGM, according to numerous published reports.

Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the 97-year-old studio home to film franchises including James Bond, Rocky, RoboCop, The Pink Panther and Chucky the killer doll, has been on the block since December. Apple and Comcast have already kicked the tires and valued the company at around $6 billion. MGM also owns the Epix premium programmer.

Now, MGM’s majority owner, New York investment firm Anchorage Capital, reportedly wants around $9 billion, and that’s the price Amazon is said to be negotiating around.

Amazon’s ties to an MGM purchase have been rumored for several months, but The Information reported on Monday that Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Amazon Studios and Prime Video, is indeed leading an acquisition discussion. The New York Times and Variety, among several other publications, subsequently confirmed these talks themselves. 

According to The NYT, Michael De Luca, MGM’s chairman, presented the studio’s coming slate to Amazon’s team on Friday.

With AT&T agreeing to divest its WarnerMedia division and have it merge with Discovery Inc., media consolidation is certainly top of mind. Much of the discussion around that deal revolves around the opportunity for WarnerMedia and Discovery to jointly compete with the runaway likes of Disney and Netflix, which have more global scale than anyone right now. 

But with 175 million Amazon Prime members worldwide using Amazon Prime Video, according to a recent company disclosure, Amazon’s scale is pretty impressive, too. 

MGM, which has a library of around 4,000 films, would add heft to Amazon Studios at a time when it’s not only programming the subscription Prime Video service, but also is trying to expand the ad-supported IMDb TV platform. 

MGM’s pending film slate includes Ridley Scott's House of Gucci, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver; an untitled ‘70s-era film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) and starring Bradley Cooper; and the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect starring Jennifer Hudson.

This TV, an over-the-air network carried on broadcast stations’ subchannels, added distribution to eight major market ABC-owned subchannels on April 1. Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group bought This TV from MGM in October 2020. 

Allen Media said This TV is now available in approximately 86 million U.S. households via over-the-air, cable and online platforms. This TV offers original programming, movies, retro TV series, event specials and other content.  

Also read: Byron Allen Buys This TV, Light TV From MGM

The eight ABC-owned television markets which now carry This TV via a new agreement are: New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Houston; Fresno, California, and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, with about 27 million households.  

"Allen Media Group’s over-the-air broadcast television network This TV is now well-positioned for greater success with the addition of these eight phenomenal ABC owned and operated broadcast television stations,” Byron Allen, Founder/Chairman/CEO of Allen Media Group and Entertainment Studios, said in a statement. "As we continue to invest substantial amounts of capital into the programming, marketing, and distribution of THIS TV and our portfolio of 11 networks, we remain strong believers in over-the-air broadcasting and free-streaming direct-to-consumer platforms.” 

The E.W. Scripps Co. named Tom Zappala as head of programming for its new national networks business, effective Jan. 25.

A 30 year programming and production veteran, Zappala most recently had been head of programming strategy for MGM Global Networks, where he acquired third-party programming, oversaw digital scheduling and worked on renewal discussions with distributors, including MVPDs and digital platforms.

Also Read: Jonathan Katz Promoted to COO for Scripps National Nets

At Scripps, he will report to Jonathan Katz, COO and head of entertainment for Scripps networks, the new business is made up of the Katz Networks, Newsy and Ion Media, acquired by Scripps earlier this month.

Also Read: E.W. Scripps Completes Acquisition of Ion Media

“Tom is one of the most versatile and creative programmers in the media business today, on any platform,” Katz said. “His breadth of experience makes him exceptionally qualified to lead our programming efforts as we bring our national networks businesses together. I’ve always envied the companies that were lucky enough to leverage Tom’s talents, and now I’m thrilled that he’s part of our team.”

Before joining MGM, Zappala was executive VP, programming, for Viacom Media Networks and executive VP of programming for The Walt Disney Co. Earlier in his career, he was with the CBS Station Group.

The acquisitive Byron Allen has struck again, announcing the purchase of digital multicast networks This TV and Light TV from MGM.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

The comic turned media mogul’s TV empire now holds 10 networks including The Weather Channel, and 16 TV stations in 12 markets.

“I am happy to announce that Allen Media Group has achieved another critical milestone by successfully acquiring two over-the-air broadcast television networks This TV and Light TV from MGM,” said Allen. "We are going to continue to invest a substantial amount of capital into the programming, marketing, and distribution of these networks. We are strong believers in broadcasting and free-streaming direct-to-consumer platforms.” 

Related: Entertainment Studios Promotes The Weather Channel Exec Bruce Gibson to VP Network Distribution Position

This TV was launched in 2008 and is programmed with films and classic TV series. Light TV features family-friendly movies and series and was launched in 2016. Both networks are carried as the secondary digital channels of local broadcasters.

E.W. Scripps bought Katz Networks, which operates four digital broadcast networks for $302 million in 2017.

“Byron Allen is an innovator and has built a tremendous portfolio of networks within his organization. With a reach of over 81 million households, these networks will be great additions to his Allen Media Group,” said Chris Ottinger, president of world wide television distribution & acquisitions at MGM.

Stargate Command, an SVOD platform specifically devoted to the 1994 hit sci-fi film Stargate, along with the movie’s myriad TV spin-off series, is being shuttered, effective Dec. 31.

According to operator MGM, the platform’s content will be shifted to YouTube and be free to view.

“Shows like Dialing Home and Recon, which were previously only available to All-Access Pass holders, will be made available on YouTube without charge beginning in 2020,” MGM said in a note to Stargate Command users today.

Related: More Subscription Streaming Sites Will Soon Go Down, Fox Exec Predicts

According to fan site GateWorld.net, the SVOD platform has around 75,000 subscribers.

Niche-oriented SVOD sites have been somewhat endangered of late, with WarnerMedia notoriously shutting down well-regarded movie platform FilmStruck late last year.

“Only a handful of platforms can support themselves in the niche OTT world,” noted Fox executive Sherry Brennan, speaking on a Streaming Media West panel shortly after FilmStruck’s closure.

Stargate Command, an SVOD platform specifically devoted to the 1994 hit sci-fi film Stargate, along with the movie’s myriad TV spin-off series, is being shuttered, effective December 31.

According to operator MGM, the platform’s content will be shifted to YouTube and be free to view.

“Shows like Dialing Home and Recon, which were previously only available to All-Access Pass holders, will be made available on YouTube without charge beginning in 2020,” MGM said in a note to Stargate Command users today.

Related: More Subscription Streaming Sites Will Soon Go Down, Fox Exec Predicts

According to fan site GateWorld.net, the SVOD platform has around 75,000 subscribers.

Niche-oriented SVOD sites have been somewhat endangered of late, with WarnerMedia notoriously shutting down well-regarded movie platform FilmStruck late last year.

“Only a handful of platforms can support themselves in the niche OTT world,” noted Fox executive Sherry Brennan, speaking on a Streaming Media West panel shortly after FilmStruck’s closure.

A Berkeley, California-based startup says it has a new way to distribute streaming video that eliminates the need for traditional video encoding and content delivery networks (CDNs).

Eluvio was founded by Michelle Munson, a Cambridge-trained software engineer and IBM veteran. The company’s patent-pending “Content Fabric” architecture is a global software overlay network that enables just-in-time video distribution—stream or download file—directly from the source.

The system, Eluvio says, eliminates the need to create additional copies of files used in distribution networks or storage facilities using a novel representation of media and data protocol implemented in a blockchain network to create a direct-to-consumer media distribution network.

MGM is using the Eluvio Content Fabric for global streaming to web, mobile and TV Everywhere audiences of certain properties, including transcoding, multi-format encryption and DRM, access control and audience reporting.

“The economics of today’s video ecosystem is defined and hampered by yesterday’s technologies, and we aim to change that,” said Munson, who serves as CEO and co-founder of Eluvio. “The Eluvio Content Fabric enables content owners to manage and distribute video and large form content in ways never before possible, opening publishers to more direct monetization opportunities, and reducing costs by minimizing core bandwidth and storage, and radically streamlining the traditional media distribution workflow.”

Munson is introducing Eluvio alongside her co-founder, Serban Simu, at IBC in Amsterdam. In 2003, Munson and Simu also founded Aspera, which invented the FASP fast file transport protocol. Aspera was acquired by IBM in 2014. 

Veteran television and movie executive Tony Lynn passed away Dec. 1 after a brief battle with cancer, according to reports.

Lynn, 66, worked in the telecommunications industry for more than 30 years, most notably serving as President of the Playboy Entertainment Group in the mid 1990s. 

Lynn also served as senior vice president of program distribution for Showtime Networks from 2004-2008 before establishing Agile Enterprises, a successful consulting practice that provided strategy and advice on a wide range of motion picture and television sales, acquisition, marketing and distribution issues.

Lynn also served as MGM Telecommunications’ president of worldwide television, video and film distribution in the late 1980s.

A memorial service will take place on Jan. 26, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. 

After largely neglecting its digital movie and TV transactional platform, Vudu, since acquiring it 2010, Walmart is trying to make up ground and become a relevant playing in video streaming.

According to reports in AdAge and Bloomberg, Walmart is in discussion with HBO, Showtime, Starz and operators of other OTT platforms, looking at the possibility that Vudu might broker these platforms through Vudu.

Walmart isn’t confirming this. The reports come a week after Walmart announced a deal with MGM to produce original content for Vudu’s ad-supported free-to-consumer sub-platform, Movies On Us, with the first title being a remake of the 1983 MGM film “Mr. Mom.”

Amid that announcement, it was widely reported that Walmart was going to eschew earlier thoughts on entering the subscription video on demand market.

Related: Walmart Partnering with MGM to Boost Vudu with Originals: Report

With Netflix, Amazon and Hulu owning a stranglehold on the SVOD market, and little unclaimed customer share available in markets like North America, Walmart might be wise to hold off on that one.

However, Amazon alone has carved out a niche in brokering ready-made platforms like HBO Now and CBS All Access through its Channels marketplace. Anecdotal buzz about Channels has been solid, and Amazon executives—and their content parters—rave about the performance of the marketplace. Still, Amazon—which claimed around 160 Channels content partners over the spring—hasn’t released much in the way of concrete sales and customer metrics for Channels, creating the impression that there might be plenty of room in the a la carte distribution market for a player like Walmart.

Certainly, as the largest DVD retailer during the heyday of the disc format, Walmart has the relationships it needs with media companies. And it appears to be tapping those. According to AdAge, Vudu has finally begun reporting to Scott McCall, the executive in charge of Walmart’s entertainment business at its Bentonville, Ark. headquarters.

It was all the way back in 2010 that Walmart acquired Vudu, an online destination to rent and buy digital movie and TV shows. Walmart’s last major announcement for Vudu, before the MGM original content deal, was the creation of Movies on Us back in 2016.

LOS ANGELES — After demurring on a plan to compete with Netflix, Amazon and Hulu in the subscription video on demand business, Walmart is making a push into ad-supported streaming with its Vudu transactional OTT platform.

The big-box giant, which has deep roots into the video business dating back to the halcyon days of DVD, when it was the format’s most important retailer, has formed a partnership with MGM to produce — drum roll — original series. The shows will be family-friendly and targeted to Walmart’s key consumer constituency: rural America.

They’ll be available for free streaming on Movies on Us, the ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) portion of the Vudu platform, which was launched in 2016 and currently offers about 3,125 older movie titles. It also has 262 full seasons of TV shows.

First on the production slate will be a remake of Mr. Mom, a series remake of the 1983 John Hughes-penned feature, starring Michael Keaton as a laid off Detroit auto-industry middle manager adjusting to running the show at home as his wife, Teri Garr, brings home the bread as a rising star in the ad biz.

“It’s just the beginning,” Hulu head of advertising VOD Julian Franco said in announcing the series at the Newfronts West conference in Hollywood. “It’s one that we hope will be of many. We have a pipeline of new exclusive content coming.”

MGM’s film library includes franchises such as James Bond, The Hobbit, The Pink Panther and Rocky, just to name a few titles that might be adaptable to the format. The TV library has Fame, Stargate SG-1 and Teen Wolf.

MGM owns the Epix premium network, as well as the MGM HD channel. It also owns a pay TV distributed VOD channel, Impact, focused on action dramas.

With more than 200 OTT platforms currently vying for audience worldwide, Walmart would have been entering into a fairly saturated market with an SVOD play. But AVOD seems be fertile ground for participants with the right niche. EMarketer estimates the U.S. ad spending on digital video will grow about 30% this year to $27.82 billion.

Walmart is set to announce a partnership with MGM to produce original content for the big box store’s Vudu transactional platform, according to Reuters.

The news service said Walmart will make the announcement Wednesday during a presentation at the Newfronts West event in Los Angeles.

The "family-friendly" content will be focused to Walmart’s consumer base—that is, folks not living in major cities. The report didn’t specify what Walmart will be paying for the content. But it did say the shows will reside within Vudu’s Movies on Us sub-platform, the free-to-consumer, advertising video on demand (AVOD) portion of Vudu that includes mostly archival movie titles.

“Under this partnership, MGM will create exclusive content based on their extensive library of iconic IP (intellectual property), and that content will premiere exclusively on the Vudu platform,” Walmart spokesman Justin Rushing told Reuters.

Related: SpotX Gets Programmatic Pole Position at Vudu

Walmart is reportedly shelving a plan to compete with Netflix, Amazon and Hulu in subscription video on demand.

Walmart acquired Vudu in 2010 as a hedge against declining DVD and Blu-ray sales. The platform specializes in sales and rentals of digital movies and TV shows—a competitive market, with Apples iTunes Store, Amazon, Comcast and others in the mix.

Walmart doesn’t break out financials for Vudu. 

MGM Worldwide Television has promoted Mark Burnett to chairman, and the long-time television executive has agreed to extend his employment deal with the company to 2022.

Burnett, who made his name first as a producer of reality hits like Survivor and The Apprentice, has been president of MGM Worldwide TV since 2015, when his production company One Three Media was acquired the movie and television studio.

“Mark is a one-of-a-kind creative individual with an incredible eye for talent and content and a long track record of success,” said Kevin Ulrich, CEO of Anchorage Capital Group and chairman of MGM’s board of directors in a statement. “We are confident that under Mark’s leadership, MGM Television’s best days are ahead.”

Burnett has added a huge number of scripted and reality series to the MGM slate over the years. Earlier this week premium channel Epix – owned by MGM – added his boxing reality series The Contender to its lineup. 

“In the past four years at MGM we have renewed all our television franchises and have added a lot of new hits,” Burnett said in a statement. “This is the most fun I have had in my career and I know we will continue to build on these successes. I believe so strongly in the future of MGM and the team that surrounds me and it was important for me to extend my involvement well into the future.”

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MGM named former Participant Media executive Ted Lim senior vice president, strategic planning and corporate development. He will report to MGM chief operating officer Chris Brearton.

In his new positon, Lim will oversee deal execution, collaborate on implementing ongoing growth initiatives, formulate new business models, and identify new partnerships and opportunities.

“Ted’s specialized background in strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, and integration makes him an essential addition to our management team as MGM embarks on an aggressive and innovative growth strategy,” Brearton said in a statement.

Lim previously served as senior vice president of strategy and business development at Participant Media. During his tenure, Lim played a key role in Participant’s investment in Amblin Partners, the acquisition of digital short form video company SoulPancake and its expansion into television series production. 

Prior to Participant Media, Lim was an executive in the corporate strategy and business development team at The Walt Disney Co., where he helped manage the company’s investment in Hulu, including its $750 million recapitalization in 2013, and its acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012. Lim started his career as a management consultant at Bain & Co.

“The opportunity to join MGM during this time of growth for the legacy studio is incredibly exhilarating,” Lim said in a statement. “I look forward to working with Chris and the talented senior management team to help expand and drive growth in 2018 and beyond as we continue into this new phase of innovation.”

VRV, Ellation’s subscription VOD aggregation service, has teamed with Metro Goldwyn Mayer to add Stargate Command to VRV Select, a curated house channel launched last year.

The integration will provide access to the full Stargate Command offering that’s part of an All-Access offering that includes Stargate Origins, a digital, short-form prequel series for the Stargate franchise that was launched last fall, and a library that includes StargateSG-1, Stargate: Universe,Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate (the motion picture), Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Stargate: Continuum and a mix of extras.

RELATED: MGM Slates ‘Stargate Origins’ Digital Series

VRV Select is part of a $9.99 per month SVOD package from VRV that also bundles in services such as Crunchyroll, Funimation, DramaFever, Rooster Teeth, and Shudder, among others. 

RELATED: SVOD Shakeout: The Survival of the Fittest (subscription required)

As a stand-alone, MGM sells All-Access for a one-time fee of $20 (providing access from the Startgate Command launch on Sept. 20, 2017, through May 15, 2018), and will continue to provide those members with a window of exclusivity for newly released content. VRV, meanwhile, will offer episodes of Stargate Origins no earlier than 30 days after each episode first appears on Stargate Command, they said.

MGM also announced that, this summer, it will make the new feature-length cut of Stargate Origins available for sale digitally (in resolutions up to 4K) for $19.99 in the U.S., and will also offer local language versions (at a price to be announced later) in several other international markets, including France, Italy, Japan, Spain and Latin America. That cut, the first Stargate content to be released in 4K, will also be made available for free to All-Access subscribers.

VRV announced that it now supports Apple TV devices, complementing its reach on other streaming platforms that includes web browsers, iOS and Android mobile devices, Android TV, Fire TV boxes and sticks, Xbox One and PS4 consoles, newer-generation Roku devices, and Google’s Chromecast.

"We are honored to partner with MGM to bring Stargate, one the most beloved sci-fi franchises of all-time, to VRV,” Eric Berman, head of business development & partnerships at Ellation, said in a statement. “Together, we can now offer the fandom access to their favorite content across mobile and living room devices through the VRV app, which as of today, is now available on Apple TV."

VRV has not announced subscriber figures, but, at last check, said it had about 2 million registered users.

Epix said it has reached a carriage deal with Comcast that will make the premium channel available to X1 video customers early next year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Epix was formed in 2009 by a trio of content providers – Viacom’s Paramount Pictures movie studio, Lionsgate Entertainment and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. But the service often struggled to obtain carriage in the early days, lost in the shuffle of more dominant players like Home Box Office, Showtime and Starz. Earlier this year, MGM bought out the other EPIX partners and continued its strategy to develop more original programming such as existing original series like Get Shorty, Berlin Station, Graves and, coming soon, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair.

“Comcast’s Xfinity TV is one of the most innovative and powerful distribution platforms for entertainment content across the United States,” said MGM chairman and CEO Gary Barber said in a statement. “As we increase our investment in original series, expand content offerings and commit more resources to developing EPIX’s brand and appeal, we are excited to partner with Comcast and bring EPIX’s suite of premium content to their customers.”

With the Comcast deal, EPIX will be available live and on demand through the Xfinity Stream app to EPIX customers. The addition of Comcast’s 22 million subscribers will expand EPIX’s overall availability to about 70 million homes.  

“This agreement marks an incredible milestone for our company and provides EPIX with a launchpad to deliver our content to more consumers on every platform,” said EPIX executive vice president and general manager Monty Sarhan in a statement. “We’re extremely pleased to be in the Comcast universe.”

Former Turner programming chief Michael Wright has been named president of Epix, assuming his new role on Dec. 4.

Wright was appointed to his new role by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, which completed its purchase of the remaining interest in Epix it didn’t already own in April.  He will report to MGM chairman and CEO Gary Barber, who had served as interim president of Epix after former Epix president and CEO Mark Greenberg left in September, and will lead creative and marketing efforts for the channel.   Business operations will continue to be overseen by Monty Sarhan, Epix executive vice president & general manager. Sarhan will also work closely with Chris Ottinger, MGM’s president, Worldwide Television Distribution & Acquisitions on all distribution matters. 

Wright has a long history in the entertainment business. He most recently served as CEO of Amblin Partners, a content creation company he launched with director Steven Spielberg in 2015 and was named CEO of DreamWorks Studios in 2014. Wright served as president and head of programming for Turner, TBS, TNT, and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) from 2002 to 2014, when he left the company amid a voluntary buyout of more than 500 employees.  

“We are thrilled to welcome Michael into the MGM family,” Barber said in a statement. ”His television industry experience and creative instincts are the perfect combination to help us execute on our original content strategy for Epix and drive additional value creation for MGM overall.”

Epix has recently gotten more aggressive on the original programming front, expanding its lineup to include The Truth About the Harry QuebertAffair, currently in production in Montreal and starring Patrick Dempsey in his return to television, Ben Schnetzer, Virginia Madsen and Damon Wayans Jr..  Early next year, MGM Television will begin production on the second season of Get Shorty, starring Ray Romano and Chris O’Dowd. Those series join existing Epix originals like Berlin Station and Golden Globe nominated Graves, docu-series America Divided, Danica, about racing superstar Danica Patrick, and big movie franchises James Bond, Rocky, and Star Trek.

“Epix, under MGM’s ownership, is strongly positioned to excel as a provider of engaging, entertaining original content,” Wright said in a statement. “This is an exciting time in our business, and I'm looking forward to working with Gary, the EPIX and MGM teams, to bring the best storytelling voices to the network and move EPIX into the next phase of its growth.”

Epix president and CEO Mark Greenberg is departing the network after eight years at the helm.

Greenberg’s departure comes five months after the premium service was acquired by MGM – one of the founding owners of the service along with Lionsgate and Paramount. MGM chairman and chief executive officer Gary Barber announced Greenberg’s departure in a memo sent to staffers this morning.

RELATED: Epix Writes A Script For Growth

“As we have completed the integration of Epix into MGM, Mark Greenberg, the founding CEO of Epix, has decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities in the media and entertainment industry,” Barber said in the memo. “Mark has been a driving force behind the success of the company and a pioneer in TV Everywhere, leading Epix to become the first cross-platform network and overseeing its programming expansion into original scripted series.”

Epix will be lead in the interim by Monty Sarhan, executive vice president, programming, strategy and enterprises.

Greenberg, who has served as Epix's president and CEO since it launched in 2009, said in a statement that this is the “right time to leave.”

“Founding Epix and building it over the past nine years into a thriving and successful business has been one of the great accomplishments of my professional life,” Greenberg said. “With the completion of the integration of Epix into MGM, I have decided that I am ready to move on to other interesting and exciting opportunities in the media and entertainment industry that will allow me to tap into my entrepreneurial spirit and build on my experience at Epix.”

The full internal memo from Gary Barber follows:
When we announced our acquisition of Epix earlier this year, we expressed our excitement about adding the fastest growing premium pay TV network to the MGM family of properties. 

As we have completed the integration of Epix into MGM, Mark Greenberg, the founding CEO of Epix, has decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities in the media and entertainment industry.

Mark has been a driving force behind the success of the company and a pioneer in TV Everywhere, leading Epix to become the first cross platform network and overseeing its programming expansion into original scripted series.

In the interim, Epix will be managed by Monty Sarhan, executive vice president, programming, strategy & enterprises, and its talented operating team that is already in place. He will report to me for the time being with help and assistance from MGM's senior management team including Chris Ottinger, president, worldwide television distribution & acquisitions and Ken Kay, chief financial officer.

In closing, I want to thank Mark for building and leading the business over the last nine years. His dedication and commitment to the company during this integration process has been greatly appreciated. We wish him all the best in his endeavors.

We are confident in the future of Epix and look forward to making significant investments in premium content to further the company’s growth and success.

MGM told Stargate fans at Comic-Con International in San Diego that the studio is reviving the franchise in the form of a new live-action original series, Stargate Origins, that viewers can watch on a coming new digital site, Stargate Command, this fall.

The 10-episode series, with episodes running about 10 minutes each in length, will debut this fall and follow the character Catherine Langford who appeared in the 1997 motion picture and in the first TV spinoff series, Stargate SG-1. Other TV series in the franchise were Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe (pictured), the last ending after two seasons on Syfy in 2011. 

MGM said in a release that Stargate Origins will be produced by MGM’s Digital Group and entertainment studio New Form, will be directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan (Virtual Morality) and written by Mark Ilvedson and Justin Michael Terry. Shooting is set to begin next month with production and development being handled by New Form.

MGM released a teaser trailer for the new show and said the new digital platform will have a mix of paid and free content. 

Today at #SDCC, @mgm announced Stargate Origins! Check it out on Stargate Command! https://t.co/MDlD2hBq0yhttps://t.co/W8oGJSqlN3

— Stargate Command (@stargatecommand) July 21, 2017

Key quotes from the release: 

“We’ve been eager to revisit the Stargate franchise, and create an all-new story that honors the founding mythos and gives loyal fans more mystery and adventure,” Kevin Conroy, President of Digital & New Platforms at MGM, said. “We view Stargate Origins as a thank you to fans who have been keeping the spirit of the franchise alive for nearly 25 years. With the increasing popularity of digitally native content that can be streamed to any device, MGM is committed to the production of premium linear mid-form content and are proud to launch with Stargate Origins.”

“We saw a need for a definitive hub for the Stargate fanbase to continue to enjoy news and content, both old and new,” Chris Ottinger, President, Worldwide Television Distribution & Acquisitions, MGM, said. “Stargate Command will open a new door for the community to celebrate and interact with all content in a way that has never been done before.”

“We couldn’t be more excited about our partnership with MGM and their trust in us as a leading digital-first studio to deliver the next compelling chapter of this fantastic Stargate franchise,” New Form COO JC Cangilla said.

Comet TV, a science fiction broadcast network from Sinclair Television Group and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, has launched apps for Apple TV (fourth gen) and the current batch of Roku devices.

Those apps will include Comet TV’s live broadcast feed, plus an integrated program guide.

In addition to those apps, Comet TV is still offered on over-the-air broadcast TV in more than 100 markets, as well as on the Web at www.comettv.com.

Comet TV, which debuted on Oct. 31, 2015, features a library of sci-fi fare that includes films such as The Crow, Gattaca and Labyrinth, classic Japanese Godzilla films, and TV series that include Mystery Science Theater 3000, Stargate Atlantis, and The Outer Limits. Stargate: SG1 is set to return to Comet TV in April.

Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios and Lionsgate have made undisclosed equity investments in adRise, the company behind Tubi TV, a free, ad-based on-demand OTT offering that competes with services such as Sony-owned Crackle.

Tied in, MGM and Lionsgate will also license “library content” to Tubi TV, a free VOD service launched in April 2014 that runs on iOS and  Google mobile devices, the Amazon Fire TV, Roku players and Roku TVs, the  Xbox One and Xbox 360, Samsung connected devices  and Apple TV. They said the deal spans “hundreds” of titles, including Midnight Cowboy, Crash, Rain Man, and The Hurt Locker, Fargo, and American Psycho.

Tubi TV, which inked a movie and TV deal with Paramount Pictures earlier this year, said the Lionsgate and MGM titles will add to its current library of about 40,000 movies and TV shows.

Tubi TV said viewership on its platform have increased 400% over the past year.

In addition to the investment and content licensing deal, Sandy Grushow, former chairman of Fox Television Entertainment Group and CEO of Phase 2 Media, has joined the Tubi TV board. Cota Capital has also come on board as an investor.

"Consumers want more streaming premium content without subscribing to yet another app or paying for another channel. Tubi TV's mission is to make premium content accessible to everyone, everywhere, without having to pay more. Tubi TV will always be free,’ said Farhad Massoudi, founder and CEO of Tubi TV, in a statement.

"We're delighted to partner with Farhad and his team at Tubi TV as we continue to ensure that our content is being monetized across every platform, digital and linear, ad-supported and subscriber-based, domestically and internationally," added Jim Packer, Lionsgate’s president of Worldwide Television & Digital Distribution. "This agreement reflects our ongoing commitment to license our content across an expanding array of ad-supported digital platforms and serve next generation audiences around the world."

"MGM's investment and license agreements enable the studio to expand into OTT services, allowing consumers to find MGM films and series on multiple platforms,” said John Bryan, president, domestic television distribution at MGM.

Global Eagle Entertainment, a provider of content and digital media for airlines, has signed on Thai Airline Nok Air to provide content, connectivity and digital solutions for the carrier’s free in-flight WiFi service.

According to Global Eagle, Nok Air is the first airline in Asia to offer free inflight WiFi connectivity. The satellite-delivered service is provided to Nok Air by Thaicom PLC. In addition to Nok Air, Global Eagle and Thaicom will jointly develop, implement and support inflight connectivity solutions for airlines in Thailand and the surrounding region.

"We're very excited to be the first in Asia to offer free inflight WiFi to our passengers on top of our other free services. This is a testament to our promise of being proactive in bringing new and innovative services to our passengers. Inflight WiFi will provide our passengers with a whole new travel experience, as they can still connect to what is important to them at 35,000 feet in the air," said Nok Air CEO Patee Sarasin in a statement.

Global Eagle was formed in 2011 by former CBS Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment president Jeff Sagansky and former MGM chairman and CEO Harry Sloan as a special purpose acquisition company and raised about $190 million to invest in the in-flight entertainment industry.

"We're thrilled with the launch of another customer as we bring market-leading connectivity and content solutions to Nok Air and its passengers," said Global Eagle CEO Dave Davis in a statement. "We believe our satellite connectivity service, which operates both over land and water, provides the optimal solution for Nok Air, which has many flights on over-water routes to vacation destinations. Supported by our partnership with Thaicom, we remain focused on further expanding our presence across the growing South East Asia region."

Comcast has notched a deal to offer titles from MGM Television through the Xfinity On Demand digital store, the multiscreen electronic-sell through (EST) service the MSO launched last November.

MGM’s debut on the service will start with the 2014 flick RoboCop on May 20. Under the deal, Comcast gains the ability to sell other titles from the MGM library, including Bull Durham, Carrie (2013), Capote, Fargo, Skyfall, Hoosiers, The Princess Bride and the Rocky franchise.

Comcast has previously notched EST deals with Twentieth Century Fox, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, and corporate cousin NBCUniversal.

Comcast’s digital store allows customers to buy movies and TV shows via the Web and the set-top box. Those titles can also be played back on tablets and smartphones via the MSO’s Xfinity On Demand Purchases app.

Comcast has not announced sales figures for its EST offering, but in a recent interview for a feature on cable’s pursuit of the EST market, Matt Strauss, Comcast Cable’s SVP and GM, video services, said that the “vast majority” of transactions made on the service are coming not from the Web, but from the remote control.

At last check, Comcast’s digital video store offered more than 565 movies and 26 TV series, including season one of Netflix original House of Cards.

“Our Xfinity TV customers now have access to hundreds of movies and shows they can own digitally and enjoy anywhere, on any device,” said Michael Schreiber, SVP of content acquisition at Comcast, in a statement. “Our digital store was a hit with customers from day one, and we expect continued success with the addition of the incredible film and television content from MGM.”

“MGM is thrilled to join the Comcast store and to offer its premiere content, including our newest film releases and television series, to Xfinity customers,” added Damien Marin, SVP, domestic pay TV & worldwide digital media. “Through Xfinity, Comcast provides an incredible platform for subscribers to enjoy MGM’s latest releases including RoboCop, Carrie and Vikings as well as beloved movies such as Rocky and The Silence of the Lambs. We are delighted to be part of this service and look forward to delivering more content to Comcast customers.”