That streaming service, with new content from a roster of talent that includes Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Reese Witherspoon, is scheduled for a fall debut.
The Walt Disney Company will also go big on streaming, with plans to fill an expansive new streaming product, Disney Plus, with franchises like “The Avengers” and “Star Wars.” It will also offer the many television shows and films it picked up when it bought the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox entertainment empire for $71.3 billion in a deal that closed in March.Īdding to the competition, Apple is shifting away from its focus on hardware to spend more than $1 billion on Hollywood talent as it enters into the entertainment business with Apple TV Plus. AT&T, which acquired HBO and Turner Broadcasting as part of its $85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner last year, announced plans this month for a streaming service - HBO Max - that will start next year. The company’s dominance has prompted more established media giants to embark on streaming services of their own. Netflix also noted that its second-quarter slate of programming, lacking fresh episodes of two of its original hits, “The Crown” and “Stranger Things,” was not as robust as it had been the previous quarter, which most likely figured in the disappointing results. In its letter to shareholders on Wednesday, the company acknowledged that the higher subscription cost had something to do with its failure to meet second-quarter expectations. The second quarter is typically Netflix’s weakest time of year, but its performance this time was unusually poor. In January, the company announced that it was raising its rates by anywhere from 13 to 18 percent, depending on the subscription plan, with the increases hitting existing subscribers in March. The number of those subscribers dropped during a time when the price for Netflix went up. It was the first time the company had shed domestic streaming customers since it started its digital service 12 years ago and its shares fell sharply. Netflix, the streaming juggernaut that has upended the entertainment industry, showed signs of vulnerability Wednesday when it reported that it had lost 126,000 paid subscribers in the United States during the second quarter.