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Disney Is Purging Content to Avoid Paying Workers and Evade Taxes (jacobin.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Interesting, to be sure:

Outside observers say that the numbers don’t add up behind Disney’s decision to take down the shows and claim a $1.5 billion impairment charge. That’s because Disney is claiming two contradictory things: both that the assets were producing so little value that it’s cheaper to destroy them than to keep them and that the assets were worth $1.5 billion.

“I cannot figure out how they can possibly get to $1.5 billion, because they should have almost no unamortized costs” under the 2017 tax bill, said David Offenberg, a professor of entertainment industry finance at Loyola Marymount University.

[–] givesomefucks 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A big part is there's apparently nothing requiring them to disclose streaming numbers

So it's like how trump does his taxes. They just claim whatever benefits th in the moment. So as a "loss" it's worth a shitton, but as a "profit" it's worth nothing.

It's why actor/writer residuals are so shit, the billion dollar companies do t have to tell anyone how much it actually costs or makes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Regulators and investors are behind the curve in regard to entertainment technology. Big business is taking advantage of everything not written into an ironclad contract.

Their big move upcoming is offloading as much as they can from D+ to Hulu, because if the contract only discusses streaming on D+ than there are no royalties to pay through Hulu.

[–] reddig33 2 points 1 year ago

Actors barely make any residuals from streaming, so this sounds like more magical “Hollywood accounting”.

Breaking up the studios to introduce more competition would help. The same company owns the production studio, the content, the streaming channel, the cable channel, and the broadcast channel. Some studios even own the cable lines, set top box, and/or internet connection. It’s ridiculous.