• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 12, 2023

AMC Networks, a seemingly struggling, mid-sized TV network group, admits the current TV marketplace is a tough one.

Speaking at the Winter Television Critics Association meeting in Pasadena, Dan McDermott, head of AMC Studios and president of original programming AMC Networks, said:

“As human behavior continues to evolve, our industry is experiencing a necessary period of reflection and correction.”

He added that “rising inflation, challenging ad market, too many shows and an over-reliance on streaming metrics that don’t necessarily deliver profitability have caused most content companies, including ourselves, to take stock and recalibrate their forward path.”

AMC Networks has had to ditch upcoming new TV shows and has instituted significant layoffs -- around 20% of its staff.

To be fair, any sort of recession affects all businesses. But for TV in particular, with the rush to find new distribution channels -- streaming/OTT/connected TV -- there is tremendous entropy with the strong possibility of a big financial downside.

All the while, TV networks need to convince vested parties to keep paying -- whether that is national advertisers needing whatever broad reach is left on legacy TV or from pay TV services (cable, satellite, and telco) that continue to pay decent carriage fees to all linear TV networks.

What about small to mid-sized TV networks and platform operators? What can they do? Merge? Sell themselves to the larger, legacy TV-based corporations?

Executives at publicly listed stock-market companies continue to appeal to institutional investors with words like “lean,” efficient,” “nimble” and “synergy.”

Possibly only Fox Corp. has been able to make good on these words as it sold off half its business to Walt Disney, leaving them to a core of strong news and sports content -- professional sports (NFL, Major League Baseball) and Fox News Channel.

So if you don’t have either,what's your next play? Or how can you break some positive news?