The Return of Brian Williams

     Brian Williams, an anchor at MSNBC, was suspended a few months ago for telling false Iraq War story on air NBCU did nothing to promote his return from his months-long suspension, but when people heard about his return, his viewer numbers went up. Andy Lack, the NBC News chief, said Williams' return was a strategy to get their viewer ratings up and also a long term investment for the company. On September 23rd, Williams' anchored from 3:30-5:50 PM and got nearly 600k viewers, some people argue that it is because of the Pope Francis story, because of that people are mocking him on Twitter with #BrianWilliamsPopeStories.

 Brian Williams Returns

   This article caught my attention because I thought that people would not want to watch Brian Williams again because of how he terribly lied and you never really know when he will do it again. This impacts me as a consumer because I watch the news to keep up with local and national events, and I think that Brian Williams isn't really a reliable source anymore, although it was a smart way for MSNBC to get higher viewer ratings. A question this raises for the industry is will his career last long?

The Dolans, Who Built the Cablevision Empire, Are Now Leaving

     The Dolan family is the family that made one of America's cable fortunes, which began with 1,500 subscribers in Long Island over 40 years ago. On Thursday, the Dolan family settled to sell the company Cablevision, the cable television company that Charles F. Dolan started 42 years ago. The company was sold to Altice, a European media company, for $17 billion, including debt; the family sounded forlorn about the deal. "Since Charles Dolan founded Cablevision in 1973, the Dolan family has been honored to help sheperd our customers and employees through the most extraordinary communications revolution in modern history," James L. Dolan, Charles Dolan's son, stated. "Now, nearly half a century later, the time is right for new ownership of Cablevision and its considerable assets." The Dolans were a family that established themselves as a pioneer in the cable industry in the 1950s. The sale to Altice values the Dolan's collective stake in Cablevision at about $2.2 billion. The company has about 3 million customers in the Northeast, it hasn't really had the best customer satisfaction, they earned a mediocre customer satisfaction rating in a survey last year, although it has been the source of cable television and Internet for many in the tristate area. However, the family isn't leaving entirely, they still have control of the Knicks and the Rangers, the Madison Square Garden, and AMC Networks, the home of "The Walking Dead" and other successful shows.

Cablevision deal article

    What caught my attention about this article is that the company made a lot of money off this deal, they even got rid of their debts because that was part of the deal, their debts were passed on to Altice. This impacts me as a student and a filmmaker because Charles Dolan's company wasn't always in a good condition but he kept persisting and eventually became a very successful company. A question this raises for the company is if Altice will improve the company from when the Dolan family had control of it.

Hulu Becoming a Bigger Competition For Netflix

     Hulu Making Smart Moves

        Now that Netflix announced that it will not renew its deal with Epix, Hulu quickly announced its deal with Epix. People subscribed to Hulu will now gain movie access to movies and not only TV shows, Hulu will have access to movies from Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate, which are the studios that own Epix. This deal will officially begin on October 1st. This is now making Hulu an even bigger competition for Netflix. "It's a huge deal for us... Obviously this is a big move for us in the movie market and really substantially increases the slate we have in our library. And it's certainly not the last movie deal you are going to hear from us. We're going to continue to invest a lot of money in programming." Eric Craiger, Hulu's head of content, told The Times in a phone interview. Ted Sarandos, Netflix content chief, stated in a blog post that the company had chose not to renew the Epix deal because it is veering away from nonexclusive content.

Hulu Article 

        

          This specific article seemed very interesting because Hulu is known for having only TV shows, but with this deal it will become even more popular. This will also hurt Netflix as a business because Hulu is now slowly turning almost exactly like Netflix. Hulu is really making smart business decisions, I'm sure it will definitely gain customers off of this deal. 

        This will impact me as a consumer because I am currently subscribed to both services and with this deal I might as well just let go of Netflix and subscribe only to Hulu if they're nearly the same thing. A question this raises is what is going to be the next move for Netflix? Will this hurt Netflix as a business or improve it?