AMC Entertainment won’t stop trying to "convince" some of the major streaming services to introduce their movies theatrically, said CEO Adam Aron on a Q1 earnings call Monday. “We have had conversations over the years with Netflix, Amazon and Apple,” he said. “We continue to make it very clear that we would be very pleased to show some of their bigger, better movies. But in doing so, we have to respect our long-standing industry partners, the major studios. We can't have one set of rules for the major studios and a separate set of rules for streamers.” The $187.4 million domestic opening last weekend of Disney's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is proof “all those who doubted the consumer appeal of movie theaters” were wrong, said Aron. “We can say to our shareholders with some glee and delight that the resilience of movie theaters is right now on clear display and that the future of the cinema is bright,” he said. Some on Wall Street and in the media “have been filling our heads for two years now about the rise of streaming and the corresponding end of theaters,” he said. “This won't be the first time or the last time that conventional wisdom will be proven to be filled with so much folly.”

After two years of COVID-19 impact, artist services and expanded-rights revenue increased 19.5% at Warner Music Group in fiscal Q2 2022, reflecting increases in merchandising and concert promotion revenue, said the company’s Tuesday earnings report. Performance revenue rose 9% “as bars, restaurants, concerts and live events continue to recover from COVID disruption,” said Chief Financial Officer Eric Levin on the company's earnings call. Streaming revenue from emerging platforms grew to $345 million for the quarter ended March 31; digital revenue, 70.1% of the company’s total recorded music revenue, was $931 million, up 8%; physical revenue grew 3.4% on “increasing demand for vinyl,” said CEO Steve Cooper. The music company continued international expansion, acquiring Qanawat Music, a distributor in the Middle East/North Africa market, expanding WMG’s presence in Dubai, Cairo and Casablanca, it said. It also partnered with Bollywood artists in India, where it grew share over the past 24 months, Cooper said. He positioned WMG at the “intersection of gaming, social and entertainment" with brands including Roblox, Fortnite and The Sandbox. An area of incremental revenue is digital fitness: WMG was the music launch partner for Peloton’s gaming-inspired fitness experience, Lanebreak, Cooper said. The company continues to build its presence in podcasting, launching in April Interval Presents, an in-house podcast network covering music, pop culture and social impact. WMG expects music to remain “resilient” amid macroeconomic challenges, Levin said. In video streaming, people generally subscribe to multiple services, he said, vs. audio where they generally subscribe to one service with their music aggregated in one place. Levin called digital music a very “fairly priced, if not even low-priced, high-value service that's central to people's lives.” Shares hit a 52-week low Tuesday at $25.35 before closing 5.46% down at $25.78.

The FCC received no submissions from U.S.-based foreign media outlets for the Oct.12-April 12 period, it said in a report to Congress Monday. The previous semi-annual report, in November, also reported no submissions (see 2111080066). The May 2021 report had only one submission, from Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, which had also submitted in previous iterations of the report (see 2105100054). The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act requires the reports.

Dish Network "is not entitled to a mulligan" since it had plenty of opportunity to consolidate different Illinois municipality lawsuits seeking video service provider fees and opted not to for strategic reasons, Shiloh, Illinois, said Friday (docket 3:21-CV-00807) in opposition to Dish's motion to reconsider (see 2204220031). Since Dish never presented a motion to consolidate, there's no basis for a recon motion, Shiloh said. Dish didn't comment.

Disclosures that Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in Q1, sending the stock plunging more than 35% in a single day last month (see 2204200002), sparked a securities fraud complaint Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that seeks class-action status. Plaintiff Fiyyaz Pirani, as trustee of Netflix shareholder Imperium Irrevocable Trust, accuses co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos and Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann of making “materially false and/or misleading statements" to investors before the April 19 earnings report “because they failed to disclose material adverse information and/or misrepresented the truth about Netflix’s business,” said the complaint. Senior executives “failed to disclose to investors” that Netflix was “exhibiting slower acquisition growth” due to subscribers’ account-sharing and increased competition from other streaming services, it said. “As a result of these materially false and/or misleading statements, and/or failures to disclose, Netflix’s securities traded at artificially inflated prices,” it said. The executives’ “wrongful acts and omissions,” and the “precipitous decline” of the Netflix stock, caused members of the potential class to suffer “significant losses and damages,” it said. Netflix didn’t comment Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco granted Pirani's motion in January 2020 to be made lead plaintiff in a similar September 2019 securities fraud complaint against Slack and its top executives that's still pending.

HBO Max's terms of use make it clear that any supposed Video Privacy Protection Act violation claims would be handled individually through arbitration and not via a class-action suit, HBO said in a motion to compel arbitration Monday (docket 1:22-cv-01942) in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Suing HBO and seeking putative class-action status are two subscribers -- one in California, another in North Carolina -- who allege the streaming service's integration of the Facebook Tracking Pixel into the HBO Max website allows disclosure of their video viewing behavior to Facebook without their consent. Plaintiffs' attorneys didn't comment.

Getting HGTV's newsletter is the same as subscribing to its video service for purposes of being considered a subscriber under the Video Privacy Protection Act, counsel for plaintiffs suing Discovery Communications for VPPA violations told the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, according to a letter posted Thursday in docket 1:22-cv-02031. Discovery is accused of providing HGTV newsletter subscribers' personal information to Facebook without notifying them. Discovery, in an April 25 letter that said it's planning a motion to dismiss the putative class action, said district precedent aligns with the argument the plaintiffs aren't subscribers because the email newsletter is separate and distinct from HGTV video content.

FCC intervention is the only way to improve closed caption accessibility due to “recalcitrance and resistance” from industry commenters in docket 12-108, said the National Association of the Deaf, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and other consumer groups in a call with staff from the Media Bureau, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and the Disability Rights Office Tuesday. “More than two decades after the display settings were first adopted, it is time for the Commission to act in a design space that has yielded relatively little improvement,” said an ex parte filing posted Friday. The FCC has “ample legal authority to impose these requirements” under the 1990 Television Decoder Circuitry Act and commission precedent, the groups said. The FCC “rightly has never found that the bare provision of captions can serve Congress’s goals of achieving equal television access,” the filing said.

Some 51% of U.S. TV content viewers subscribe to a traditional pay-TV service, down from 63% last year and 81% in 2020, said Horowitz Research Wednesday. Though 37% are paying for a subscription VOD service -- and not cable or satellite -- a 30% year-on-year increase, the overall percentage of TV content viewers subscribing to at least one SVOD service fell to 62% from 74% in 2021, partly due to a drop in Netflix subs, it said. An additional 10% have access to other SVOD services by borrowing passwords, said the research firm. Streaming subscribers reported spending an average $75.80 monthly on SVOD and/or virtual MVPD services, up $26 a month from a year ago. The share of TV viewers watching free, ad-supported services, including over-the-air content via antenna, was unchanged at 66%. Survey findings suggest churn will become a "bigger challenge" as consumers become even more cost-conscious, Horowitz said, saying 18% of SVOD subscribers are planning to cancel at least one of their services, 42% for vMVPD customers. The next phase in the maturing industry “will be a reset,” said Horowitz Chief Revenue Officer Adriana Waterston. The firm predicts more ads in free or low-cost ad-supported tiers and more consolidation of services and subscriptions.

Activision Blizzard shareholders approved Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion buy of the game company in an all-cash transaction (see 2201180009), voting virtually in a special meeting Thursday, Activision said. More than 98% of the shares voted were in favor of the deal, it said. Microsoft’s proposed buy, the largest in its history, is expected to close in Microsoft’s fiscal year ending June 2023.