Fear for DC Comics as a Publisher

[dewline]

Something of concern:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2019/07/31/where-does-dc-fit-in-atts-vision-for-warnermedia/#17bfed2e79b7

I stopped reading their ongoing series after the second Flashpoint mini-series, but have been occasionally picking up trade collections of favoured material from my era of preference. Evidently, I should be doing more of that, and faster.

Comments

[shanejayell]

On the plus side, WB might sell 'em to Marvel.

[dewline]

Somehow, I can't see that. At least not soon.

[shanejayell]

Actually, with the so/so preformance of DC at the box office plus AT&T's HUGE debt load, I could see it.

The TV side would be complicated, admittedly.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I'm wondering if Nintendo, Sony or another international firm might make a bid for DC in conjunction with some other parts of WB.

I've not been keeping up with the division of the entertainment pie and who owns what.

[thewayne]

Oh, dear. I somehow either missed the news or it had slipped from my mind that DC was owned by Warner, or I had thought that Warner was their movie parent. I didn't realize that AT&T now owned them. That isn't just very bad, it's extremely bad.

I hate to say this, but based on past performance, any quality from them is largely doomed. All AT&T cares about is quarterly share performance. They lost so much money buying DirecTV and haven't been able to turn that around that they're kinda desperate to get money out of anything else, and they're going to squeeze until it squeaks. AT&T bought it as the upslope in cord-cutting was beginning to accelerate and it isn't slowing down: it's a moribund industry and the people who sold it to them are in stitches from laughing.

I've been very concerned about HBO because they have very specific methodologies about producing quality content, and that takes time. It doesn't lend itself to everything being 'of the week', and if they try that, quality will go down the crapper and people will abandon it as it becomes a poor copy of the CW.

Not good.

I don't really buy comics anymore, so I'm not surprised I wasn't aware of this, but that is quite a thing.

[dewline]

Yeah, AT&T now owns WB which owns DC.

So, yeah, I'm scared more than a bit right now. I don't know if the rest of the comics-focused news sites have figured out these implications as you have yet.