Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, left; David Zaslav, CEO and president of Warner Bros. Discovery, center; and Bob Bakish, president and CEO of Paramount Global.
Getty Images
Companies and industries have ups and downs. The legacy media industry is in a valley.
The first half of 2023 has been a colossal disappointment for media executives who wanted this year to be a rebound from a terrible 2022, when a slowdown in streaming subscribers cut valuations for Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global roughly in half.
Instead, investors have once again become excited by Netflix’s future prospects as it’s cracked down on password sharing, potentially leading to tens of millions of new signups. Netflix shares have surged the past five months, outpacing the S&P 500.
Meanwhile, the legacy players can’t get out of their own way.
Netflix vs the S&P 500 over the past five months.
“When it rains it pours,” said LightShed media analyst Rich Greenfield. “It just keeps getting worse.”
It’s been a bumpy ride for Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger since he returned to lead the company late last year. Disney recently finished laying off 7,000 employees. Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy stepped down last week. The company is pulling programming from its streaming services to save money. Its animation business is in a major rut, with its latest Pixar movie, “Elemental,” recording the lowest opening weekend gross for the studio since the original “Toy Story” premiered in 1995. Shares have struggled in the past five months.
Disney vs. the S&P 500 over the past five months.
Warner Bros. Discovery vs. the S&P 500 over the past five months.
Paramount Globalcut its dividend last quarter as streaming losses peak this year and a weak advertising market exacerbates a terminally ill cable network business. Wells Fargo released an analyst note Friday saying the bull case and the bear case for the company were the same: selling for parts. Warren Buffett, perhaps the most acclaimed investor in history, told CNBC that Paramount’s streaming offering “fundamentally is not that good of a business.”
Paramount Global vs the S&P 500 over the past five months.
Fox Corp. vs the S&P 500 over the past five months.
NBCUniversal has weathered the storm the best, shielded by its parent company, Comcast, which gets its revenue from cable and wireless assets. It’s also taken advantage of missteps from the aforementioned. MSNBC became the No. 1 cable news network this month for the first time in 120 weeks, dethroning Fox News for a week amid coverage of former President Donald Trump’s federal indictment. Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is by far the biggest box office hit of the year, yet shares haven’t moved much.
Comcast vs the S&P 500 over the past five months.
All of this is happening with an extended Hollywood writers’ strike going on in the background with no end in sight. The writers know the longer the strike lasts, the more pain will be inflicted on media companies, who will eventually run out of already-made scripted content. Zaslav recently gave a commencement address to Boston University and was drowned out by boos and chants of “pay your writers.”
This week may bring even more bad news. Film and TV actors are set to join writers on strike unless they reach a deal with Hollywood studios by Friday.
The beneficiary of Hollywood work shutdowns will likely be YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix, which continues to churn out international content that is unaffected by the strike, said Greenfield.
Legacy media may get a small reprieve if advertising jumps back as the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign heats up. But there’s still scant evidence investors will reward media companies for simply cutting costs. There’s currently no strong growth narrative for legacy media, and consolidation prospects are murky as regulators block media-adjacent deals such as Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision and Penguin Random House’s proposed purchase of Simon & Schuster.
The industry just wrapped up its annual advertising gala in Cannes, France. Legacy media executives still spent company dollars to make the trip to hang out on yachts and drink rosé. The backdrop was as beautiful as ever.
But the landscape is bleak.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is the parent company of CNBC.
WATCH: WPP CEO Mark Read on the state of the advertising market, from Cannes Lions 2023
Amazon’s new MK30 Prime Air drone is displayed during Amazon’s “Delivering the Future” event at the company’s BFI1 Fulfillment Center, Robotics Research and Development Hub in Sumner, Washington on Oct. 18, 2023.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon is facing a federal probe after one of its delivery drones downed an internet cable in central Texas last week.
The probe comes as Amazon vies to expand drone deliveries to more pockets of the U.S., more than a decade after it first conceived the aerial distribution program, and faces stiffer competition from Walmart, which has also begun drone deliveries.
The incident occurred on Nov. 18 around 12:45 p.m. Central in Waco, Texas. After dropping off a package, one of Amazon’s MK30 drones was ascending out of a customer’s yard when one of its six propellers got tangled in a nearby internet cable, according to a video of the incident viewed and verified by CNBC.
The video shows the Amazon drone shearing the wire line. The drone’s motor then appeared to shut off and the aircraft landed itself, with its propellers windmilling slightly on the way down, the video shows. The drone appeared to remain in tact beyond some damage to one of its propellers.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, a spokesperson confirmed. The National Transportation Safety Board said the agency is aware of the incident but has not opened a probe into the matter.
Amazon confirmed the incident to CNBC, saying that after clipping the internet cable, the drone performed a “safe contingent landing,” referring to the process that allows its drones to land safely in unexpected conditions.
“There were no injuries or widespread internet service outages. We’ve paid for the cable line’s repair for the customer and have apologized for the inconvenience this caused them,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, noting that the drone had completed its package delivery.
The incident comes after federal investigators last month opened a separate probe into a crash involving two of Amazon’s Prime Air drones in Arizona. The two aircrafts collided with a construction crane in Tolleson, a city west of Phoenix, prompting Amazon to temporarily halt drone deliveries in the area.
For over a decade, Amazon has been working to realize founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of drones whizzing toothpaste, books and other goods to customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. The company began drone deliveries in 2022 in College Station, Texas, and Lockeford, California.
But progress has been slowed by a mix of regulatory hurdles, missed deadlines and layoffs in 2023 that coincided with broader cost-cutting efforts by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
The company has previously said its goal is to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by the end of the decade.
The hexacopter-shaped MK30, the latest generation of Amazon’s Prime Air drone, is meant to be quieter, smaller and lighter than previous versions.
Amazon says the drones are equipped with a sense-and-avoid system that enables them to “detect and stay away from obstacles in the air and on the ground.” The company recommends that customers maintain “about 10 feet of open space” on their property so drones can complete deliveries
The company began drone deliveries in Waco earlier this month for customers within a certain radius of its same-day delivery site who order eligible items weighing 5 pounds or less. The drone deliveries are supposed to drop packages off in under an hour.
Amazon has brought other locations online in recent months, including Kansas City, Missouri, Pontiac, Michigan, San Antonio, Texas, and Ruskin, Florida. Amazon has also announced plans to expand drone deliveries to Richardson, Texas.
Walmart began offering drone deliveries in 2021, and currently partners with Alphabet’s Wing and venture-backed startup Zipline to make drone deliveries in a number of states, including in Texas.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) sports day event in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025.
Lam Yik Fei | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
Shares of artificial intelligence czar Nvidia fell 2.6% on Tuesday as signs of unrest continued rippling through its kingdom.
Over the month, Nvidia has been contending with concerns over lofty valuations and an argument from the “The Big Short” investor Michael Burry that companies may be overestimating the lifespan of Nvidia’s chips. That accounting choice inflates profits, he alleged.
The pressure intensified last week in the form of a potential challenger to the crown. Google on Nov. 18 announced the release of its new AI model Gemini 3 — so far so good, given that Nvidia isn’t in the business of designing large language models — powered by its in-house AI chips — uh–oh.
And on Monday stateside, Meta, a potential kingmaker, appeared to signal that it is considering not just leasing Google’s custom AI chips, but also using them for its own data centers. It seemed like Nvidia felt the need to address some of those rumblings.
The chipmaker said on the social media platform X that its technology is more powerful and versatile than other types of AI chips, including the so-called ASIC chips, such as Google’s TPUs. Separately, Nvidia issued a private memo to Wall Street that disputed Burry’s allegations.
Power, whether in politics or semiconductors, requires a delicate balance.
Remaining silent may shroud those in power in a cloak of untouchability, projecting confidence in their authority — but also aloofness. Deigning to address unrest can soothe uncertainty, but also, paradoxically, signal insecurity.
For now, the crown is Nvidia’s to wear — and the weight of it is, too.
What you need to know today
And finally…
Lights on in skyscrapers and commercial buildings on the skyline of the City of London, UK, on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. U.K. business chiefs urged Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves to ease energy costs and avoid raising the tax burden on corporate Britain as she prepares this year’s budget.
The run-up to this year’s U.K. Autumn Budget has been different from the norm because so many different tax proposals have been floated, flagged, leaked and retracted in the weeks and months leading up to Wednesday’s statement.
It has also made it harder to gauge what we’re actually going to get when Finance Minister Rachel Reeves finally unveils her spending and taxation plans for the year ahead.
Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach, right, walks to the morning session during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 11, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Workday shares slid more than 5% in extended trading Tuesday after the finance and human resources software maker issued quarterly margin guidance that came in below Wall Street projections.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.32 adjusted vs. $2.18 expected
Revenue: $2.43 billion vs. $2.42 billion expected
The company forecast a fourth-quarter adjusted operating margin of at least 28.5% and $2.355 billion in subscription revenue, according to a statement. The StreetAccount consensus was a 28.7% margin and $2.35 billion in subscription revenue.
Workday’s revenue grew about 13% year over year in the quarter, which ended on Oct. 31. Net income of $252 million, or 94 cents per share, was up from $193 million, or 72 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Subscription revenue in the third quarter totaled $2.24 billion, with an adjusted operating margin of 28.5%. Analysts polled by StreetAccount had anticipated $2.24 billion in subscription revenue and a 28.1% margin.
During the fiscal third quarter, Workday announced artificial intelligence agents for analyzing employee performance testing financial health, and the company revealed plans to buy AI and learning software startup Sana for $1.1 billion. Also, activist investor Elliott Management said it had built a Workday stake worth over $2 billion.
Workday has seen its stock decline this year as pundits discuss the risk of generative AI tools threatening the growth prospects for cloud software incumbents. Company shares have fallen 9% so far in 2025, while the Nasdaq Composite index has gained 19%.