Barry Diller is calling on the legacy Hollywood studios to end the dual writers and actors strikes, otherwise it’ll be “catastrophic” to the industry.
The media mogul, speaking on the podcast “On with Kara Swisher,” said the strikes would only strengthen streaming giant Netflix during a tumultuous time for legacy media.
“The strike does one thing, and one thing only, it strengthens Netflix and weakens the others,” said Diller, the chairman of IAC and Expedia, who once held top roles at Fox, Paramount and ABC Entertainment.
He also advised studios to cut Netflix and other streamers out of the negoations with the unions.
“They should certainly get out of the room with their deepest, fiercest and almost conclusive enemy, Netflix, and probably Apple and Amazon,” he said, noting their different business models. He said the legacy studios, actors and writers should be “natural allies” given their century of working together.
The remarks echo comments Diller made earlier this summer on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” in which he said the strikes could cause a domino effect that could produce “an absolute collapse of an entire industry.”
Writers Guild of America members have been striking for more than 100 days, while the actors’ union joined the picket lines in July, halting production of TV shows and movies.
In recent weeks, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has gone public with its latest contract proposal to the writers. It was quickly apparent talks between the studios and writers remain heated.
“There was a very recent attempt to get it on track with the WGA, which I gather collapsed in the last couple of days,” Diller said on Swisher’s podcast, which was recorded in late August. He added it “looks bleak” that the strike could end by September.
Representatives for SAG, WGA, AMPTP and Netflix didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Recent discussions with the writers union included a sit down with top media brass including Disney CEO Bob Iger, NBCUniversal film head Donna Langley, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav.
In recent earnings calls, Netflix and its media peers have said they hoped to come to a resolution quickly with the writers and actors.
Diller said for the “old majors” like Disney, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Paramount Global, if the strikes last through the end of the year the lack of fresh content by the spring or summer of 2024 on their streaming services will lead to subscriber cancellations and revenue losses.
“When they have to gear up to make more programming to get back subscribers, they won’t have the revenue base to be able to produce,” Diller told Swisher. “So that is kinda catastrophic.”
He goes on to call Netflix “an evil genius” that was able to dominate and leave legacy media scrambling to notch profits on their streaming businesses.
While making streaming a profitable business has been an ongoing focus for media companies, Diller said these companies should shift back to focusing on their broadcast and pay-TV networks. While cord-cutting of traditional pay-TV bundles continues to accelerate, the business still remains profitable.
Diller said legacy media should take some of its “shows and creativity and build our networks back up. It’s there for the take.”
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC. NBCUniversal is a member of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.
A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.
“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank,Tan Su Shan told CNBC.
“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.
That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.
After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.
— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.
China rolls back curbs on rare earths. Beijing said Friday that it would suspend some restrictions on exports of rare earth elements. The move follows talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Oct. 30.
Nexperia impasse shows signs of easing. The Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement Sunday that it had taken steps to allow exports of certain chips from Nexperia’s China facility. Shares of Nexperia parent Wingtech Technology climbed Monday.
U.S. government on track to end shutdown. The Senate on Sunday night stateside passed the first stage of a deal that would end the shutdown. The procedural measure allows other votes essential to the agreement to be held starting on Monday.
[PRO] Chinese sectors benefiting from AI. Earnings season in the country is underway, and while it’s spotlighting some AI-related sectors that have seen growth of up to 57%, others are facing a decline because of fierce price competition.
Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.
An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.
China has rolled back a number of restrictions on its export of critical minerals and rare earth materials to the United States, in a sign that a trade truce between the world’s two largest economies is holding.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said Friday that it would suspend some export controls on critical minerals used in military hardware, semiconductors and other high-tech industries for a year.
The suspended restrictions, first imposed on Oct. 9, include limits on the export of certain rare earth elements, lithium battery materials, and processing technologies.
The export relaxations follow talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30.
Beijing also reversed retaliatory curbs on exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and other so-called super-hard materials such as synthetic diamonds and boron nitrides. Those measures, introduced in December 2024, were widely seen as retaliation for Washington’s expanded semiconductor export restrictions on China.
China classifies such materials as “dual-use items,” meaning they can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
Beyond military applications, these critical minerals are used across the semiconductor industry and other high-tech sectors — sectors at the heart of U.S.-China trade tensions.
Beijing has also suspended the stricter end-user and end-use verification checks for exports of dual-use graphite to the U.S., which were imposed in December 2024 alongside the broader export ban.
China dominates global production of most critical minerals and rare earth elements and has increasingly used its export policies as leverage in trade disputes.
As part of the latest China-U.S. trade deal, the U.S. has agreed to several concessions, including lowering tariffs on Chinese imports by 10 percentage points, and suspending Trump’s heightened “reciprocal tariffs” on Chinese imports until Nov. 10, 2026.
The U.S. will also postpone a rule announced Sept. 29 that would have blacklisted majority-owned subsidiaries of Chinese companies on its entity list.
But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.
A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.
“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank,Tan Su Shan told CNBC.
“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.
That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.
After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.
— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.
China consumer prices pick up in October. The consumer price index, released Sunday, showed a 0.2% growth year on year. It beats analysts’ expectations of zero growth and is the first month since June that prices rose.
U.S. government on track to end shutdown. Enough Democratic senators had agreed to vote for a deal that would fund the U.S. government through the end of January, a person familiar with the deal told CNBC.
Another missed jobs report. The ongoing U.S. government shutdown — which is now the longest ever — means the Bureau of Labor Statistics couldn’t release its monthly employment data. Here’s what economists would have expected the report to show.
[PRO] Stocks that could bounce after sell-off. Using CNBC Pro’s stock screener tool, we found several names that are oversold, according to their 14-day relative strength index. This implies they could be due for a recovery in prices.
Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.
An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.
