AMC Theatres rode the “opening weekend strength” of Spider-Man: No Way Home to sell more than 7 million tickets globally Thursday-Sunday, including 5 million in the U.S., said the theater chain Monday. More than 2 million people watched a movie at an AMC location around the world on Saturday, the most tickets it sold in a single day since Christmas Day 2019, it said. Imax reported separately Monday that it took in $36.2 million in Spider-Man revenue on 834 screens across 77 markets globally, including $22 million in North America. It was its sixth biggest global opening weekend ever, it said. Spider-Man overall took in $334.2 million in its debut weekend, smashing expectations of $160 million-$170 million, Colliers analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Monday. Despite the "raging coronavirus," the U.K. was the film's strongest market with a $41.4 million box office, making it the fourth highest opening of all time, Frankel said.
KRDK-TV Valley City, North Dakota, qualifies for carriage as a local TV station on the Otter Com and Arvig cable systems in the Fargo area, the FCC Media Bureau ordered Friday in response to Parker Broadcasting must-carry complaints against the systems. MB said Parker met its obligation by pledging to buy and install any equipment needed to deliver an adequate signal to the cable headend. The two have 60 days from when KRDK provides a good quality signal to their headend to initiate carriage. Otter is happy to carry KRDK, but the broadcaster hasn't provided its signal or any information about how it intends to do so, said Business Operations Manager Eric Engler. Arvig didn't comment.
Subscribers to SiriusXM’s $35-monthly Platinum VIP plan can activate 12 months of Apple Music for free in a cross-service promotion, said SiriusXM Thursday. Early next year, SiriusXM plans to launch a separate special offer for up to six months of Apple Music free with the purchase of a qualifying SiriusXM sub.
Tegna-owned stations in Washington, D.C., and four other markets might go dark on Verizon Fios' video channel lineup Dec. 31, when the current retransmission consent agreement expires, Verizon warned subscribers Wednesday, saying the broadcaster proposed "unreasonable price demands." Tegna said it's "working hard to reach a fair, market-based agreement with Verizon based on the competitive terms we’ve used to reach deals with other major providers.” Other markets involved are Buffalo; York, Pennsylvania; Hampton, Virginia; and Hartford, Verizon said.
SiriusXM and its Stitcher and Pandora podcasting properties not providing transcripts for most podcasts they stream violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, New York State Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law, the National Association of the Deaf said Tuesday in a complaint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan (docket 21-cv-10542). Not providing transcripts, even when they're available from third-party podcast producers, denies deaf and hard-of-hearing people access to the benefits hearing users are offered, said plaintiffs NAD and five of its members. Sirius XM didn't comment.
The AAA Club Alliance is offering free three-month SiriusXM platinum plan trial subscriptions in the first such agreement. The offer is open to drivers with a deactivated factory-installed SiriusXM car receiver, said SiriusXM Monday.
Gracenote announced a content analytics tool Wednesday that it said can forecast potential future entertainment programming performance. Audience Predict uses Gracenote content metadata, audience measurement data from parent company Nielsen and machine learning. With competition for content growing amid the surge in video streaming services, plus linear networks, “decision making around distribution has become increasingly challenging,” Nielsen said.
Sonos introduced support for Ultra HD audio and Dolby Atmos Music on Amazon Music, it emailed Tuesday. See also its blog post and 2112060048.
When Apple and Amazon wrapped hi-resolution music into standard music subscription packages in the spring, a fifth of all music streaming subscribers had access to high-quality music, Futuresource reported. Though the music services helped enable a “mass-market migration” toward hi-res audio, challenges are blocking widespread adoption, said Futuresource's Simon Forrest. The playback side hasn’t caught up, said the report: In 2022, devices will catch up with the capabilities of music streaming services. Forrest called super resolution a “potential, but unconfirmed, opportunity for the audio industry to use AI-based computation.” It would let spatial and higher resolution audio formats be synthesized on devices, similar to how HD video content can be upscaled, the analyst emailed us Monday.
At least 150 million subscription VOD accounts will be canceled globally next year, said a Deloitte report Wednesday, projecting a 30% industry churn rate. But more subscriptions will be added than dropped, the average number of subscriptions per person will rise, and many subscribers who cancel may re-up, it said. Analysts Chris Arkenberg and Andrew Evans called the trends signs of a “competitive and maturing SVOD market.” Retention will be more important than ever, they said: Churn costs SVOD providers up to $200 per subscriber in acquisition costs, and those could increase as the number of SVOD services grows and the pool of new consumers declines. Four in five U.S. households had a paid SVOD subscription this year, with about 35% churn, said the analysts. While providers are spending “billions of dollars” to shore up their content with top-tier programming, “consumers will only take so many price hikes,” they said, which has led to a rise in less-expensive or free ad-supported offerings.