The 11th Hour Dispatch — Monday, July 30, 2018
BINGE WATCH
Rabbit season! Duck season! The only thing we know for certain is that it is no longer pilot season at Amazon Studios. At their Television Critics Association event this weekend, Amazon announced that they will be discontinuing the program that allowed users to watch shows’ first episodes and share their feedback about what should or shouldn’t be picked up for a full season. The process resulted in Emmy winners like Transparent, but it hewed too closely to the outdated network model and took too long, according to co-head of TV Albert Cheng. They’ll be switching to a more analytics-based approach with insight from their internal teams. While they’re reneging on previous decisions, can they go ahead and un-cancel I Love Dick? Pretty please?
YOUNG MONEY
And #MoviePassDeathWatch continues, with subscribers having difficulties finding theaters that will accept the card today. Meanwhile, parent company Helios and Matheson is once again a penny stock after last week’s reverse stock split, closing the day at just $.80. On Friday, they borrowed $6.2 million, with $1.2 million due back that day and another $3.1 million due later this week. The rest is due August 5, leaving MoviePass likely to either run out of cash again or do a big stock sale, according to The Motley Fool. Regardless, the chances of me being able to see The Meg (aka the Jason Statham giant shark movie) with my MoviePass are looking more and more guppy-sized.
BIG BUSINESS
It could be worse (aka last week’s record-breaking dip), but Facebook is definitely not getting the week off to a good start. Shares for the social giant were down another 4% to $171.06 today, which is bad for both the company and for Mark Zuckerberg. Its market cap is down to $487 billion, and he’s personally lost billions of dollars. After sliding from #3 to #6 last week, he’s still the sixth richest man in the world as of today, but he’s only got a lead of $7 billion on Carlos Slim in seventh place. If I tell my mom to post lots of embarrassing middle school photos of me to boost activity, do you think that’ll be enough to help out poor Zuck?
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
I want nothing but happiness for these two because of all the joy Gina Rodriguez has given to me.
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