The 11th Hour Dispatch — Tuesday, September 18, 2018
YOUNG MONEY
The SEC has slapped SeaWorld and its former CEO James Atchison with $5 million worth of fines for not disclosing the negative effects that the documentary Blackfish had on the company. The commission reported that SeaWorld and the former exec “made untrue and misleading statements or omissions in SEC filings, earnings releases and calls, and other statements to the press” about Blackfish’s impact from December 2013 to August 2014. Atchison received numerous emails and internal communication that indicated that the documentary was negatively affecting the park’s success, but he repeatedly publicly stated that there was no tie between SeaWorld’s dwindling popularity and Blackfish. That is, until the park finally admitted that negative impact on August 13, 2014, sinking stocks by 33%. SeaWorld is “neither admitting nor denying the allegations,” but will pay a $4 million penalty while Atchison will fork over $1 million.
BINGE WATCH
Following the trend of every major awards show this year, The Emmys saw its lowest ratings ever last night. According to Nielsen, 10.2 million people tuned in to TV’s biggest night of the year, which is roughly 1 million less than last year. That’s a 7% decrease from CBS’s airing of the award show last year, and that’s pretty good in comparison to The Grammys, which saw a 24% decrease this year and the Oscars, which fell 19%. While The Big Three are probably not jumping for joy at dwindling viewership of traditional TV, it was a great night to be a streaming service. Netflix and HBO (technically still a traditional broadcaster) each left with 23 Emmys, ending HBO’s 17-year streak on top. Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel charmed its way to Outstanding Comedy Series, the first streaming service to do so.
Speaking of Maisel, it was just a massive night for the show overall. Along with the top comedy award, it took home Emmys for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, and creator Amy Sherman-Palladino became the first woman to win both comedy categories for writing and directing.
Other interesting events included Oscars director Glen Weiss proposing to his girlfriend on stage, Henry Winkler winning for Barry after losing six other times over the last 42 years, and Jeff Daniels thanking his horse. The equestrian lifestyle was apparently very hard for him.
BIG BUSINESS
Speaking of gaming, YouTube announced that it’s shutting down its standalone Gaming app, which you probably didn’t even realize existed in the first place. The app, which was launched in 2015, will officially close next spring and its features will be transitioned into a new vertical on the standard YouTube website. YouTube used YouTube Gaming to test (as well as to try to compete with the dominant Twitch) many features that have been expanded to the larger YouTube community, such as channel memberships and the chat monetization feature SuperChat. YouTube’s Director of Gaming Content Ryan Wyatt noted that while more than 200 million viewers are logged into YouTube and watching gaming content daily (50 billion hours were streamed over the last 12 months alone!), the majority are not doing so on the YouTube Gaming app. Don’t let that discourage you though, because Sensor Tower data indicates that the app was downloaded 11 million installs, which means a pretty good chunk of people at least tried out the concept, and Twitch sees considerable user numbers on its own iOS device. In other YouTube news, the company announced a new vertical video ad format last week, signaling that we are, in fact, in The Bad Place.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
Sandra Oh brought her parents on the golden carpet and they melted my heart.
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