| Good afternoon from Los Angeles, wherever you may be. It's been a whirlwind week for everyone, so I hope you are getting some rest and finding ways to enjoy your isolation. I made Osso buco for the first time Friday night, finished a book Saturday and am baking some cookies today. Last week, we all started to talk about Coronavirus. This week, we struggle to talk about anything else. The full impact of this pandemic on the global economy remains unclear. Wall Street was blindsided, and the stock market suffered its steepest drop in more than 30 years on Thursday. Analysts are already speculating about what this could mean for the entertainment business. This may seem like a trivial matter, but pop culture has always comforted us during moments of tragedy and fear. Communal experiences – both in person and on TV – bind us together. News outlets are still writing about George W. Bush's first pitch at the World Series after the September 11 attacks. Such a moment is unthinkable for weeks, if not months. Major sporting events have been canceled or postponed, including March Madness, the NBA, the NFL, the Masters and the MLB season. The concert business has shut down for the foreseeable future, with a couple of notable exceptions. And movie theaters are next. With viewership of live entertainment in decline, live sports has been one of the only types of programming we all watch together as a society. Isolated in our own homes, we can text and call about the latest dunk or interception. Instead, people who want to watch the NBA or NHL might instead watch the news, which, let's be honest, is only going to freak them out more. It's too soon to predict what COVID-19 will do to our daily habits once it passes, if anything. But in this week's newsletter, I'll do my best to summarize what's happened to the business of culture so far, and what's likely to come next. For those of you tired of reading about the virus, there's a small dose of other news below as well. -- Lucas Shaw TV networks are going to lose a lot of money Live sporting events were expected to fill prime-time slots across several TV networks for weeks to come. Those networks are now scrambling to fill their airwaves. ESPN is airing old games and documentaries. CBS will air reruns of its primetime shows. Replacement programming will fill a hole, but it won't generate the same interest from viewers or advertisers. The sporting events set for the next month generate more than $2 billion in advertising sales, according to Kantar Media. "We're likely to see one of the greatest downdrafts in advertising we've ever seen in this country," Rich Greenfield, an analyst with LightShed Partners, told me. There is a certain irony in all of this: people are stranded at home, and the one thing many want to watch is unavailable. Is this the tipping point for pay-TV? A lot of media analysts believe the current economic downturn will do to pay-TV what the 2008 recession did to newspaper advertising. Newspaper advertising sales were already falling. The recession hastened their decline, and they didn't come back. TV advertising sales have held up despite the rapid decline in live viewership, and the surge in video consumption online. But the past year or two, TV ad sales growth stopped (see below).  Could it start to turn negative? It's hard to see that so long as TV networks offer live sports, but you never know. Cord-cutting on the other hand... The decline in pay-TV subscriptions is already accelerating. Now people could go without pay for weeks or months, and are going to start cutting expenses. What are people more likely to cut: their $100 cable package, or their $13 Netflix subscription? Streaming's time to shine  Photographer: null Photographer: null Disney released "Frozen 2" on Disney+ three months ahead of schedule, a savvy marketing effort to bring viewers into its service. Most new movies are not available on streaming for months after they leave theaters. Lots of streaming services are trying to seize this moment (without appearing callous). Netflix has tweeted out reminders of titles in its library. My guess is all the streaming services will have strong first and second quarters while people are stuck at home. They don't need to change their programming schedules because they aren't live. They already offer thousands of titles, making them the perfect remedy for at-home boredom. That being said... Disney+ already has pipeline problem  Hilary Duff attends D23 Disney+ Showcase in Anaheim, California, on Aug. 23, 2019. Photographer: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images North America The "Frozen II" move is also a sign of Disney+'s need for fresh programming. While Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and others are releasing new shows every week, Disney+ has struggled to find a new hit since its first one, "The Mandalorian." As Chris Palmeri and I wrote in a story this week – was it really this week?! – "Though just five months old, Disney+ has already seen a number of high-profile projects fizzle." A couple projects got axed. Two more moved to Hulu. The star of a third (Hilary Duff) asked to do the same. The programming team is still trying to determine its brand. (It's easier when your brand is everything.) Disney+ had a monster first few months thanks to a robust marketing campaign and an early hit. But Disney is no longer marketing the service in the same way, and one new show can't sustain interest. Disney's other streaming service has no such issues  Photographer: Amy Sussman/Getty Images Photographer: Amy Sussman/Getty Images While Disney+ doesn't have enough new material, Hulu has an embarrassment of riches. Last week, FX released almost all of its programming catalog — some 1,600 episodes — on Hulu, and debuted a new dramatic series, "Devs." This will all appear under a new brand, "FX on Hulu." John Landgraf, the chief executive officer of FX Networks, has been one of Hollywood's most outspoken internet skeptics. So I spoke with him about why FX is embracing streaming in a big way. "We can radically increase their volume overnight, just as they can radically increase the number of subscribers we can get our shows too," Landgraf said during an interview at his Los Angeles office, which overlooks the backlot at Fox. The concert business is shutting down  Photographer: VALERIE MACON/AFP Photographer: VALERIE MACON/AFP Live Nation and AEG, the world's two largest promoters, are halting arena shows in the U.S. and several other territories until next month, at the earliest. Smaller shows will continue on a case by case basis, in accordance with local rules about gatherings. But more and more states are banning events of more than a few hundred people. Artists and promoters were at first reluctant to cancel events en masse. Musicians have come to rely on live music as their primary source of income. David Crosby told GQ he's worried he could lose his house. But the threat to public health became too much to ignore. Shares of live event companies Live Nation and Eventbrite have tanked over the past few weeks. Michael Rapino, the CEO of Live Nation, has acquired shares to buoy the stock. Not everyone is putting health first. The Vive Latino festival took place in Mexico this weekend, headlined by Guns N' Roses. The organizer declined to cancel because the Mexican government didn't say it shouldn't, and said it was too late for refunds. The movie business hasn't decided what to do  Photographer: Josef Scaylea/Corbis Historical Photographer: Josef Scaylea/Corbis Historical Hollywood movie studios delayed releases for the biggest movies due out the next couple months, including Disney's "Mulan," Paramount's "A Quiet Place II" and "Universal's "F9." Movie theaters remain open, but are reducing capacity. "We recognize that ultimately we are going to be a little bit slower," Russell Vannorsdel, who helps run a local chain of theaters in Iowa, told my colleague Kelly Gilblom. "We're trying to be creative." These theaters will close soon unless they find something else to show. There are almost no wide releases left on the calendar. The box office is expected to take a huge hit over the next couple months. Global ticket sales last year topped $40 billion. It's hard to project how small the numbers will be this year. Movie ticket sales sank to their lowest point in more than two deicades. 6 stories you might have missed -
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