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Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Though Showtime is being rebranded into Paramount+ With Showtime, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish says the Showtime brand is alive and well and more projects based on the cable channel’s most iconic series, including “Ray Donovan,” are in the pipeline for the integrated platform. “We’re not just doing that streaming, we’re doing that linear as well,” Bakish said during a Morgan Stanley-hosted investor conference. “So come sometime this year, when you turn on Showtime linear, it’s going to be Paramount+ With Showtime. And it’s what I call a win-win-win. It’s a win for consumers, because the product is going to be fundamentally better than Showtime. You’re going to get ‘1923’ on it, you’ll get ‘Tulsa King,’ as part of your Showtime subscription. It’s just going to be a bigger, broader product. We fundamentally believe in a broad thesis. So that will work at the consumer level and as part of that, we’re leaning into the Showtime franchises. So you could think about the slate as smaller, which will be less expensive, but also really giving the people what they want — which is more Showtime, maybe more ‘Dexter,’ maybe more ‘Ray Donovan,’ and really leaning into that. And we have some exciting plans there.”

Elon Musk prodded advertisers “to use Twitter yourselves, and believe what you see on Twitter, not what you read in the newspapers.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Nexstar is still dark on internet streamer FuboTV on Tuesday, the TV station group giant’s president and chief operating officer explained why. “We are in a dispute with CBS right now over the Fubo situation,” Tom Carter said during a Morgan Stanley-hosted investor conference. “But keep in mind that virtual MVPDs contribute less than 10% of our distribution revenue and our distribution revenue is about half of our total revenue and Fubo is the smallest vMVPD we deal with. So we’re talking about a relatively minor amount of money, quite honestly, to both us and CBS. So it’s kind of easy to pick Fubo as a fight to have.” Nexstar executive vice president and chief financial officer Lee Ann Gliha noted: “We view this as a CBS-only issues and it’s just driven by the specific issues that surround the CBS situation.”

Kim Kardashian is trying to keep the focus on her kids amid Kanye West‘s string of controversies.

Paramount Global and Walmart have reached a streaming bundle deal that will see Paramount+ offered at no charge to subscribers of 2-year-old loyalty program Walmart+.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media AnalystThe upstart sports brand Overtime announced a Series D round of funding to the tune of $100 million, with Liberty Media Corp. joining its long roster of investors.In an interview for the latest episode of the Variety podcast “Strictly Business,” Dan Porter, CEO and founder of Overtime, pledged to grow the company’s existing leagues in basketball and football.

The African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) announced its special achievement honorees for the 4th Annual AAFCA TV Honors who will be celebrated at an invitation-only, in-person luncheon on August 20th at the SLS Hotel in Los Angeles. 

That in turn will have a major ripple effect across Hollywood’s creative community and the global content production ecosystem, which in recent years has been primed to operate in an environment of seemingly endless demand for new TV shows and movies. Morgan Stanley this month projected the rate of content spending by the 14 largest players in global media to expand at a 13% compound annual growth rate from 2022-25, when the tally will top $200 billion.

Elon Musk has unveiled a group of investors that together will provide about $7.14 billion in financing commitments for his pending $44-billion acquisition of Twitter, and said he’s talking to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey about sticking around as part owner.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorUPDATED: Elon Musk this week reaped $8.4 billion in a series of stock sales of Tesla, the electric car company he heads, evidently as part of raising money for his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.Musk, , the world’s richest individual, sold more than 4.4 million shares of Tesla on April 26 and 27 at various prices of about $870-$1,000 per share, according to SEC insider transaction filings Thursday. Additional disclosures Friday showed that he sold another 5.4 million Telsa shares on April 28.

Twitter and Elon Musk are said to be close to clinching a sale of the social media giant to Elon Musk after the Tesla CEO came through with finanancing late last week.

Naman Ramachandran The 11-member Twitter board met on Sunday to consider billionaire Elon Musk’s $43 billion takeover offer for the social media company, according to reports.Musk “wooed many of the social media company’s shareholders with financing details on his $43 billion acquisition offer,” according to Reuters which quoted people familiar with the matter. “The company’s decision to engage with Musk… does not mean that it will accept his $54.20 per share bid,” according to Reuters.

Elon Musk is serious about that offer.

filing with the SEC. The $46.5 billion – backed by debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other financial firms – is $3.5 billion more than the $43 billion of his publicized offer, though it was not immediately clear whether that represented a higher price-point offer or just buys Musk additional negotiating wiggle-room.The filing says Twitter has not responded, and that Musk is exploring “whether to commence a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Common Stock … at a price of $54.20 per share.” Any shareholder could choose to take the offer; if a majority (plus Musk’s outstanding shares, just over 9%) were to agree, he could take control — though Twitter’s recently enacted “poison pill” conditions could upend that process.The filing is notable in that it prevents Musk from making the same mistake a second time: The Tesla CEO got in hot water with the SEC for tweeting in 2018 that he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420.

Elon Musk has assembled financial commitments worth $46.5 billion to buy Twitter and said he is considering a tender offer – or going over management’s head to make his bid directly to shareholders — “but has not determined whether to do so at this time.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorTech billionaire Elon Musk is moving forward with his potential bid to acquire Twitter, revealing that he has lined up $46.5 billion in financing for a possible tender offer for the company.The financing was disclosed in an SEC filing Thursday. Musk’s financing includes commitments from Morgan Stanley and “certain other financial institutions.”According to the filing, Musk has not yet determined whether he will make a tender offer for Twitter or whether he will take other steps to further the proposal.Last week, Musk — the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who is the wealthiest person on the planet — proposed to buy Twitter for about $43 billion in a hostile takeover, offering $54.20 per share for the social media company.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefChinese TV producer Linmon Media has filed an application for an initial public offering in Hong Kong. It is the third time that the eight-year-old company has sought a stock market flotation.The heavily-redacted draft prospectus, sponsored by Morgan Stanley and CICC, does not reveal how much fresh capital the company aims to raise, nor the company’s anticipated valuation.

Two business stories converged as Elon Musk took a Twitter kick at Netflix after the streamer’s stock sank on subscribers losses.

Billionaire Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for about US$41 billion in cash, saying the social media company he has often criticized needs to go private to see effective changes.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorSpotify has suspended premium service in Russia after the country launched its war on Ukraine — a move that the audio streaming powerhouse expects to result in a loss of about 1.5 million paying customers in the first quarter of 2022.That’s according to Spotify CFO Paul Vogel, who spoke at Morgan Stanley’s 2022 Technology, Media and Telecom Conference on Wednesday. According to a Spotify spokesperson, the loss of its business in Russia is not material: The country represents less than 1% of total revenue.Vogel also alluded to the recent controversy over podcaster Joe Rogan, which has spurred calls to boycott the streamer (but Vogel didn’t identify Rogan by name).Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Vogel, Spotify was trending ahead of its Q1 guidance of adding a net 8 million total users, including 3 million paying customers.

After a conversation covering broadband, wireless spectrum, DOCSIS and other “wonky” corners of Charter Communications’ business, CEO Tom Rutledge saved his pay-TV punches for the closing stretch.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorNetflix execs have regularly insisted that there’s no way the company would introduce an ad-supported service.Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann, speaking Tuesday at an investor conference, took a slightly more open tone: He noted that the subscription streamer doesn’t currently have any plans right now to introduce an ad-supported VOD plan, but he didn’t rule it out at some point in the future.“It’s not like we have religion against advertising, to be clear,” said Neumann, speaking Tuesday at Morgan Stanley’s 2022 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. “But that’s not something that’s in our plans right now… We have a really nice scalable subscription model, and again, never say never, but it’s not in our plan.” During the session, Neumann was asked about Netflix’s thinking about a cheaper, ad-based tier after Disney announced plans to rollout an AVOD plan for Disney Plus starting late in 2022 in the U.S.

Bob Bakish, CEO of Paramount Global, took the floor for the first time publicly since the renamed company’s recent and not well-received Investor Day, touting streaming prospects but acknowledging, “We are going to have to prove that to you over time” – referring to Wall Street.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterParamount Global CEO Bob Bakish says Disney Plus’ decision to launch a cheaper, ad-supported version later this year is “validation of the strategy,” which Paramount (recently rebranded from ViacomCBS) itself uses for a tier of its streaming service Paramount Plus.“They’re 100% right,” Bakish said during Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference Tuesday, when asked about Disney’s announcement last week to roll out an ad-supported subscription plan for Disney Plus, to launch first in the U.S. in late 2022.

Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann addressed the decision to pull out of Russia and pushed back ever-so-slightly less firmly than the notion of advertising being introduced to the service.

Walt Disney CFO Christine McCarthy said the entertainment giant’s total exposure to Russia and Ukraine combined is about 2% of its total operating income — with Ukraine about 10% of that 2%.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorDisney CFO Christine McCarthy insisted that media giant’s move to introduce a cheaper, ad-supported version of Disney Plus later this year is not a “hail Mary” to try to hit aggressive streaming-acquisition goals with a lower entry price.The goal of Disney Plus with ads is to provide consumers an additional choice for how they want to subscribe to the service, according to McCarthy, speaking Monday at Morgan Stanley’s 2022 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference.“We had some preconceived notions of what consumers wanted” before the company launched Disney Plus, she said — in other words, the assumption was that people generally wanted zero advertising. McCarthy said Disney did some additional research and found that some consumers viewed ad-supported streaming services more favorably than ad-free services.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterJennifer Lopez’s “Marry Me” is the most-streamed day-and-date movie on Peacock and Will Smith’s gritty “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” reboot “Bel-Air,” which debuted after the Super Bowl last month, is the platform’s top series, Comcast CEO and chairman Brian Roberts said during a Morgan Stanley conference Monday.More to come…

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefBlackOps Studios Asia from the Philippines, Story Arch Pictures from the U.S. and Agog Film from Hong Kong have joined forces to develop, produce and finance a slate of genre movies that target the streaming marketplace.The 16-title slate comprises nine films and seven series in the action, horror and sci-fi genres, with 11 flowing from BlackOps, two from Story Arch and three from Agog.