It was the week of the Emmy Awards, last week, leaving HBO the biggest winner. Regulatory interventions put considerable pressure on the social networking stocks in our Global Media index. All social networking stocks were down, including heavyweight Facebook. The TPSI Global Media ended week 39 with a loss of 2.8 percent, underperforming the S&P 500, which lost 1.5 percent. The biggest losers included comScore and Pearson. McClatchy was the biggest winner, up 7.5 percent.
Social networking
The US regulators once more took aim at the American internet majors, more specifically the social networking companies. Facebook was faced with another investigation, this time from the Department of Justice (DoJ) in relation to possible monopolistic behaviour. In other news Facebook acquired a company working on a brain control interface. Facebook further launched a VR space, Horizon.
Both the FTC and the DoJ suspected Tinder, owned by the Match Group (a unit of IAC, down 4.7% for the week).of luring people into subscribing with the help of fake accounts.
Other news
- Video. HBO, a unit of AT&T (-1.3% for the week), and Netflix (-2.8%) were the big winners of this year's Emmy Awards. Walt Disney (-1.7%) started taking pre-orders for its upcoming Disney+ service in the US. The company further reached an agreement with Sony (-0.6%) on the use of the Spider-Man character in their respective films.
- Publishing. Pearson (-14%) was forced to issue a profit warning due to faster than expected migration in the US from paper-based textbooks to digital products.
- Advertising. ComScore's (-19%) former CEO was fined by the SEC for overstating the company's revenues, five years ago. ComScore's share price is now down 87 percent year to date.
- Gaming. Google, a unit of Alphabet (-0.4%), launched a new subscription service, Play Pass, giving access to games and apps.
