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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

Well, that's it then. Either I'm officially out of touch, or Time Warner is $100M out of touch. Occam's Razor.

Is this what getting old feels like?

$100 million for two dozen bets (plus management fees) to catch 300MM MAU that yields $100k ad slot inventories. 2000 placement a year to break even. 4000 to double ROI.

TWC has skin in the game to explore a new channel. Snap has skin the game to make sure their top notch sales team can close those deals. And a couple hundred kiddie social influencers are gonna get stupid money to play with instead of being on Youtube or Instagram.

Being old is thinking it's just another form of the horse tracks.

"TWC has skin in the game to explore a new channel." <-- IMO, piece that holds it all together. all media cos have a huge interest in finding and maintaining channels-that-are-not-Facebook - newspapers/magazines/print already nearly live/die by FB's feed (mostly the latter...and the living are now trying to figure out ways to diversify, i truly wish them luck!), and TWC needs to figure out a way to avoid that same dependence as video continues to move more and more online. snapchat is not facebook, and that is worth TWC trying to make work!

Time Warner is not TWC. TWC no longer exists.

I don't think you're necessarily out of touch, but you might be looking at it with the wrong lens.

Time Warner is a media company. Their business is creating and monetizing media, either by selling it or by selling advertising for it. Traditionally they did most of it by TV and cable. With the advent of the internet and sites like Hulu and Youtube, Time Warner is also moving online. But that's if you're trying to focus on selling the content.

If you're trying to sell the advertising around the content, then you've got a problem. Traditionally you make all of that money on highly valuable ad placements between segments of your TV shows right? Sports broadcasts, for example, are premium advertising inventory, but in the last few years things have been hurting badly because of increasing numbers of cord cutters. They all went to Snapchat, Facebook, Netflix, Google (Youtube), so all of these tech giants are trying to eat traditional media's lunch. It's a blatantly obvious move with the sports broadcasting agreements that Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc. have been signing.

This is Time Warner going "well if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Better to embrace all formats that would let you reach (and monetize) audiences than to get left in the dust. Snapchat has somewhere around 150 million active-ish users, and your average TV show (not the blockbusters) probably sees somewhere around 5-10 million viewers? So the numbers actually work out in terms of just reach. I'm not so sure about monetization.

I'm with you: 3 shows a day * 5 minutes * 365 days a year * 2 years < 200 hrs of content for $100M

Now express that budget as something relating to advertising budget and profits. Those 200 hrs should steer tens of billions in sales.

Prime-time TV adverts apparently cost about $75k[1]; $45k for a 5-minute show doesn't seem so unreasonable in that context.

[1]: http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2014/advertising-...

Not to mention prime-time TV is just that -- timelocked. The 5 minute show is on demand and can be accessed at 4AM if the user so chooses.

This is hilariously close to an actual scene from The Simpsons: https://frinkiac.com/meme/S05E20/289238.jpg?b64lines=IEFNIEk...

I used to be with it, then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with, isn't it and what's it seems weird and scary. It'll happen to youuuuu.

I would say that the company that merged with AOL in 2000 is probably the out of touch one.

That said, I always thought that their "subscribe to all of the really old video games" service, GameTap, was a fantastic idea that really shouldn't have crashed and burned like it did.

Snap is just another channel.

This comment is underrated. It's the next generation of media distribution.

I'm 24, I think Time Warner is out of touch. Or maybe I'm old too

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