By Tali Arbel, AP Technology Writer
The coronavirus sapped $2.8 billion in revenue from AT&T in its most recent quarter, mostly in its WarnerMedia TV and film division. Its satellite TV business, DirecTV, continued to bleed customers.
"I expect we're going to be dealing with some of these economic challenges in the COVID environment as we move forward here," said AT&T CEO John Stankey said during a call with analysts Thursday.
WarnerMedia revenue fell 23% to $6.8 billion due to a pullback by TV advertisers, particularly as there were no live sports, and movie theaters closed.
Hollywood shut down production due to the pandemic, delaying movie releases and series for both traditional TV and streaming services. Stankey said the company hopes to resume film and TV production next month.
The company is hoping to navigate the shift to online video with its HBO Max service, which launched in late May. AT&T said it had 3 million people sign up with the $15-a-month service one month after it launched, while 4 million "activated" their Max account — it's included free for certain AT&T customers and cable subscribers who already pay for HBO.
There are 36.3 million U.S. subscribers to HBO Max or HBO. The company said it had "work to do to educate and motivate" HBO customers that they could switch to HBO Max, which has more content.
HBO "has gotten off to a rather inauspicious start," wrote MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett in a note to investors.
In the wireless business, AT&T's biggest, revenues were relatively steady, slipping 1% to $17.15 billion. It lost 151,000 customers who pay a monthly cellphone bill. That number included 340,000 people that AT&T kept providing service to even though they had stopped paying because of economic difficulties due to the pandemic as part of the "Keep America Connected Pledge" many telecom companies made to the Federal Communications Commission. That agreement with the FCC ended on June 30. CFO John Stephens said the company is contacting those customers and wants to try to keep them, but didn't specify how the pricing would work. AT&T said it also had 159,000 home internet customers who weren't paying because of the pandemic.
Tens of millions of people in the U.S. can't get broadband or can't afford it, and that has only grown more difficult for them during the pandemic as work, school and social interaction have shifted online.
The company added 135,000 customers to prepaid phone service, which tends to be cheaper.
AT&T Inc. also lost 886,000 customers in its "premium" TV division, which is mostly DirecTV subscribers. That video base has shrunk by a quarter in two years.
Overall, the Dallas company's quarterly profit fell 65% to $1.28 billion, or 17 cents per share.
Adjusted for asset impairment costs and other items, earnings came to 83 cents per share. Wall Street expected per-share earnings of 78 cents, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research.
Revenue fell 9% to $40.95 billion, just shy of expectations.
AT&T shares fell less than 1% to $29.91 Thursday.
A new initiative will allow UK deaf audiences to see captioned films before general release
For once, deaf audiences are being prioritized at U.K. cinemas.
Paramount Pictures UK will be showing their movies with captions the day before general release, meaning deaf and hard of hearing cinemagoers across the country will be able to watch them first.
The distributor is starting with the robot animation "Transformers One" on Oct. 10. Subtitled screenings of Paramount's upcoming films, "Gladiator II," "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" and "The Smurfs Movie," will follow over the next few months.
Rebecca Mansell, chief executive of the British Deaf Association, called the initiative ground-breaking. Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences have been struggling to attend the few available subtitled film showings because they are often scheduled at inconvenient times, she said.
"It fits in with the cinema's needs, but not necessarily when the Deaf community want to go," she said. "The deaf community always feel that they are the last ones to know, the last ones to watch something, the last ones for everything. And now we're going to be the first. It's definitely a really exciting moment."
Around 18 million people in the U.K. are registered as deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, according to the association.
Paramount has also been running deaf awareness training with cinema managers and staff in U.K. cities so that they can better communicate with customers.
Yvonne Cobb, a TV presenter and celebrity ambassador for the British Deaf Association, was running the training at a large cinema in central London's Leicester Square Wednesday.
She said the three-hour training session wasn't enough for staff to become fluent in British Sign Language, but workers were able to learn basic signs, how to interact with deaf... Read More