Agreeing on Marriage

AMC TV station, originally controlled by the American Rainbow Media Group, is a cable TV station headquartered in New York.

Its full name is American Classic Movie Cable Channel.

It probably ranks among the top ten in terms of viewership share among American cable TV channels.

If TVB TV stations were included, they wouldn't even be in the top twenty.

AMC was acquired by Smith Media last year and subsequently invested heavily in new TV series and programs.

There are also expansion of company personnel, addition of new advanced shooting equipment, change of company shooting locations, etc.

It also received support from MGM's film library, and suddenly had the copyright support of nearly 3,000 MGM movies and more than 5,000 TV series.

These strengths have allowed AMC TV station to suddenly move from the bottom of the six major cable television stations.

It has become a strong competitor among the top three cable television stations in the United States.

Several large-investment TV series launched after it have received very good ratings.

Among them, "The Sopranos" and "Breaking Bad" both had excellent L+ same-day ratings and L+7 ratings.

L+ same-day ratings and L+7 ratings are a method of calculating the ratings of American TV series.

L+ same-day ratings refer to the single-day broadcast rate of each subsequent episode after the first episode.

Generally, students with more than 400,000 passengers are considered passing, and those with more than 800,000 passengers are considered excellent.

More than 2 million visitors is considered a hit, and more than 5 million visitors is a phenomenal hit.

"Friends" set a viewing record of 53 million viewers on January 28, 1996.

This is the current record for American dramas, and no one can surpass it.

This is also a symbol of the status of "Friends" in American TV series.

L+7 is the total ratings of a TV series in the following seven days after it is broadcast online.

The data of "Friends" in this regard is 290 million, which is also a record that no one can break at present.

AMC's "The Sopranos" generated L+ ratings of 2 million viewers on the same day, while "Breaking Bad" had 2.8 million viewers.

These data can already be ranked among the top ten in this year's TV series.

It’s considered a hit of the year.

Able to achieve such results.

AMC's TV drama department is worthy of Smith Media's heavy investment.

Except TV series.

AMC TV station has also made good achievements in variety shows.

Like Bell Grist, who was specially invited from England with Abel's support.

This former member of the special forces retired and hosted the reality show "Into the Wild", which received good ratings.

So far, one episode is released every week, and there are exactly seven episodes in total.

The total viewership of the seven-episode program was 25 million, with an average of 3.57 million viewers per episode.

This ratings can be considered very good in the context of variety shows.

Of course, compared with the top variety shows, it is completely incomparable.

After all, talk shows are also considered variety shows.

Talk shows have always been the category with the highest ratings among various programs in the United States.

For example, Oprah's talk show, its highest single-episode viewership reached an exaggerated 60 million viewers, and its average single-episode viewership is about 20 million viewers.

Even if I eat two truckloads of blasting bugs, I won't be able to keep up with Oprah's big mouth.

In one year, Smith Media invested $100 million in AMC.

The average ratings of AMC TV stations increased by 158.69% compared with when it was first acquired by Smith Media.

The TV station's advertising revenue has increased even more dramatically, from US$14.56 million for the whole year last year to US$59.68 million in the current nine months.

The increase is more than 300%.

Although it is not as good as NBC TV stations, their advertising revenue can easily reach hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

But this increase can be considered gratifying to the naked eye.

In addition, due to the increase in ratings, the share of cable membership fees will increase.

In the past nine months, AMC TV's total revenue has exceeded US$100 million.

You must know that before being acquired by Smith Media, AMC TV had not even had a total revenue of US$100 million for three consecutive years.

Although losses are inevitable this year, it is still a good start.

This is enough to prove that Richard Plepler, the general manager of AMC TV station hired by Abel, is indeed a very good program content producer.

Under the responsibility of this station director and chief producer, AMC TV station is operating well.

Even without Abel's capital injection at this time.

It is also able to maintain a very excellent development range.

It’s just that after Abel’s bid to purchase NBC television failed.

His attention and eyes were on AMC TV station again.

Under his renewed attention, AMC TV station initiated reform and expansion.

Michael Ovitz, one of the former Hollywood kings, resigned from CAA.

His new job is to join AMC TV station and start fighting for the establishment of AMC TV network.

A few days ago, AMC Television and seven television stations owned by Bloomberg formed a new company called AMC Television Group.

Bloomberg put his seven TV stations into this group through a franchise model and owns 10% of the group's shares.

Abel and Smith Media jointly invested US$5 billion into the company, plus the original AMC TV station.

The current shareholding ratio of AMC Television Group is Smith Media 45%, Bloomberg 10%, Abel Personal 25%, and Smith Family Office 20%.

Michael Ovitz serves as chairman and Richard Plepler serves as chief executive officer.

AMC Television Group has begun its own expansion plan.

The first step of the plan is to swallow up at least 100 of the more than 1,300 independent regional television stations on the East Coast.

The second step is to develop towards the central region and the west coast.

The third part is to radiate throughout the United States.

In the end, we will start to go global, or we will go global from the beginning, but the intensity will not be very great.

According to Abel's vision, AMC Television Group cannot at least lose to FOX, which is the television network owned by News Corporation.

FOX is currently at the bottom of the four major television networks, but it already has 29 directly owned TV stations and 228 affiliated TV stations, covering 95% of the population of the United States and more than 800 million viewers worldwide.

If AMC TV Network wants to achieve this goal, Abel estimates that it will cost about US$15-25 billion and take 4-8 years.

After failing to buy NBC, Abel put the plan into action.

Michael Ovitz is the founder of CAA who has great public relations skills.

This is what Abel used to hook up with the lobbyists of independent television stations across the country.

If this step of the plan can be achieved, then it will be okay even if NBC is not needed in the future.

Of course, if there is an opportunity to acquire it, he will actually do it.

But that's all for the future.

At Smith's farm, Abel spent three days with his mother and Charlize.

Three days later he set off and left Smith's farm.

He did not go to the Sunnis Mountain town or visit his PMC company.

Instead, we first went to the capital of Texas, a deep blue amidst deep red.

The city of Austin is located in southwest central Texas.

Since the mid-20th century, the semiconductor and computer industries in Austin have developed rapidly.

In addition, housing costs are much lower than those in Silicon Valley, attracting a large number of high-tech talents and companies, and becoming a well-known high-tech center.

That place in California is known as Silicon Valley.

This part of Texas, Austin, is known as the "Silicon Mountain" or "Silicon Hills."

Famous semiconductor companies like Freescale and Dell have their headquarters here.

In addition, IBM, Intel, Cisco, 3M, etc. also have important local branches.

It is also the famous "Live Music Capital of the World" in the United States, with many famous musicians, music venues and music events. The city's per capita share of music venues ranks first in the United States.
To be continued...