Connect with us

Business

How Trump's second presidency could bring more drama to Hollywood

Published

on

How Trump's second presidency could bring more drama to Hollywood

Already facing retrenchment and existential concerns about its business model, Hollywood is bracing for more potential volatility from the incoming Trump administration.

While President-elect Donald Trump has not laid out specific plans for the entertainment industry, analysts said his proposed broader policies on global tariffs, as well as the threat of retaliation against companies, could put a chill on Los Angeles’ signature business.

“If I were wealthy today, I would not be buying stock in the entertainment world,” said Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. “There’s going to be a lot of turbulence.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently proposed upping the annual cap on state film and TV tax credits to $750 million, from its current total of $330 million. He and others have called for the federal government to step in and keep the U.S. competitive in global production.

But it’s unlikely that Trump would throw the film and TV business a lifeline, especially in any way that could help Newsom and deep-blue California.

Advertisement

“Let’s face it, liberal Hollywood is the enemy,” Galloway said. “Even though this is a guy who made his name in entertainment, he’s not going to be a pro-entertainment-industry politician.”

Many Hollywood stars and executives were vocal backers of the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, lending her their endorsements and their pocketbooks after pushing for President Biden to withdraw from the race.

Some executives hedged their bets, though. Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav demurred when asked this summer whom he supported for president, saying he preferred someone who would pave the way for more consolidation.

On Thursday, the Motion Picture Assn. trade group, which lobbies on behalf of the studios, congratulated Trump and the incoming Congress on their victories.

“We look forward to working with them on a wide range of important issues for the film, TV, and streaming industry, which supports more than 2.7 million American jobs, boosts more than 240,000 businesses in cities and small towns across the country, and delivers over $242 billion in wages to our workforce each year,” the group said in a statement.

Advertisement

Analysts were also concerned about the effect a potential tariff war could have on the entertainment industry.

If Trump follows through with his threats of global tariffs, nations like China could ban U.S. imports, including film and TV shows, which would dent the already-reeling distribution market, Galloway said. During Trump’s first term, the president’s trade war with China was partly blamed for derailing Hollywood’s relationship with the country.

The potential for retaliation could also be a problem, said Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken finance institute.

As a candidate, Trump railed against CBS and said he wanted the network’s broadcast license pulled for editing one of Harris’ answers during her interview on “60 Minutes.” The news program has flatly denied allegations of deceptive editing to help Harris.

That type of directive would likely get tied up in the courts, but “it’s the threat that becomes the issue,” Klowden said.

Advertisement

Films and TV shows that paint Trump in a negative light run the risk of drawing his ire, which could then affect their parent companies, Galloway said. Media and entertainment giants might be wary of the situation Walt Disney Co. found itself in after it battled Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the state’s so-called Don’t Say Gay anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Recently, the Trump biopic “The Apprentice” struggled to find a distributor after the former president’s team threatened legal action. The film fared poorly at the U.S. box office.

More conservative media, on the other hand, could see a boost in their stock, including the Murdoch family-owned News Corp., which publishes the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily, and Fox Corp., parent company of Trump’s favored Fox News.

“Back in the day, studios were little companies making movies,” Galloway said. “Now they’re cogs in enormous, multinational operations where one domino suddenly sends 50 others falling.”

Advertisement

Business

Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan

Published

on

Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan

Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.

In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”

“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”

Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.

In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.

Advertisement

The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.

“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.

Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.

The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.

Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.

Advertisement

Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.

Continue Reading

Business

Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes

Published

on

Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes

A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.

The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.

The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.

The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.

Advertisement

It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.

However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.

Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.

Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.

“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.

Advertisement

In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”

The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.

“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.

Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.

Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.

Advertisement

Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.

The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.

But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.

Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.

A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.

Advertisement

“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .

Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.

Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.

Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Business

How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Published

on

How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.

But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.

While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.

Advertisement

“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.

It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”

Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.

“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.

The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.

Advertisement

Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.

Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”

Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.

Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.

“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”

Advertisement

For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.

“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending