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The Walt Disney Company’s stock price soared on Wednesday, up by 10% at the time of publishing, as the company surpassed earnings expectations and unveiled its first new theme park development in 15 years. Following Disney’s second quarter earnings report, the entertainment giant announced an agreement to build a new resort and theme park in Yas Island, United Arab Emirates. “As our seventh theme park destination, it will rise from this land in spectacular fashion, blending contemporary architecture with cutting edge technology to offer guests deeply immersive entertainment experiences in unique and modern ways,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement. While no opening date or project timeline has been released yet, the Abu Dhabibased experiences company Miral Group is set to develop and build the new shoreline resort, with Disney imagineers leading operational oversight and creative design. Our resort in Abu Dhabi will be the most advanced and interactive destination in our portfolio,” said chairman of Disney Experiences Josh DAmaro. Prior to the theme park announcement, Disney also released its favorable second quarter earning report, recognizing “that uncertainty remains regarding the operating environment for the balance of the fiscal year,” the company said in the report. Disney reported a 7% increase in revenues this quarter in comparison to the same period last year, increasing to $23.6 billion. Notably, Disney’s entertainment saw significant growth, with a 2.5 million subscription growth for Disney+ and Hulu from this years first fiscal quarter. “We have a lot more to look forward to, including our upcoming theatrical slate, the launch of ESPNs new DTC offering, and an unprecedented number of expansion projects underway in our Experiences segment,” Iger said in the report. “We remain optimistic about the direction of the company and our outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year.”
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E-Commerce
House Republicans have added a provision to their sweeping tax cut package that would authorize the sale of thousands of acres of public lands in Nevada and Utah, prompting outrage from Democrats and environmental groups who called the plan a betrayal that could lead to increased drilling, mining and logging in the West. Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee adopted the land sales proposal early Wednesday morning. The initial draft had not included it amid bipartisan opposition. The land sale provision put forward by Republican Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah would sell thousands of acres of public lands in the two states, and calls for some of the parcels to be considered for affordable housing projects. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., called the plan deeply irresponsible. Public lands shouldnt have a price tag on them. But [President] Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are working like mad to hand over our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters to drill, mine, and log with the bare minimum oversight or accountability,” said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Clubs Lands Protection Program. The lands potentially for sale belong to all Americans. They shouldnt be given away to pad corporate bottom lines,” Manuel said. The sales were approved as the Natural Resources Committee voted 26-17 to advance legislation that would allow increased leasing of public lands for drilling, mining, and logging while clearing the path for more development by speeding up government approvals. Royalty rates paid by companies to extract oil, gas, and coal would be cut, reversing former Democratic President Joe Bidens attempts to curb fossil fuels to help address climate change. The measure is part of Trumps big bill of tax breaks, spending cuts, and beefed-up funding to halt migrants. House Speaker Mike Johnson has set a goal of passing the package out of his chamber by Memorial Day. All told, 11 different House committees are crafting portions of the bill. Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican and former interior secretary in the first Trump administration, had said before the vote that he was drawing a red line on public land sales. “It’s a no now. It will be a no later. It will be a no forever,” said Zinke, whose state includes large parcels of federally owned lands. Zinke and Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-New Mexico, are set to lead a new bipartisan Public Lands Caucus intended to protect and expand access to Americas public lands. The caucus was set to launch on Wednesday, hours after the resources panel vote. Oil and gas royalty rates would drop from 16.7% on public lands and 18.75% offshore to a uniform 12.5% under the committee-passed bill, which still faces a vote in the full House and Senate once it is incorporated into the final legislative package. Royalties for coal would drop from 12.5% to 7%. The measure calls for four oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over the next decade. It also seeks to boost the ailing coal industry with a mandate to make available for leasing 6,250 square miles of public landsan area greater in size than Connecticut. Republican supporters say the lost revenue would be offset by increased development. Its uncertain if companies would have an appetite for leases, given the industrys precipitous decline in recent years as utilities switched to cleaner burning fuels and renewable energy. Drew McConville, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, denounced the committee vote. The Trump tax bill was already a massive and historic sellout of U.S. lands and waters to corporate interests. This dark-of-night maneuver shows how shamelessly focused congressional Republicans are on sacrificing public benefits to pay for Trumps reckless tax cuts. If this bill passes, the losses to Americas great outdoor legacy will be felt for generations, McConville said in a statement. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner in March proposed using underutilized federal land for affordable housing. Turner said some 7 million homes are needed. Officials under Biden also sought to use public lands for affordable housing, although on a smaller scale. The agencies have not yet released more details of the proposal. Matthew Daly and Matthew Brown, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The vertical video feed is coming to the Netflix app. The streaming service announced Tuesday that in the coming weeks it will pilot the new feature, which it will populate with short-form clips of movies and shows tailored to the end-user’s viewing habits. Netflix users will be able to swipe through the feed to watch, save, or share content with friends, just like Tiktok. Yep the user interface that took over social media is making its way into streamingbut most importantly for Netflix, it’s a play for improving its own content discovery engine. “We know that swiping through a vertical feed on social media apps is an easy way to browse video content, and we also know that our members love to browse our clips and trailers to find their next obsession, so in the coming weeks well be testing a vertical feed filled with clips of Netflix shows and movies to make discovery easy and fun,” Netflix’s chief product officer Eunice Kim said during a virtual presentation. [Image: Netflix] During this mobile-only test, the vertical video feed won’t be available to every single member, Netflix tells Fast Company, but those who get it will see recommendations personalized to them, with feature clips from their top picks for you. Netflix previously tried vertical-video feeds in 2021 with two themed apps, Fast Laughs for comedy clips and Kids Clips for clips from its children’s programming, but it’s forthcoming in-app pilot expands on that concept across the streamer’s library. The announcement was one of a number of design changes Netflix announced Tuesday, including a new My Netflix tab with listed content, reminders for upcoming shows, and a continue watching feed, as well as a homepage designed to show more information at a glance, including callouts like “New Episode,” “Recently Added,” “Oscar Winner,” and “We think you’ll love this” that appear with their own emoji-style icons next to shows. The company is also considering expanding into video podcasts. But it’s the vertical video feed that seems aimed at killing two birds with one stone. [Image: Netflix] Netflix head of design Steve Johnson told Fast Company last year that the two things that keep him up at night are discovery and competition for viewing time from a generation that spends a majority of its viewing hours on mobile devices. By piloting its own short-form, vertical video feed, Netflix is trying to both improve discovery and carve out more viewing time on its app with a swiping experience borrowed from social media. Already, TikTok’s social media competitors like Instagram have made design changes that mirror its vertical video layout, and that trend is now creeping into other app categories. (Tubi launched its own TikTok-ified discovery format, called “Scenes,” last fall.) As TikTok became more popular, full-length, professionally shot shows had to compete with more and more short-form video content, and even with amateur, recorded snippets of their own IP popping up in social feeds. Now, Netflix is trying to meet viewers where they are, with a few potential benefits. By offering viewers shareable clips of its own shows, Netflix has a say in how its content appears on other platforms, while still taking advantage of the soft marketing of user-generated fandom. And if cutting up its shows into bite-size videos and organizing them in a format familiar to social media natives provides Netflix a better discovery funnel for new shows, the format could soon find other closed platform imitators.
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E-Commerce
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