Yahoo Lost $42 Million On ‘Community’ And Other Original Programming

By Tyler Coates @tylercoates
Published Oct. 21, 2015, 1:45 p.m. ET

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Original programming might be earning Netflix and Amazon Emmy awards and bringing big bucks Hulu’s way, but it’s not doing wonders for Yahoo.

As The Wrap reported yesterday, Yahoo lost $42 million in the company’s third quarter, and company’s CFO puts the blame on its original series — particularly the expensive acquisition of NBC’s cult favorite Community. After the TV network cancelled Dan Harmon’s comedy series after five seasons, Yahoo pounced on the opportunity to adopt it as its own entity, giving it a sixth season — which may have been a costly business decision.

“What we concluded is certain of our original video content, we couldn’t see a way to make money over time,” CFO Ken Goldman said. “I’m thinking of Community, I’m thinking of Sin City Saints and so forth. So there, where we had spent money and had some assets on our balance sheet, we elected to write those off. That actually helps us going forward and we won’t have the expense to impact us going forward.”

In addition to the two aforementioned series, Yahoo also put money behind Paul Feig‘s Other Space. Even though Community does have a rabid fan base, it wasn’t enough to bring viewers to Yahoo’s original programming en masse. As Goldman explains:

In thinking through that, we thought of not only what is the cost, but what is the cost to market and create the streams you need to make them successful. So we’re not saying we’re not going to do these at all in the future, but what we’re saying is in three cases, at least, it didn’t work we had hoped it would work, and we decided to move on.

It’s unclear if Yahoo will continue to experiment with original programming in the future, but the chances don’t look too great considering Goldman’s statement.

 

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