I'm Angeline on our focus today is media and entertainment and our guest is Naveen Som, a senior director and sector lead for S and P Global.

Out with the old and in with the new.

That, in a phrase, is how one could describe the pandemics effects on the media industry, with cinemas and theme parks close and movies delayed.

Million's, if not billions of viewers spent the past year sat on there.

So first watching YouTube, Netflix or other streaming platforms.

This is the S and P Composite media on entertainment index.

It outperformed the wider market over the past 12 months, up 34%.

The reason?

Well, look at the constituents.

A top tier is dominated by alphabet, which gobbled up a $1.4 trillion or 40% off the total market cap of the index.

Next along Facebook, Disney, Netflix and Comcast, with MAWR traditional cable operators way down on the list.

So now, with vaccines on the horizon and the potential for consumers to get out of the house and away from their TVs and devices, what's in store for the sector for more on this.

I'm now joined by S and P Global's Naveen Sarma Non avian.

This is increasingly a crowded space, especially for streaming.

There's so much choice, is it not oversaturated?

I think it's totally to tell when it comes to that question.

We've seen a lot of companies media companies accelerate their launches of their streaming services over the last year.

Especially Aziz.

You point out, people have been home for for for a tely stay year.

And so I think what you're going to see.

I mean, you know, within the next month, you're going to have every media company essentially launch a streaming service.

Andi, we're gonna have Now we're gonna start focusing on things like what's in the content?

What's the pricing, what the subscriber growth look like?

I think we're going to see a lot of experimentation over the next couple of years.

Frankly, I don't think that the way that things are currently structured today is going to be the way that the services they're gonna be in five years.

And so I think, um, yeah, I think we're gonna eventually have some winners and losers, but I do think it's too early to start picking those winners and losers now, Navin, if we look at the credit and advertising side of this, what are we going to see in terms of consumer behavior?

Where will the winners and losers be?

Yeah, So it's an interesting question, because when we look at media, I think we've seen a better recovery thus far, at least in United States for advertising based companies.

So television radio outdoor advertisers have continued to advertise through the pandemic.

And so the recovery that we see well, we think we'll continue to accelerate this year.

And so we're much more, um, positive about those spaces versus some of the other ones we'll talk about in terms of the recovery prospects in 2021.

How about traditional entertainment operators like cinemas, theme parks, cable TV?

I mean, we got the vaccines being rolled out now.

Are we in for a rebound or are they on their way out?

Well, certainly not on their way up, but we do think that recovery prospects are going to be a bit slower.

So you know all of those sectors air driven by consumer behavior.

Just because people get vaccines doesn't necessarily going to automatically change the behavior and return to a lot of those venues.

And so we think that that those sectors will take longer to recover, you know, more likely, we won't start to see our return to 2019 revenue levels until 2022.

And then from a credit measure standpoint, we don't think that we're going to see a recovery until the least 2023.

Thank you very much.

Very interesting points there.

That was nerve in some a senior director at S and P Global.

Now, before I go, here are some of the top stories we're following in the sector.

Britain's media regulator revoked the broadcasting license for Chinese English language network C g T n after allegations of bias coverage of the Hong Kong protests and after concluding that it was ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

The announcement provoked an almost immediate rebuke from China, which accused the BBC of quote fake news over its coverage off coronavirus.

The New York Times reported better than expected quarterly revenue as digital readership sword in the period dominated by the US election on its aftermath, continuing a trend of increased readership throughout the presidency of Donald Trump.

Revenue rose to $509 million in the quarter On Finally, Microsoft has thrown its support behind proposed new laws in Australia that rivals Google and Facebook have said are quote unworkable.

The law would force them to pay domestic media outlets for content.

Last month, both companies even said they pull some of their key services from the country.

If the rule change went ahead, Microsoft said it would be willing to live by the new regulations on That's your roundup of the media and entertainment sector.

I'm Angeline on on This is Reuters.