Verizon’s Foray Into Hollywood Is Already Getting a Reboot
- Executives said to acknowledge shortcomings in meetings
- Video service remains foundation of media strategy, CFO says
Over the past few months, senior executives from Verizon Communications Inc. sat down with producers, agents, filmmakers and studio executives to issue a mea culpa. Go90, the mobile video streaming service the company introduced in the fall of 2015, had fallen well short of expectations -- and Verizon knew it.
Go90 didn’t have as many users as Verizon intended, and it was time to reset, according to people familiar with the conversations who asked not to be identified discussing private meetings. The nation’s largest wireless provider, eager to start a new business as growth slows in the mobile-phone industry, had gone boldly into media investments in the past few years, buying Intel Corp.’s OnCue and AOL Inc., but its strategy hadn’t always been clear.