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We once had no choice at all when it came to in-flight movies.
How many hours per day would you say that you think about what people watch on airplanes in-flight entertainment?
Airplanes not that often, maybe twice a week.
Theyre trapped in a tin can with it and can choose whether to turn it on.
Sometimes the options are better than wed expect.
How is that programming curated?
They know their customer better than we do.
When you say they know their customer, who is that customer?
It really turns more on the individual taste of the people doing the buying.
Where it gets interesting is what else you offer to a customer in flight.
That often varies not just by the airline but by the people doing the curating and buying.
Its going to be more nuanced based on their buying preference and, frankly, their experience.
How much data do you get on what customers might be watching?
Airlines generally do not share that data.
And in in-flight, theres not.
Theres no Nielsen for planes?
It seems like you would benefit immensely from having that.
The data allows you greater insight, and thats why its proprietary.
Thats why people dont want to share it.
And it varies by the platform and partner.
What kind of approvals?
Big directors will have approval over certain changes in a movie that arent just removing language or nudity.
Some of the airlines will want the films edited for different levels of standards.
And we get calls, because people watch their movies in various places.
Did they get mad?
Were they like, Why did you cut my show?
Its usually a heads-up.
It often comes up when we have an edit and someone pulled a different edit.
When you drop the audio, its called lip flap.
you could have multiple edited versions of a film pretty quickly.
Is there any request that a client might ask for that, as Warner Bros.
Discovery, you would say no to?
Whats a red line you wont cross?
We allow editing for standards and practices and reasonable editing for time.
Beyond that, were not going to allow editing for editorial perspectives.
The work is the work.
Thats what they created, and were not going to alter it.
Were licensing content globally, so you have to take into account that you have multiple markets.
Then were licensing content in multiple platforms.
There are cruise ships.
We do transactional deals, so you’re free to buy content digitally through electronic sell-through.
And sometimes to multiple parties.
It could be between deals.
There could be a reason that its not on a certain platform.
It varies greatly as you look across all of our shows and movies across all territories.
Are there any common recurring requests that you see across different airlines?
I assume anything plane crashrelated is verboten?
Ive never seen anybody watchLostorYellowjacketson a plane.
We always get asked how soon we can make the movies available on the airlines.
And the bigger the hit, the sooner they want the movie.
Thats where we spend a lot of our focus.
The airlines are looking for ways of making the experience better than that of their competitors.
I havent heard about those.What are some examples?
We did one with the spinoff ofSex and the City.
There are a couple of them weve done.
There have been some organic blockbuster licensing hits over the years.
I remember that years ago, Netflix got the streaming rights forBreaking Bad.
Is there an example of any blockbuster hit for in-flight entertainment like that?
I like that question.
The airlines arent ordering, for example, new seasons of those shows.
Ill give you an example of what can happen.
And we license the prior seasons off of NBC to Netflix.
The airlines dont have the size, budgets, or marketing reach to do something like that.
What youwillfind is hits that work in multiple places tend to work in almost all places.
If a series is doing really well for a streamer, its going to do really well in flight.
People tend to gravitate toward either whats buzzworthy or timeless.
I think we like to talk about different genres that tend to work in different places.
So in an in-flight experience, people tend to want to kick back and relax.
Youre going to have a higher usage of more lean-back films, we call them, versus lean-in films.
Theyll still work, but theyre not going to work as well in that environment.
So that is an insight you do have.
Even if you dont have the hard numbers.
We did a study a long time ago called theneed states,and people want to relax.
Its one of your basic needs: You want to tune out.
You want to enjoy yourself.
Thats the majority of the viewing experience, and thats what we all do in our viewing behavior.
What are some popular lean-back titles right now?
Black Adamis very entertaining.Elvisis great, because its a good, long, fun, visually immersive musical ride.
TheHarry Potterfilms always work.
Some big comedies always work.
I can say right now that a disproportionate number of people are watchingTop Gun: Maverick as they should.
Its an amazing movie.
Its a plane movie!
Are there lean-in programs you would say buck that trend?
Things that come back over and over again.
I think that the HBO series are very immersive.
If youre watchingGame of Thrones, you have to pay attention, and that does really well.
Those are the ones that buck the trend, and they check off those other boxes.
Theyre very entertaining and visually incredible, so that helps.
This is a no-go?
You mentioned thatThe Last of Usis a success.
None comes to mind.
If were distributing, were going to distribute widely.
Discovery library at a time?
Some of these things turn over I think, monthly?
Or maybe on different timelines?
Youre seeing hundreds of titles on each of these airlines from us.
Some of the airlines can swap them out monthly, and some do it quarterly.
They only have so much space on their hard drives on a given plane.
Most people dont know that.
Is it literally just a hard drive on a plane?
And I guess its probably operating a server?
A local server like Plex or something?
They do a really good job replicating the experience of a streaming service or streaming services.
It makes you feel like theres a lot of content in there.
Do you get complaints in general either from the airlines themselves or from individual passengers?
Is there even a pipeline for that?
Like a suggestion box?
I dont even know what that would look like.
Its an honest question.
Yeah, I dont know either.
No, we dont.
We dont have a pipeline for in-flight customer feedback.
If you find out, let us know.
Wed love to hear some insights.
This conversation has been edited for length, altitude, and clarity.
