With the ratings boom caused by the second season of "The City of Hope" and "The National Supermodel Contest" being released one after another, Lifetime TV took advantage of the opportunity to release several other original series.

Although the results cannot be compared with the two ratings leaders, it is enough to fill the content of Lifetime TV's other ratings periods, and no longer the embarrassing situation where "Pret on the Sky Bridge" and "American Supermodel Contest" were the same as last fall, and the other ratings periods were still deserted.

While Lifetime TV began to discuss the new year share contract with cable TV operators with more confidence, other media groups that have been paying attention to Lifetime TV have also begun to study the reason for the rise of this TV station. Yes, they plan to follow the trend. This kind of thing is not only in the film industry now. Even the FFM paid cable TV stations that Firefly are preparing for, but are actually planning to follow the trend of HBO.

However, although the cable TV industry is in the storm of a big explosion, Eric is not worried about these followers later. After all, in this country where all walks of life are firmly controlled by capital, not many people want to make decisive moves and make no effort to invest without any clarity. When they react, Lifetime has long established its industry status.

Similarly, in this country of capital, at the beginning of each year, it is the time for major corporate giants to ‘sell transcripts’ to investors, the media and the public.

The seven major Hollywood majors, after last year's film sea tactics and the natural growth brought about by the strong recovery of the US economy, Time Warner's revenue reached US$11 billion in 1995.

However, among the 25 films released by Time Warner throughout the year, except for "Batman Forever" who invested $100 million worldwide to recover $330 million in box office, coupled with its lucrative peripherals, barely achieving profitability, many other large-scale films with a budget of more than $50 million have basically ended in a dismal end.

Especially the production cost of "Future Water World", which has a box office of up to $175 million, has only more than 80 million in North America. Although the global box office reaches 260 million, due to the general low share and high tax revenue in overseas markets, Warner Pictures finally recovered more than 90 million in global box office share. This project alone brought Time Warner a loss of more than 100 million US dollars.

Although the cable TV businesses such as Turner Broadcasting and HBO, which are owned by Time Warner, cannot withstand the bleak film business deficit. In the end, the entire group's annual losses reached 280 million, more than three times that of last year. With the financial report, Time Warner has experienced turmoil again. Ted Turner, the founder of Turner Broadcasting and the major shareholder of Time Warner, even proposed the proposal to split Time Warner on the board of directors. Although the general trend in recent years is resource integration, this proposal has still been corresponding with many board members.

The Viacom Group, which Summer Redstone firmly controlled, also exceeded 10 billion yuan in annual revenue with the strong revenue performance of Blockbuster's videotape rental and sales chain, following Time Warner, reaching a scale of $107. However, compared with Time Warner's huge losses, Paramount achieved a net profit of $760 million for the whole year.

If we talk about comprehensive strength, News Corp., which covers the entire Western world, can be comparable to Time Warner, but the financial system and equity structure of News Corp., which covers the entire world, is too complex in terms of its financial system and equity structure, and its businesses in some countries and regions will even settle separately. Therefore, 20th Century Fox, a subsidiary of the domestic film and television business in the United States, became the main representative of News Corp. Because of this, 20th Century Fox's status is very similar to that of Global and Sony controlled by Sony. In addition, MGM has rapidly recovered its performance, the subsequent four major profits and losses are different, but they cannot be compared with the top three giants.

In the early few months of the year, the American media have successively reviewed the performances of these six Hollywood giants, but still failed to wait for the most popular Firefly Group's annual financial report.

Although the media people who were looking forward to it were all kinds of twitching, after several low-key board meetings and negotiations with the group's main creditors, a group of senior executives finally decided not to release the Firefly Group financial report.

For non-listed companies, publishing financial report data actually has a very clear purpose. For example, last year, because of the issuance of huge bonds of up to US$8 billion, the integration of ABC Group has not been completely completed. In addition, Ron Perelman's acquisition of Firefly bonds and other incidents, in order to prevent unnecessary speculation and concerns in the capital market, Firefly released its financial data for the whole year.

This year, everything within the group has been on the right track, with neither internal or external troubles, and there is no need to do such extravagant things to satisfy the curiosity of the capital market or the media public.

Of course, Eric doesn't want to be too swaggering is another very important reason.

After several months of financial statistics, Firefly Group's annual revenue data was finally fixed at US$23.9 billion, achieving a net operating profit of 2.57 billion. If we include the subsequent funds of US$1.25 billion from the sale of ABC paper media assets and Disney's hand-painted animation studio, Firefly's annual profit revenue has reached US$3.82 billion. Not to mention this data is enough to say to the remaining six majors, "Come together." If we compare it upward, in 1995, Ford, the most profitable of all American corporate giants, had an annual revenue of US$128.4 billion and a net profit of only US$5.3 billion. Even if Firefly's US$1.25 billion non-operating profit and US$2.57 billion net profit revenue is enough to squeeze into the top ten US corporate profit rankings.

Only the board of directors of Firefly Group and the core senior management know the detailed annual financial data. Even some important creditors only know one rough idea. With the professional qualities of these people, of course they will not disclose it to the media.

Therefore, with the public data such as movie box office and TV program ratings, although relevant media and analysis agencies can predict that Firefly Group's annual profit will be very terrifying, without any detailed data, they can only evaluate themselves based on known information.

Because of the lack of official endorsement of Firefly Group, even if these media data are almost the same as the real data, they cannot be widely recognized. When some public see the terrifying annual profit figures of Firefly Group in financial magazines, their first reaction is to question the accuracy of these numbers. After all, if the annual profit data of nearly $4 billion is true, the profits of Firefly Group will be enough to compete with the other six majors. Dividing up 50% of the entire Hollywood profits by oneself has never happened in the entire Hollywood history.

In the midst of the hustle and bustle, the release of Forbes magazine's 1996 Rich List once again made the media explode.

After the release of Windows 95, with the tendency of Microsoft's operating system to unify the world, Bill Gates, who owns 40% of Microsoft's shares, soared from US$12.9 billion last year to US$18.5 billion. Behind him, Warren Buffett and three other super rich men also crossed the threshold of 10 billion US dollars.

However, at the first place on this list, the striking figure of $67.7 billion is like the bright moon in the night sky, making all the glimmer of light around it look completely gone.

Compared with 46.5 billion last year, Eric's personal net worth soared by $21.2 billion in just one year.

At the same time as the list was released, Forbes President Steve Forbes personally wrote: "If Eric Williams had bet on the Kuwait War with all his wealth six years ago, it would have been a reckless gamble. Over the years, Eric Williams has proved with facts that he not only has amazing talent in film and television media, but also has a keen eye that ordinary people cannot reach as a pure investor."

"Since Yahoo in 1991, Eric Williams has invested nearly $5 billion in huge amounts of money in emerging high-tech industries such as the Internet and mobile communications over the past five years. Five years later, these investments have increased by at least four times and are worth more than $20 billion."

"Of course, although Eric Williams' investment in the high-tech industry has been very successful, it is undeniable that the increasingly powerful Firefly Group in Hollywood is the real foundation of Eric Williams. It is precisely because of the continuous and abundant profits that the Firefly Group has brought Eric Williams over the years that he was able to show his skills in the investment industry."

"Compared with publicly held companies such as Time Warner and Viacom, Firefly Group has not released the annual financial data for 1995, but according to the public information that can be queried, Firefly's annual turnover in 1995 should be around US$24 billion, which even exceeds the total annual revenue of Time Warner and Viacom."

"In terms of profits, Firefly Group's profitability is even more terrifying. Compared with Time Warner's annual loss of US$280 million and Viacom's annual net profit of US$760 million, Firefly Group's operating net profit in 1995 should be between US$2.3 billion and US$2.6 billion, which is four times that of Viacom, and even close to the total profits of the six major film companies, Time Warner, Viacom, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal, and MGM."

"This breathtaking profitability makes me feel that perhaps the IRS can really consider levying an alien immigration management tax on someone, well, that's a joke."

The release of the brand new Forbes Rich List was the most direct impact of the media's discussions, but the latest issue of Forbes magazine was released on the day of the release of the latest issue of Forbes magazine. Because the magazine mentioned in detail Eric's investment and returns in the high-tech industry, the U.S. Nasdaq index was directly stimulated, with an increase of 5% on the same day. Many high-tech star stocks, including Cisco, American Online, and Microsoft, even rose by more than 10%.

Forbes magazine is still very credible. Compared with other financial magazines' exaggerated or conservative profit estimates of Firefly Group, the data published by Forbes magazine has obviously received more recognition.

The continued explosion of the global film market and the fact that Hollywood has conquered cities and lands around the world are almost well known, but after seeing the terrifying profitability of Firefly Group, although Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures' losses as a negative case still failed to prevent a large number of capital forces from pouring into Hollywood again.

Under this situation, on March 25, the 68th Academy Awards Ceremony was held as scheduled in the Holy Citizens Hall in Los Angeles.

Although Eric was invited as usual, he was also absent again.

It's not too busy or anything else. The main reason is that sitting motionless for three hours at the Oscars is not a pleasant thing. What's more, Firefly's films have only received some nominations this year, and Eric has no need to attend.

Eric didn't want to go, so Drew, who had already started looking for a dress, also turned down the invitation. The two of them were hanging together in the girl's Beverly Hills mansion to watch the live broadcast.

The script of "Shawshank Redemption" is still lying in the corner, but there has been no Oscars tragedy this year.

In addition to the award-winning popular "Forrest Gump", several other nominated films "Apollo 13" and "Baby Pig" did not show the popularity and influence that could match "Forrest Gump".

In the end, "Forrest Gump" successfully won six awards including Best Picture and Best Director with 13 nominations. Tom Hanks also successfully won the Best Actor Award for the rest of the year, creating a new milestone in Oscar history.

Although I did not attend the Oscars, celebration parties are definitely indispensable.

Because Firefly and MGM are combined, the only major nomination films this year is "Forrest Gump", and there is no need to hold a celebration banquet separately. In addition, Tina Brown, the former editor-in-chief of "Vanity Fair", called and asked, Eric decided to place the celebration tonight at the Oscar party held by "Vanity Fair".

Tonight's Vanity Fair party was held at an art center at the foot of Beverly Hills, less than five kilometers from the Trausdale Manor where Drew's mansion was located. Eric and the girl were not in a hurry at all. They watched the award ceremony live before setting off to the party location.

It was just nine o'clock in the evening in Western time, and the car stopped in the parking lot outside the art center. Eric and Drew had just gotten out. The media reporters who were squatting outside rushed forward, and the dazzling spotlights shone wildly.

The interview opportunities inside the Vanity Fair party will definitely not be open to the public, but the organizer will not be able to take care of the party outside.

"Eric, do you think the numbers released by Forbes magazine are accurate?"

"Mr. Williams, what do you think of Tom Hanks winning the Best Actor for the Oscar?"

“Is there any PR factor in this?”

"Eric, how are your new films going on?"

"Drew, do you and Eric plan to get married?"

"When are you going to have a child?"

“…”
Chapter completed!