Sony Global TV Chair Ravi Ahuja Talks ‘Mad Scramble’ After Strikes and Benefit of Not Having a Streaming Service: ‘It’s Not Overly Complicated’

variety.com:

Ellise Shafer During the streaming boom, Sony was one of the few big entertainment companies that held back from creating its own platform.

And now that the market has cooled down, Ravi Ahuja, chairman of Sony Pictures’ Global Television Studios, sees this as a massive advantage.

During a keynote at Content London on Wednesday, Ahuja said that what drew him to Sony in the first place was because while working at Disney and Fox, he “saw firsthand the complexity of operating in that kind of environment.” “Here, it’s not only a very large, independent studio, with the benefit of a lot of resources … but with a very focused mission: make great shows, find the right home,” Ahuja said. “That’s it.

It’s not overly complicated by trying to satisfy platform demands, trying to balance different things.” Now that the strikes are over, Ahuja said that “things are getting back to normal” in the production world. “But it doesn’t feel normal, because it’s a mad scramble to get it all going again,” he added. “This is an interesting inflection point in our industry with COVID, labor issues, streaming resets… so many things happening.