Sony Ups Cost-Cutting Target for Studio Division

TOKYO: Sony Corporation is looking to cut $300 million in costs at Sony Pictures Entertainment by the end of fiscal 2015, up from the previously set target of $250 million, the company's president and CEO Kazuo Hirai announced at a corporate strategy meeting in Japan today.

"We are also steadily implementing measures this fiscal year that intend to enhance the business’s profitability by 25 percent over the previous year," Hirai said.

The TV production and media networks businesses are core focuses for Sony, Hirai continued, where the company has "been seeing steady growth, especially in our Indian networks business as well as GSN and other cable network businesses in the U.S. Especially in the U.S., we had seven direct-to-series orders in the last year and a number of our new series were picked up for a second season. We also produced the number one new drama series, The Blacklist. Given the ever-growing demand for content, we plan to continue to produce quality programs while working to grow our business and profit going forward."

Hirai also noted that Sony should benefit from not being aligned with a particular U.S. broadcast network, as compared with the other Hollywood studios, given the proliferation of online video content. "As the Internet evolves from being a secondary channel for the distribution of content to a source of brand new content, I believe that for Sony, not being among the big networks will actually work to our advantage when it comes to rolling out new businesses of our own…. It’s extremely exciting to have all these new channels where you can distribute your content directly. The value of compelling content is soaring, and this is a very positive development for all content holders and producers, including Sony. And with digital content distribution shifting increasingly from downloads to streaming, the entertainment industry environment as a whole is realigning drastically."