The COVID-19 pandemic turned the TV world on its ear in a short time, and the industry is grappling to learn which trends will stick and how to address the many challenges, said panelists on Digital Media Wire’s virtual Future of Television conference Monday.

Shares of Universal Electronics Inc. hit a 52-week low Friday before the stock closed 16.6% lower for the day at $35.70 after a bleak Q3 earnings report Thursday. Revenue grew only 1.4% year on year to $155.6 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30; it had a net loss of $1 million vs. net income of $6.2 million due to components shortages and logistics delays.

Universal Display Corp. CEO Steve Abramson warned investors on a Q3 call Thursday not to read too much significance into the decline in sales to panel maker BOE, its third-largest customer. Universal drew only 7% of its revenue from BOE in Q3, half the share it contributed in the year-earlier quarter, said UDC's 10-Q.

Supply chain constraints took a 5%-7% bite out of potential Q3 revenue for Snap One and will have a similar impact in Q4, said Chief Financial Officer Mike Carlet on a Thursday earnings call. Components shortages, manufacturing and shipping led headwinds for the company in the quarter.

Tech companies and trade associations favor working more closely with U.S. trade partners to diversify information and communications technology supply chains and make them more resilient to disruption and bottlenecks, several commented Thursday in BIS-2021-0021. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security sought comment to help the secretaries of Commerce and Homeland Security prepare a report to the White House on supply chain disruptions in the “critical sectors and subsectors” of the ICT “industrial base” by the one-year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order (see 2109170042).

Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen is unfazed by investor skepticism about the company’s capability to build out its 5G network in time to meet regulatory deadlines and do so within the $10 billion budget it allocated for the rollout, he said on a Q3 call Thursday. With supply chain bottlenecks so widespread, Ergen dismissed an analyst’s suggestion that Dish should consider asking the FCC to postpone its 5G buildout deadline for 2022.

The White House is pressing Congress to pass legislation with $52 billion for U.S. chipmaking (see 2106090007), White House National Security Council Senior Director-International Economics and Competitiveness Peter Harrell told an AT&T livestream event Thursday. “The bigger picture is we’ve got to get the funding across the finish line,” he said. “Congress has to get the funding across the finish line, and we have to move on expanding capacity here at home and with our allies.”

Some Roku TV OEM partners “were hit particularly hard with inventory challenges, which negatively impacted their unit sales figures and market share in Q3,” said Roku’s Wednesday Q3 shareholder letter. Supply chain problems sparked a 42% average spike in U.S. TV prices, driving TV sales down 31% year on year, said Roku Chief Financial Officer Steve Louden on the company’s Wednesday earnings call.

Spending on influencer marketing in the U.S. will rise 33.6% this year to $3.7 billion, almost $1 billion more than in 2020, said an eMarketer report. Growth will continue in double digits until 2023, approaching $5 billion. That compares with estimated spending of $58.66 billion on social network ads, which are seen growing 26.9% over 2020. Both are social media-based.

The U.S. and its trade allies increasingly worry about the “digital authoritarianism” being practiced by China and other “undemocratic” countries, including “intrusive surveillance and censorship,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in Q&A during a keynote Wednesday at a Georgetown Law Center virtual conference. Their practices can “influence the ability of Americans to enjoy their civil liberties right here at home,” she said.