Warner Bros. Discovery in talks to merge with Paramount
The two giant media companies have had talks about potentially becoming one giant media company
Aux News Warner Bros. Discovery
Following a stunning reveal by Axios, Variety has confirmed a late-breaking entry for most unbelievable news story of the year (or perhaps “most depressingly believable news story of the year”): Warner Bros. Discovery has met with Paramount about a potential merger of the two super-huge media companies. Axios says that WBD’s market value is more than double Paramount’s, so “any merger would not be of equals”—which is to say that WBD would be consuming the deep-in-debt Paramount the way the evil robot Unicron consumes planets in the 2023 Paramount-owned movie Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts.
Axios has pertinent details about how this is all going down, but it’s worth highlighting that these are just talks and no deals have actually been made yet (and maybe won’t ever be made). Still, the idea of a WBD/Paramount merger is fascinating—and just a little horrifying—so there’s a lot to think about here even on the consumer side.
For example, Axios notes that Paramount has a strong library of kids content thanks to the fact that it owns Nickelodeon, and a deal like this would put SpongeBob under the same roof as Bugs Bunny (assuming infamous WBD boss David Zaslav doesn’t kill Bugs before that happens). But even beyond stuff for kids, since both WBD and Paramount own their own streaming services (Max and Paramount+, respectively), those platforms could be combined into some kind of behemoth (ParaMax+?) that would be a serious competitor to Netflix and Disney+… while removing even more opportunities for consumer choice and putting even more shows and movies in danger of Zaslav and WBD’s terrible cost-cutting axe.
Because therein lies the dark side of a deal like this: As these companies consolidate, the entertainment world gets a little smaller and there become fewer and fewer opportunities for art to get made. You just have to look at the brief history of Warner Bros. Discovery’s existence to see proof of that. Two big companies merged, and the legacy they’ve built since then has been all about cravenly saving money by any means necessary.
But, on the other hand, Axios points out that WBD-owned Turner Sports and Paramount-owned CBS Sports currently share broadcasting duties for March Madness, so combining those two brands into one company would streamline things for college basketball fans. So that’s cool.
65 Comments
It makes a hell of a lot more sense than ATT buying Discovery and WB, I’ll say that much.
I bet Zaslav gets “You’re the AT&T of people!” a lot.
hopefully this leads no where. nothing about this plan sounds good.
“As these companies consolidate, the entertainment world gets a little
smaller and there become fewer and fewer opportunities for art to get
made.”Sam Barsanti, big advocate for “art” of course. I mean, you can really see that from all of his work here. Art art art art art.
You left some “f” out of that last sentence.
We don’t know that he has any marketable skills beyond snarking on pop culture, so he may have a personal interest here.
Hell, he barely possesses those skills.
seems weirdly aggressive
I mean he’s not wrong
If this dude is so bad, maybe just wait for him to say bad shit to mock him? This was fine. It’s not that serious.
And there it is. I saw a number of people earlier this year predict that Zaslav’s goal was to make WBD more appealing for a merger of some kind.I hope the FTC blocks this merger, and then for good measure drowns Zaslav in a bathtub.
The bastard would probably find some way to turn the tub into a tax write-off.
“We in the FTC rarely get to use piano wire, but it is one of the many tools available when standard mediation breaks down.”
If the FTC didn’t block Disney’s acquisition of Fox, I don’t think they’ll block this one. Fox was sold for seven times what Paramount is worth now.
The FTC that rubber-stamped the Fox acquisition was a very different beast than the current FTC, which has been much more adversarial to mega-mergers like this. (See: Microsoft buying Activision, which the FTC fought tooth and nail. And even more recently Adobe’s attempted acquisition of Figma).If Trump gets elected in 2024, and WBD and Paramount wait until 2025 before formally declaring the intent to merge, it’ll be a totally different story.
This. Lina Khan has been kicking ass and taking names. Mergers this size (hell, companies this size) are almost by definition harmful to competition and thus consumers, and it’s high time the public sphere finally started to recognize that.
This right here is where I don’t get that upset about Biden getting back in office. Regardless my opinion of him, the cabinet and appointments by Biden versus anything the GOP would use have very tangible impacts on us all.
Right? Like, we could do a lot better than Biden, but at least we can work with a Biden world. Trump et. al. literally want a fascist dictatorship, genocide, Handmaid’s Tale, etc.
This is actually the opposite of the predictions though. The (very plausible) assumption was that Zaslav was tasked with bringing WB’s debt under control to make them more attractive for being consumed into a larger entity, probably Comcast. Merging Paramount into the blob is very much an absorption the other direction.
The end result is a way-too-big media company either way.
Sure, but that’s just going to continue until everything is Disney. I mean, what’s the last significant merger that actually got blocked…Time Warner/Comcast almost a decade ago?
If you’re talking about just giant media company mergers, yeah. In general the rate of large-scale mergers (in general) has cooled a bit in the last couple of years as the FTC has become increasingly hostile toward them; companies that might have gone for it 10 years ago might not even try to bother if they assume Khan et. al. are going to shoot it down. (And that makes me happy. Giant mergers are almost invariably bad for consumers and workers.)
And then Disney buys this new merged company in 2027.
This might actually be the best case scenario (relatively speaking). I’d rather see this than Disney, a tech monstrosity or some investment group buying either studio and both combined would have a hellva lot to potentially offer.
Immediately no. Block that shit.
Axios says that WBD’s market value is more than double
Paramount’s, so “any merger would not be of equals”—which is to say that
WBD would be consuming the deep-in-debt Paramount
So WBD is already struggling with debt problems and they’re thinking of taking on way more debt? It’s a bold strategy…
At any rate, I propose their combined streaming service should be called MaxMount+ and feature nothing but pornography.
We know Zaslav loves reality TV, so presumably it’d all be amateur sex tapes.
Warner Bros Discovery Paramount WISHES their corporate synergy was as strong as your comment-username synergy.
In the short term these mergers boost the stock prices for both companies, which is what he needs.
I’m sure he’s already picked out shows to delete from Paramount+
“So WBD is already struggling with debt problems and they’re thinking of taking on way more debt? It’s a bold strategy…”That’s how the Pennsylvania Railroad wound up merging with the New York Central. What could go wrong?
If this doesn’t get blocked by the government on the grounds of creating a monopoly, then we should just burn our entire system of government to the ground because it is fucking useless.
Let’s do it anyway.
I’m on board.
Pitchforks and torches are the purest form of democracy.
Probably we need the best computer hackers on the planet.
It won’t happen anyway. The middle class has embraced modern peonage and they’re too besotted with spending money they don’t have, booze, junk food and Netflix.My town went from one cannabis dispensary to eight in one year, and that is by design. You guys don’t have recreational yet? I’m surprised. Actually it’s a hell of a lot cheaper for people to stay with their dealers. But, wow, the taxes generated…Weed and psychotropics will keep the masses happy and compliant.
We need a lot of weed to get through your comments.
It helps, but her sheer, soul-crushing dumbness still comes through.
Nah, medicinal’s just only now taking off.Fun fact: my ostensibly conservative city is THE birthplace of the medicinal weed movement in Australia. Started by, no shit, an ex-drug squad cop and his wife. There’s a yuuuuge plantation out the road, down from one of the chook farms. The middle class has embraced modern peonage and they’re too besotted with spending money they don’t have, booze, junk food and Netflix.One of the saddest and scariest tweets I came across is how the concept of selling out is not just unknown among Gen Z, but completely antithetical to them – kids love the sponsorship and recognition by large, faceless corporations, and actively court it.
So not surprised about the ex-cop. He knows the biz better than anyone. GenZ? They are lost already. After GenX is gone the ‘culture’ will be so entirely different that, if we could come back, we wouldn’t recognize it. Who are these strange creatures, we’d ask. I suppose if some kind of apocalypse were to ocurr soon, wiping out the wealthy too (I can dream), they could start over and possibly make something amazing, because the uber privileged wouldn’t last a few days. The don’t know how to do anything practical.
😀
You just know somewhere a list is being made of all the Paramount content to delete for no good reason whatsoever.
Like those British kill lists the Nazis made for Operation Sea Lion.
Please don’t let Zaslav have the first good Star Trek shows in 30 years. He can have Discovery, though.
WBD is also massively debt ridden as a result of the previous merger.
By the end of 2024 we’ll have three streaming services? All of them unaffordable for too many.
We can’t afford bread. Now they’re taking our circuses too?
Technically if someone already has Max and Paramount+ this would give them one less.
You can get all the content for free/the cost of a VPN subscription though. If things get unaffordable I suspect more people will discover this.
Mega-corps in general need to be broken up, and this “merger”’s potential should be a shining example of why.
The other thread on this brought up the possibility of all of Star Trek being removed as a way to get another tax write-off.
Given the myopic thinking so far, I wouldn’t be totally surprised. It might kick off some consumer rebellion, though. Perhaps enough to get a set of laws put into place in order to rein in the “investor class” abuses of all of the rest of us?
I may have to get a Paramount+ free trial and binge as much content as I can while they still have it.
‘”I may have to get a Paramount+ free trial and binge as much content as I can while they still have it.”’Or you could wait for it to end up on Roku… or Tubi or Pluto TV
I imagine the discussion was “if we don’t join forces, Disney destroys first one and then the other of us.”
America just doesn’t enforce anti-trust laws anymore. Hasn’t since the 80s.
You’d think they’d have learned something from letting Facebook buy InstaGram.But nope, I guess not.
Google: “Anyway, the browser codebase pretty much everyone uses will now prevent blocking online ads, online ads being how we make our money.”
Holy crap. There was an article about a couple of months ago regarding WB/Discovery and their tactics to save money. I mentioned from what I have been seeing from hem it’s almost like Zaslav just wanted the Discovery merger with WB so he can flip it. He and other key members just make a boat load of cash. Only instead of leaving it looks like he just wants to merge, but keep leading. I hope none of this is true. I mean what’s next? Merge with Endeavor so they can own UFC and WWE?
The all new Warner Bros Paramount Chipotle. Proud to be one of America’s 8 companies.
I know Wall Street loves mergers and this news will make both companies’ number go up, and I don’t have an MBA, but I don’t see how two struggling businesses both loaded with debt merging doesn’t result in some kind of fiscal black hole.
Clearly you don’t have an MBA because you’re applying common sense to a long term prospect, rather than trying to maximize values here and now before you jump ship.
Monopolies are actually very bad for the consumer (us).
Think of how efficient the comments will be when we can curse Zaslav and Robbins at the same time!
The Penn Central of media.It will be funny when we nationalize Star Trek.
You know what’s funny is I’ve heard that their ad revenue scheme isn’t working out quit as well for them cause in the U.S. that’s going down.Source: https://www.google.com/search?q=WBD+advertisement+revenueHow do they expect people to have enough time to watch their ads and by extension TV if they’re all at work?
But, on the other hand, Axios points out that WBD-owned Turner Sports and Paramount-owned CBS Sports currently share broadcasting duties for March Madness, so combining those two brands into one company would streamline things for college basketball fans. So that’s cool.What does this do for anyone? The early rounds of March Madness needs to be spread across different networks because there are 4-5 games playing at once and the later rounds are consolidated to the major networks. It’s already one of the most streamlined sporting events in the US.That aside, I really hope this doesn’t happen. It’s not that I care that much for Paramount’s current offerings, I just don’t want Zaslav to get control over another studio. I also don’t understand why Paramount doesn’t just kill their streaming service and license out their movies / shows to highest bidder if they aren’t making money with it. Not every company needs a streaming service and there is potentially a lot of money out there for studios just licensing content – somehow Sony is the only studio that understands this.
Huh. K.Boy, American capitalism sure is going great! No notes, no tweaks needed at all.::sees that Hasbro laid off a shit ton of artists, and is now trying to hire a smaller number of objects that can fix the fucked up appendages of AI “art”::Nope, totally great! Working out for everyone. Jack Welch’s moldering corpse must be pleased!