Not so fast, Netflix. Paramount launches hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery
Paramount launches hostile bid for Warner Bros. to rival Netflix : NPR
Paramount Global has sweetened its offer to acquire Warner by a bunch, offering an all-cash deal valued at $108 billion to take over the parent company of HBO, Warner Bros. Studios and CNN, among other notable properties.
So as stated, this is not a done deal.
And I’m hoping if the Netflix deal goes through they don’t drop any content, like how HBO Max dropped a bunch of content when they combined with Discovery+.
The Republican president has said he will be involved in the decision about whether the federal government should approve the $72 billion Netflix-Warner deal.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-netflix-warner-bros-merger-problem-f3e317b61899d34ce507ba38af4a2934
Since paramount has already fulled bowed down to Trump by the Colbert issue and the “anti-bias” Omsbudsman that makes sure conservative ideas are put into everything paramount makes, I think Paramount has the obvious corrupt path to win this one. They’ve already paid their bribes and agreed to be a propaganda outlet.
Well golly, I wonder which direction Trump’s gonna lean on this one.
In a federal securities filing, Paramount said the hostile bid will be backed in part by funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Affinity Partners, an investment firm founded by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
Bolding mine.
Of course it is. When I heard Trump say “‘could be a problem’ because of size of market share” I thought that seems like reasonable thing to say, what’s his angle? It was of course selling out America to foreign autocrats and making Trump and his family very rich. His two favourite hobbies
Holy shit would Netflix be better than Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE buying WB with Fascism-compliant Paramount in charge. There’s no good option here but there are worse options.
Yeah I don’t even know who to root for. Seriously fuck this timeline.
Don’t be too hasty, that will depend on how many of the billions, Kushner has undoubtedly been paid to make this happen, he sends Trump’s way. He’s not going to satisfied by just his daughters family getting paid, he will hold out for his cut too
It also helps that Larry Ellison is a big-time Trump supporter.
Maybe we can brainstorm some even worse options:
Let China and ByteDance aquire WB and merge it with TikTok
Let Russia Today back in and then let them acquire WB
There, now the prospect of a Saudi Prince controlling WB doesn’t seem so bad!
Truth+ is looking for some streaming content.
This has very little to do with the article (which I’ll read in just a sec), but I absolutely detest the headline formulation “I/They did X. Then Y happened…”
Eta: oh, great - I didn’t even get to the part where “They checked out Trump’s unhinged streaming site”, much less to the part where “Then Charlie Kirk was shot”, before hitting a “This article is only for Slate Plus members”.
Came across this YouTube short which was pretty amusing:
Writers also suffer under Netflix, of course;
Multiple screenwriters report that company executives are sending back scripts with requests to narrate the action, such as announcing when characters enter the room.
…
One example of black-and-white dialogue cited by N+1 is the 2024 Lindsay Lohan Netflix flick Irish Wish. At one point, Lohan tells her love interest, James: "We spent a day together. I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow, I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.”
Superficially, this is because Netflix is aware the most of its viewers are looking at their phones/tablets and the TV is the ‘second screen’, thus they need to keep reminding people what is happening. More fundamentally, this is because Netflix has basically given up on the idea that it can make TV that will hold people’s attention.
Aside from that, Paramount’s chairman and CEO is crazy Trumpist David Ellison. Putting that lunatic in control of both CNN and HBO would be extremely bad news, depending on how hands-on he wanted to get.
It sounds like a big move if it goes through. A merger like that would change how people use the two platforms because the libraries overlap in some places and differ a lot in others. The price of the combined service and the way they handle existing HBO Max accounts will matter most for users. I am curious how they plan to keep both brands or if they fold everything into one app.
I’m still hoping the Sheinhardt Wig Company will put in a bid.