> One of the longest-running tropes at The Verge is that a workable antitrust policy for the United States would be simply to forbid companies from buying Time Warner because it has never worked and it may never work again, and that we should just pass one law.
Checks out:
Jan 11, 2001: AOL and Time Warner merged to create AOL Time Warner
June 14, 2018: AT&T acquired Time Warner, renamed WarnerMedia
April 8, 2022: WarnerMedia spun out of AT&T, merged with Discovery
They did, but first they rebranded them as Max, thus destroying the incredible name value of HBO. It was renamed back to HBO as part of the spinout IIRC.
This is more consolidation of US media under extremely pro-Israel ownership. I don't think this will work out as well as they hope (look at CBS -- Bari Weiss has driven it into the ground) but it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over, including both "news" and "entertainment", including TikTok.
Is it possible the next administration sues to break them up? Couldn't they also just launch endless investigations of the owners until they spun it off into its own thing
Which foreign adversary and you implying? Are you implying that a specific ally of the USA is really an adversary? On what basis did you make this connection? Which foreign citizens are involved in this transaction? What tangible connection does said foreign adversary have to this company?
A behemoth indeed but the numbers also tell an interesting story. For TV screen share, Youtube has ~13% of total US viewing time vs ~6% for Paramount/Warner. They also go into this merger with staggering debt which does not bode well.
This would be the anti anti trust argument - that it's not studio vs studio, but it's type of screen-time vs other types of screen-time.
Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games? This was during the streaming wars IIRC.
Regardless of how you look at it, this is yet another confluence of IP franchises merging together, whatever juice is left in them squeezed out and reprocessed over and over over time. Kind of what Oracle is in software I guess?
Working in an adjacent entertainment IP focus business myself, my eyes are glazing over a bit at this point.
This is the same argument from when Sirius and XM radio merged. It didn't matter that they were monopolizing satellite radio because the real competition was terrestrial radio and internet radio.
From my perspective YouTube has quietly won the streaming wars. It has a vastly wider variety of content, especially for non-fiction shows. In the cases where there's more direct genre competition, I tend to prefer YouTube overall because, despite its offerings being generally lower budget, they tend to represent a wider variety of "editorial voices". There's a lot of outright slop to wade through, ofc, but there's also a lot of creative risk taking out there to discover.
Meanwhile, yeah, Paramount, Time Warner, Disney, etc. have all become so money-minded and risk-averse that it reminds me of the twilight days of the old Hollywood studio system, where all the major production companies were locked into a heated battle to determine who could be the absolute blandest.
> Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games?
Yes. He always told us that we don't need to worry about the other streamers nearly as much as we have to worry about them turning off the TV and playing games or (gasp!) going outside. TikTok/Instagram Reels wasn't a thing yet, but if it were, I'm sure they would have been on the list too.
youtube has slowly become like 90% of my TV time over the past few years, I think it's the fact that you don't have to commit to watching 40+ minutes of something every time and there's just way too much interesting content on it
and i'm not even someone you'd class as young anymore, so I don't think this is a younger generation thing
I'm in the opposite camp. I find Youtube exhausting, and it keeps getting worse and worse.
Their ads are terrible. And since I watch via a device like Roku, etc, I have to put up with them. I've actively removed them from my devices. Occasionally, I feel like looking up some video. I install it, and often before I even watch the video I uninstall it because the awful UI reminds me of all the other awful stuff in it.
Curation doesn't exist. I have to work hard to find good content. Harder than any video service out there.
And shorts. Oh. Dear. God.
For some very targeted stuff (home repairs, video game walkthroughs), it's great. For the rest, it just sucks.
Literally the only difference between him and the rest of the wannabe media barons, but you could fart the word “Israel” with your armpit and get upvotes these days.
Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?
There should be a diverse leaning of news companies, otherwise you'll only get half truths. You can't expect a left leaning news org to report anything bad about the left, or right leaning news org to present anything bad about the right. The left will be motivated to find flaws in the right, and the right will be motivated to find flaws in the left. That's a good thing. I believe an adversarial system is required to find truth. A center leaning news org is nice, but they may be motivated to keep their reporting "even", to not appear biased, which isn't really possible with the tick tock of republican and democrat leadership.
A for-profit news org changing leadership/alignment, in a response to massively falling profits [1], isn't a sign of dictatorship, it's a sign of them being aligned to the reason they exist: making moneys.
I think the public should be able to view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets, and that is very much not happening in the US.
If - for example - you find a major news outlet that's pro-union, pro-single-payer, pro-wealth-taxes, and pro-debt-free-education, let me know.
> view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets
Do you think this is being prevented somehow? There are many left leaning news agencies [1]. Maybe the "problem" is that they're all for profit, most of which comes from ads, most of which are anti union companies.
In a alternative universe, a very wealthy person starts a not for profit news agency and gives zero f's how many eyeballs it gets. Hires an army of world class journalists, investigators, and producers to churn out high quality, vetted, in depth content. Does this exist?
This is probably my leftist bias, but ever consider that "leftists" are more interested in laws and decency whereas "rightists" are more interested in protecting their tribe/movement? But you think both sides play like "the right" (each only interested in exposing flaws of the other side) because you're seeing from your right-leaning perspective...
Democrat Al Franken got kicked out of Senate when it was found he inapproprately kissed a woman. I can name a long list of creeps in the GOP side who received protection from their side. Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Sexual Harassment Hegseth, Epstein-Friend in Chief. The GOP doesn't seem to have any principles about which sexual deviant they have, they just care about having the majority (in congress) or the power. Oh yeah, speaking of that, sexual assaulter Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh...
I'd trust left-leaning media to report wrongdoing whoever does it, whereas right-leaning media will gloss or bare-face lie about wrongdoing done by the right, and exaggerate about wrongdoings by the left...
Only people on the right think NPR is on the left. NPR is the most middle of the road you can get. Just because they report facts that contradict the administration doesn't make them left leaning.
I know hard core leftists love to bash NPR/PBS, but as a non-leftist, non-centrist, non-right wing person, I definitely find NPR to have a left wing bias. Not as left wing as Democracy Now, etc - but definitely left leaning.
It's not a clear divide between right and left, and NYT, the Atlantic, and NPR stans right wing voices constantly, have constantly used their editorialization to promote right wing ideals, and have gone out of their way to center right wing voices to give the appearance of being centrist to the right, which has had a direct impact in their perception as not really left wing by any of the left.
Now the center right is supporting concentration camps like "alligator alcatraz" so the overton window has shifted a lot in the last ten years.
IMO, a better solution for the broadcast media part of this is to delegate content regulation to the states when the signal from a tv/radio station is entirely within one state (and some kind of join regulation when it spans >1).
Concentrating so much power in the federal government is problematic, and unnecessary.
Seems to me that these companies will say pretty much whatever during the merger process, and as long as there's no concrete repercussions written down somewhere, just do whatever since it's much harder to break a company apart than it is to block a merger.
The pre-merger settlement approved by the current supreme court was that Skydance would: (1) Agree to production quota of 30 movies per year, (2) Domestic spending commitments, and (3) Separate cable package negotiations.
Film Rights: Star Trek, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, DC Comics, Tom & Jerry, Harry Potter, Citizen Kane, Transformers, A Quiet Place, Looney Tunes, The Conjuring, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Dora The Explorer, Mission Impossible, The Lord of the Rings, SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dune 3, Minecraft, MonsterVerse
Remember that Citizen Kane is the movie about a media tycoon who buys everything he can and ends up alone in a mansion full of stuff.
So you’re saying this opens up the possibility of some wild crossover media stories. Star Trek exploring new worlds that also include krypton, cybertron, and the game of thrones world. Oh Dune too. And maybe do the time travel thing to see a Lord of the Rings middle earth. And have Dora graduate to captain of a star ship (or explore the sea and encounter SpongeBob and Aquaman). Batman can team up with the Mission Impossible crew to solve a mystery. Ninja turtles in a mortal kombat? Wonder Woman in Westeros with Harry Potter?
Maybe a Sora descendant will allow user-directed content to emerge.
> Star Trek exploring new worlds that also include krypton, cybertron, and the game of thrones world. Oh Dune too. And maybe do the time travel thing to see a Lord of the Rings middle earth.
Sadly that isn’t far removed from the novelty “Strange New Worlds” series they recently released. What a mess season 4 was. :(
> Can this be undone in the future if folks realize it was too monopolistic and it was in fact an anti-trust violation?
I predict the democrats winning, shoving it all under that table and pushing for "reconciliation" and "moving forward" while continuing the rotten status quo that got Trump elected in the first place. Maybe a few token prosecutions of low level wage workers involved.
serious question how could you possible argue this is monopolistic when Disney, Netflix, and Youtube exist. It doesn't pass the barest level of scrutiny.
Monopoly is the wrong word, but it has a close cousin, “anticompetitive”. For free market people one of the major role of the government is maintaining competition and avoiding collusion, combining to competitors is straightforward collusion.
First it was Time in 1990, then AOL then AT&T then Discovery and now this. That's 5 owners since 90 for Warner Brothers and none of those really worked out well. I don't know enough to know if this stands a better chance, but if I was going to bet, I'd bet Warner has a new owner before 2030.
This is the first time they are being bought by another company that makes content. Every other purchase was to add content creation to an existing company. So maybe there is chance.
But probably not with Ellison in charge. He'll probably just drive both companies into the ground.
It is in your best interest. All this innovation is sure to mean better quality of life for the average person, and not at all a widening of the income gap.
I've seen plenty of negative (and legitimate) sentiment around this merger but I'm cautiously optimistic that David Ellison, being half the age of anyone else with greenlight authority, will do something different/better.
Skydance/Paramount has had plenty of success attracting young audiences via UFC & gaming partnerships, so I'm not sure that's a counterpoint. Re forumulaic/bland that's a personal taste thing and not worth arguing.
The key contributor to Hollywood's waning influence is the generation gap; it's a cultural institution that is supposed to be culturally salient. Take the Mandalorian movie as an example; the biggest studio using the biggest IP to spend $300M on a movie... which lost $100M. That movie was competing at the box office at the same time with Obsession, which was made for $750k by a young Youtuber has made over half a billion worldwide.
As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older. He can shake things up if he wants to, and I hope he does.
Being formulaic and bland is an important aspect of expecting someone to “do something different” or “shake things up”. If the owner of a film studio has so much green light power but the studio has primarily produced film following a single formula, which the audiences have grown bored with (hence bland), then how can there be an expectation of that owner suddenly doing something different simply because they bought another studio?
> As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older.
Who do you think he has more in common with? An average consumer his own age, or adult members of any age from the elite class that hes likely spent most of his time around?
Fun fact: Skydance was originally started as a vehicle to buy David Ellison an acting career [1], which spent $60M on Fly Boys. It grossed $17M. There's a very real "failed in Hollywood to alt-right" pipeline, actually.
The truth is that Hollywood was already dying and it had been systematically dismantled by short-term profit seeking. It dismantled the system that created hugely valuable properties like Friends, Cheers, ER, Seinfeld, etc where 22 episodes were created every year to a system where streamers could cut out having to pay for syndication by creating 8 episodes every 3-4 years.
You see a lot of stars of shows having podcasts now from shows that ended years or even decades ago (The Office, The Sopranos). In a healthy ecosystem, successful actors would be working actors.
You see productions chase tax rebates all across North America such as Georgia and Canada where once productions were typically based in LA and that had a ton of ecosystem benefits. As soon as the tax rebates go, so do the productions.
Gavin Newsom clearly isn't serious about becoming president because approving this merger is going to lead to even more layoffs and fewer productions. It's going to be deeply unpopular in California. For good reason.
So what's core to all this (IMHO) is... housing. Housing is an input cost to everything in that locations. LA used to be relatively cheap. It had a mix of housing types from single family homes to mansions to budget apartments so Ho actors, writers, etc could reasonably start out.
And then with declining demand as productions spread out and less pilots and shows were being made overall, the industry has become dominated by nepo babies.
I actually think that in future centuries when history is written about the turning point for American empire, it'll be the downfall of Hollywood. You cannot overstate the value the US had to export culture to the entire world with Hollywood.
So they’ve committed to for example releasing 30-32 movies a year for the next five years [1] but after that, no promises. Good thing mergers are famously temporary and we never need to worry about the next 10 years! Oh wait…
In 1 or 2 years AI movies will be better in everything. From acting , to camera work to environments to story telling. Check out the quality of some of work already out there. There is a massive shift going on. China is going full speed mode. The film industry will be reshaped. Warner Bros should have used those billions to purchase products like seadance. Otherwise they are out
Even if it gets good enough, you're forgetting about everything else that goes into movie making and distribution. Hollywood will keep their hold on media, they just might use AI to increase profits even higher.
i am extremely wary of making any predictions about ai, given what's happened in the last year, but i would put good money on hollywood being around in 2 years. there's much more to the movie industry than slapping some video together.
r/stablediffusion seems to be a bit disconnected from reality, to put it nicely.
The vibe I get is like when the Meta VR app store product launched, and there was huge promises and optimism about all the amazing apps and experiences, but when you bought it and actually tried, it was a few juiced up flagship things and a bunch of shovelware.
Nilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/1004286/senator-adam-schiff...
> One of the longest-running tropes at The Verge is that a workable antitrust policy for the United States would be simply to forbid companies from buying Time Warner because it has never worked and it may never work again, and that we should just pass one law.
Checks out:
Jan 11, 2001: AOL and Time Warner merged to create AOL Time Warner
June 14, 2018: AT&T acquired Time Warner, renamed WarnerMedia
April 8, 2022: WarnerMedia spun out of AT&T, merged with Discovery
Oh this is hilarious. Didn't AT&T also acquire HBO and spin them off too?
They did, but first they rebranded them as Max, thus destroying the incredible name value of HBO. It was renamed back to HBO as part of the spinout IIRC.
The "credit" for that move actually belongs to WarnerBros Discovery
This is more consolidation of US media under extremely pro-Israel ownership. I don't think this will work out as well as they hope (look at CBS -- Bari Weiss has driven it into the ground) but it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over, including both "news" and "entertainment", including TikTok.
https://www.972mag.com/ellisons-paramount-tiktok-israel-medi...
Is it possible the next administration sues to break them up? Couldn't they also just launch endless investigations of the owners until they spun it off into its own thing
Sadly that probably won't happen:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/paramount-merger-settlemen...
"a foreign adversary" you say?
Which foreign adversary and you implying? Are you implying that a specific ally of the USA is really an adversary? On what basis did you make this connection? Which foreign citizens are involved in this transaction? What tangible connection does said foreign adversary have to this company?
Now lets see..
Did you mean Russia?
Two RT Employees Indicted For Covertly Funding And Directing U.S. Company That Published Thousands Of Videos In Furtherance Of Russian Interests - https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/two-rt-employees-indict...
Intel report: Putin directly ordered effort to influence election - https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/06/politics/intelligence-report-...
U.S. Accuses Russian TV Network of Conducting Covert Intelligence Acts https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/us/politics/russia-sancti...
Do you mean Qatar?
U.S. Orders Al Jazeera Affiliate to Register as Foreign Agent: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/business/media/aj-al-jaze...
Maybe you meant China? DOJ brands Chinese-owned U.S. newspaper a foreign agent https://www.axios.com/2021/08/25/doj-chinese-owned-sing-tao-...
A behemoth indeed but the numbers also tell an interesting story. For TV screen share, Youtube has ~13% of total US viewing time vs ~6% for Paramount/Warner. They also go into this merger with staggering debt which does not bode well.
This would be the anti anti trust argument - that it's not studio vs studio, but it's type of screen-time vs other types of screen-time.
Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games? This was during the streaming wars IIRC.
Regardless of how you look at it, this is yet another confluence of IP franchises merging together, whatever juice is left in them squeezed out and reprocessed over and over over time. Kind of what Oracle is in software I guess?
Working in an adjacent entertainment IP focus business myself, my eyes are glazing over a bit at this point.
This is the same argument from when Sirius and XM radio merged. It didn't matter that they were monopolizing satellite radio because the real competition was terrestrial radio and internet radio.
From my perspective YouTube has quietly won the streaming wars. It has a vastly wider variety of content, especially for non-fiction shows. In the cases where there's more direct genre competition, I tend to prefer YouTube overall because, despite its offerings being generally lower budget, they tend to represent a wider variety of "editorial voices". There's a lot of outright slop to wade through, ofc, but there's also a lot of creative risk taking out there to discover.
Meanwhile, yeah, Paramount, Time Warner, Disney, etc. have all become so money-minded and risk-averse that it reminds me of the twilight days of the old Hollywood studio system, where all the major production companies were locked into a heated battle to determine who could be the absolute blandest.
Reed Hastings may be rich, but he is a fucking moron. By his logic the greatest threat to entertainment is people who parent without screens.
> Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games?
Yes. He always told us that we don't need to worry about the other streamers nearly as much as we have to worry about them turning off the TV and playing games or (gasp!) going outside. TikTok/Instagram Reels wasn't a thing yet, but if it were, I'm sure they would have been on the list too.
youtube has slowly become like 90% of my TV time over the past few years, I think it's the fact that you don't have to commit to watching 40+ minutes of something every time and there's just way too much interesting content on it
and i'm not even someone you'd class as young anymore, so I don't think this is a younger generation thing
I'm in the opposite camp. I find Youtube exhausting, and it keeps getting worse and worse.
Their ads are terrible. And since I watch via a device like Roku, etc, I have to put up with them. I've actively removed them from my devices. Occasionally, I feel like looking up some video. I install it, and often before I even watch the video I uninstall it because the awful UI reminds me of all the other awful stuff in it.
Curation doesn't exist. I have to work hard to find good content. Harder than any video service out there.
And shorts. Oh. Dear. God.
For some very targeted stuff (home repairs, video game walkthroughs), it's great. For the rest, it just sucks.
If you have the ads turned off, it's a lot nicer. I got that with some family bundle for more Drive space.
I wonder what that % would look like for US voters over 60
not a fan of CNN, but a very right leaning person is the owner of CNN now. pre-dictatorship vibes!!
Where "right" means specifically "Likud"
Antisemitism is growing fast, and I think it's time to become aware and start pushing back!
The other thing that is growing is the conflation of opposition to Israel’s belligerence and human rights violations with antisemitism.
No it’s not, antisemitism is not equal to criticism of Israel.
He's donated to and voted for candidates of both parties, and claims to be a centrist.
I don’t follow the sentiment.
Right wing people have repeatedly captured and destroyed journalism outlets they deem undesirable. Not that I’m saying CNN is any good.
Ah yes, but Larry Ellison is Jewish.
Literally the only difference between him and the rest of the wannabe media barons, but you could fart the word “Israel” with your armpit and get upvotes these days.
Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?
There should be a diverse leaning of news companies, otherwise you'll only get half truths. You can't expect a left leaning news org to report anything bad about the left, or right leaning news org to present anything bad about the right. The left will be motivated to find flaws in the right, and the right will be motivated to find flaws in the left. That's a good thing. I believe an adversarial system is required to find truth. A center leaning news org is nice, but they may be motivated to keep their reporting "even", to not appear biased, which isn't really possible with the tick tock of republican and democrat leadership.
A for-profit news org changing leadership/alignment, in a response to massively falling profits [1], isn't a sign of dictatorship, it's a sign of them being aligned to the reason they exist: making moneys.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cnn-net-worth-sliced-half-192...
I think the public should be able to view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets, and that is very much not happening in the US.
If - for example - you find a major news outlet that's pro-union, pro-single-payer, pro-wealth-taxes, and pro-debt-free-education, let me know.
> view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets
Do you think this is being prevented somehow? There are many left leaning news agencies [1]. Maybe the "problem" is that they're all for profit, most of which comes from ads, most of which are anti union companies.
What's the alternative? Mandated reporting?
[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...
>>Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?
No! but where did you get that from?
There is Fox news, X, and Truth socia for right leaning perspectives.
In a alternative universe, a very wealthy person starts a not for profit news agency and gives zero f's how many eyeballs it gets. Hires an army of world class journalists, investigators, and producers to churn out high quality, vetted, in depth content. Does this exist?
Bezos with the WaPo was this until 2024.
Did it improve under Bezos? I remember finding it of poor quality before him.
You'll still only get half-truths, but maybe (maybe) the sum of the vectors will be roughly normal
This is probably my leftist bias, but ever consider that "leftists" are more interested in laws and decency whereas "rightists" are more interested in protecting their tribe/movement? But you think both sides play like "the right" (each only interested in exposing flaws of the other side) because you're seeing from your right-leaning perspective...
Democrat Al Franken got kicked out of Senate when it was found he inapproprately kissed a woman. I can name a long list of creeps in the GOP side who received protection from their side. Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Sexual Harassment Hegseth, Epstein-Friend in Chief. The GOP doesn't seem to have any principles about which sexual deviant they have, they just care about having the majority (in congress) or the power. Oh yeah, speaking of that, sexual assaulter Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh...
I'd trust left-leaning media to report wrongdoing whoever does it, whereas right-leaning media will gloss or bare-face lie about wrongdoing done by the right, and exaggerate about wrongdoings by the left...
Do you have an example of left-leaning reporting that is mass media in the US?
WaPo, NYT, The Atlantic, NPR, and many others.
Only people on the right think NPR is on the left. NPR is the most middle of the road you can get. Just because they report facts that contradict the administration doesn't make them left leaning.
The NPR front page right now has a clip from a profanity-filled drag queen interview.
Famously fair and balanced, I know.
The 90% of America is tuning in to hear drag queens talking about cursing out children in a library.
I know hard core leftists love to bash NPR/PBS, but as a non-leftist, non-centrist, non-right wing person, I definitely find NPR to have a left wing bias. Not as left wing as Democracy Now, etc - but definitely left leaning.
I used to be an avid NPR listener, but after George Floyd it's astoundingly woke when I try listening. That's not very often anymore, to be fair.
NPR takes "both sides" reporting to an absurd extreme
Have you read the WaPo and NYT lately?
WaPo? definitely not. going through independence crisis.
NYT - i think so.
NPR - funding crisis.
The Atlantic - i don't read this - is this the one who's journalist was added in the top secret signal chat?
It's not a clear divide between right and left, and NYT, the Atlantic, and NPR stans right wing voices constantly, have constantly used their editorialization to promote right wing ideals, and have gone out of their way to center right wing voices to give the appearance of being centrist to the right, which has had a direct impact in their perception as not really left wing by any of the left.
Now the center right is supporting concentration camps like "alligator alcatraz" so the overton window has shifted a lot in the last ten years.
WaPo definitely is not with Bezos at the helm and preventing them from endorsing Harris
To the left of outright fascist propaganda? I'll give you that.
Yes, all of them, minus the ones you can count on one hand that's missing a few fingers from a fireworks mishap.
Can this be undone in the future if folks realize it was too monopolistic and it was in fact an anti-trust violation?
I wonder if David Ellison is a fun guy IRL.
Should we wonder if Goebbels was a fun guy irl? I don't get it.
He has a nice yacht, I bet it's fun on the yacht.
Probably not if you're an underage girl though.
Are you insinuating something about David Ellison here?
It's one big club
He’s only making an implication.
IMO, a better solution for the broadcast media part of this is to delegate content regulation to the states when the signal from a tv/radio station is entirely within one state (and some kind of join regulation when it spans >1).
Concentrating so much power in the federal government is problematic, and unnecessary.
Seems to me that these companies will say pretty much whatever during the merger process, and as long as there's no concrete repercussions written down somewhere, just do whatever since it's much harder to break a company apart than it is to block a merger.
The pre-merger settlement approved by the current supreme court was that Skydance would: (1) Agree to production quota of 30 movies per year, (2) Domestic spending commitments, and (3) Separate cable package negotiations.
Assets: TNT, CBS, CNN, MTV, TCM, Showtime, Adult Swim, DC Studios, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, HBO/HBO Max, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network
Film Rights: Star Trek, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, DC Comics, Tom & Jerry, Harry Potter, Citizen Kane, Transformers, A Quiet Place, Looney Tunes, The Conjuring, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Dora The Explorer, Mission Impossible, The Lord of the Rings, SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dune 3, Minecraft, MonsterVerse
Remember that Citizen Kane is the movie about a media tycoon who buys everything he can and ends up alone in a mansion full of stuff.
Please enjoy this SlopGen Fantasy Skydance Kingdom.
https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6ac56dbab5448191866eb7c80c31c025
So you’re saying this opens up the possibility of some wild crossover media stories. Star Trek exploring new worlds that also include krypton, cybertron, and the game of thrones world. Oh Dune too. And maybe do the time travel thing to see a Lord of the Rings middle earth. And have Dora graduate to captain of a star ship (or explore the sea and encounter SpongeBob and Aquaman). Batman can team up with the Mission Impossible crew to solve a mystery. Ninja turtles in a mortal kombat? Wonder Woman in Westeros with Harry Potter?
Maybe a Sora descendant will allow user-directed content to emerge.
> Star Trek exploring new worlds that also include krypton, cybertron, and the game of thrones world. Oh Dune too. And maybe do the time travel thing to see a Lord of the Rings middle earth.
Sadly that isn’t far removed from the novelty “Strange New Worlds” series they recently released. What a mess season 4 was. :(
Nothing on that list should have lived this long.
As a Trekkie, I'm offended.
Then you are too invested for your own good.
Do Trekkies not crave novelty?
You have to cling to some beacon of hope in a world that decided future is dead and proceeded to drown itself in its own dystopia fetishism.
> Can this be undone in the future if folks realize it was too monopolistic and it was in fact an anti-trust violation?
I predict the democrats winning, shoving it all under that table and pushing for "reconciliation" and "moving forward" while continuing the rotten status quo that got Trump elected in the first place. Maybe a few token prosecutions of low level wage workers involved.
I learned from working with some that psychopaths are a lot of fun going for a drink after work, but at work they make your life a misery.
If the Trumps get their cut, you're golden.
serious question how could you possible argue this is monopolistic when Disney, Netflix, and Youtube exist. It doesn't pass the barest level of scrutiny.
Monopoly is the wrong word, but it has a close cousin, “anticompetitive”. For free market people one of the major role of the government is maintaining competition and avoiding collusion, combining to competitors is straightforward collusion.
First it was Time in 1990, then AOL then AT&T then Discovery and now this. That's 5 owners since 90 for Warner Brothers and none of those really worked out well. I don't know enough to know if this stands a better chance, but if I was going to bet, I'd bet Warner has a new owner before 2030.
This is the first time they are being bought by another company that makes content. Every other purchase was to add content creation to an existing company. So maybe there is chance.
But probably not with Ellison in charge. He'll probably just drive both companies into the ground.
Yes! What the consumer needs! Less competition! Hurrah!
Sorry for the sarcasm.
Less regulation means more innovation!
I will believe this internet comment. Thanks!
It is in your best interest. All this innovation is sure to mean better quality of life for the average person, and not at all a widening of the income gap.
[delayed]
I've seen plenty of negative (and legitimate) sentiment around this merger but I'm cautiously optimistic that David Ellison, being half the age of anyone else with greenlight authority, will do something different/better.
As long as you are hoping he has a really, really, really positive view of Israel you're going to be happy!
His running of Skydance says otherwise. The most formulaic and bland film studio there is.
Skydance/Paramount has had plenty of success attracting young audiences via UFC & gaming partnerships, so I'm not sure that's a counterpoint. Re forumulaic/bland that's a personal taste thing and not worth arguing.
The key contributor to Hollywood's waning influence is the generation gap; it's a cultural institution that is supposed to be culturally salient. Take the Mandalorian movie as an example; the biggest studio using the biggest IP to spend $300M on a movie... which lost $100M. That movie was competing at the box office at the same time with Obsession, which was made for $750k by a young Youtuber has made over half a billion worldwide.
As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older. He can shake things up if he wants to, and I hope he does.
Being formulaic and bland is an important aspect of expecting someone to “do something different” or “shake things up”. If the owner of a film studio has so much green light power but the studio has primarily produced film following a single formula, which the audiences have grown bored with (hence bland), then how can there be an expectation of that owner suddenly doing something different simply because they bought another studio?
> As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older.
Who do you think he has more in common with? An average consumer his own age, or adult members of any age from the elite class that hes likely spent most of his time around?
Who else is mourning the end of Star Trek?
Seems fine. There are more options for entertainment than ever. Often these mergers don't work out anyway.
how exactly do they "not work out"? its two behemoths merging for the sake of more money
Fun fact: Skydance was originally started as a vehicle to buy David Ellison an acting career [1], which spent $60M on Fly Boys. It grossed $17M. There's a very real "failed in Hollywood to alt-right" pipeline, actually.
The truth is that Hollywood was already dying and it had been systematically dismantled by short-term profit seeking. It dismantled the system that created hugely valuable properties like Friends, Cheers, ER, Seinfeld, etc where 22 episodes were created every year to a system where streamers could cut out having to pay for syndication by creating 8 episodes every 3-4 years.
You see a lot of stars of shows having podcasts now from shows that ended years or even decades ago (The Office, The Sopranos). In a healthy ecosystem, successful actors would be working actors.
You see productions chase tax rebates all across North America such as Georgia and Canada where once productions were typically based in LA and that had a ton of ecosystem benefits. As soon as the tax rebates go, so do the productions.
Gavin Newsom clearly isn't serious about becoming president because approving this merger is going to lead to even more layoffs and fewer productions. It's going to be deeply unpopular in California. For good reason.
So what's core to all this (IMHO) is... housing. Housing is an input cost to everything in that locations. LA used to be relatively cheap. It had a mix of housing types from single family homes to mansions to budget apartments so Ho actors, writers, etc could reasonably start out.
And then with declining demand as productions spread out and less pilots and shows were being made overall, the industry has become dominated by nepo babies.
I actually think that in future centuries when history is written about the turning point for American empire, it'll be the downfall of Hollywood. You cannot overstate the value the US had to export culture to the entire world with Hollywood.
[1]: https://brobible.com/culture/article/david-ellison-tried-to-...
So all TV is going to be republican propaganda now. Cool from some perspectives, horrible from the other 9 out of 10 situations.
So when do they raise prices and start laying folks off?
They already acknowledged layoffs so likely within 30 days the cull list will be presented to senior leadership.
Its so weird how these layoffs somehow targeted every left wing news organization or show. We just cant be certain how that happened. oh well
Do we really need two Ellisons?
Do we even need one?
Their debt load is enormous due to how quickly debt costs have risen from M&A talks to issuing the debt.
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/skydance-credit-rating-down...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-01/paramount... | https://archive.today/SEtX9
I'm sure they'll figure that out.
You have to admit that David Ellison is extremely talented at being born to one of the wealthiest people in human history.
so does this mean i get paramount plus for free with my hbo?
It means they are going to raise prices for both platforms because they can.
And then everything else will follow suit. Not that they haven't already been doing just that.
Plus ads. And biographies of Trump's kids.
Everybody just stop subscribing and do something else and pirate the shit out of their content.
Free? I don’t think a monopoly knows the meaning of that word
It means that Paramount Plus is saddled with debt, and HBO is saddled with debt. And that someone needs to pay off that debt.
If it makes them more money
So they’ve committed to for example releasing 30-32 movies a year for the next five years [1] but after that, no promises. Good thing mergers are famously temporary and we never need to worry about the next 10 years! Oh wait…
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/09/25/paramount-hollywood-prom...
T-Mobile raised a lot of plan prices exactly 5 years after their merger with Sprint.
When do we get Bugs Bunny on the Enterprise ?
I'm not even mad. Let's do it. With Marvin the Martian.
They had a Lower Decks cartoon crossover already, so they can't even deny the possibility now.
In 1 or 2 years AI movies will be better in everything. From acting , to camera work to environments to story telling. Check out the quality of some of work already out there. There is a massive shift going on. China is going full speed mode. The film industry will be reshaped. Warner Bros should have used those billions to purchase products like seadance. Otherwise they are out
Some of you are outright hostile towards art and it's gross.
Let's hope that the fears of new owners being rightwing are correct so we can finally see The Censored Eleven in their full glory.
Another nail in Americas coffin.
Yet another oligarchy centralization play. I assume more to come.
How much did the Gulf states pledge towards this?
From what I see on r/stablediffusion, Hollywood has maybe 2 years left, in the optimistic case.
Even if it gets good enough, you're forgetting about everything else that goes into movie making and distribution. Hollywood will keep their hold on media, they just might use AI to increase profits even higher.
But why Hollywood?
i am extremely wary of making any predictions about ai, given what's happened in the last year, but i would put good money on hollywood being around in 2 years. there's much more to the movie industry than slapping some video together.
r/stablediffusion seems to be a bit disconnected from reality, to put it nicely.
The vibe I get is like when the Meta VR app store product launched, and there was huge promises and optimism about all the amazing apps and experiences, but when you bought it and actually tried, it was a few juiced up flagship things and a bunch of shovelware.
ehhhh i dunno about that. the stuff i've seen from people, and watched looks much better than most crap hollywood puts out anymore
to reiterate: there is more to the movie industry than putting a video together
Please post a link to some of this "stuff". I'm begging you.