Paramount Skydance has completed its $111B merger with Warner Bros. Discovery

so does this mean i get paramount plus for free with my hbo?

• throw03172019 · 19 hours ago

  It means they are going to raise prices for both platforms because they can.

  • fooqux · 19 hours ago

    And then everything else will follow suit. Not that they haven't already been doing just that.

    • TheOtherHobbes · 18 hours ago

      Plus ads. And biographies of Trump's kids.

  • 2muchcoffeeman · 18 hours ago

    Everybody just stop subscribing and do something else and pirate the shit out of their content.

    • bigbuppo · 16 hours ago

      Already unsubscribed when the news broke about a possible merger. I think I'm down to just youtube premium and Dropout now.

• greyw · 19 hours ago

  If it makes them more money

• rylando · 19 hours ago

  Free? I don’t think a monopoly knows the meaning of that word

• Hamuko · 18 hours ago

  It means that Paramount Plus is saddled with debt, and HBO is saddled with debt. And that someone needs to pay off that debt.

• mns · 7 hours ago

  They'll merge everything into some Skydance+ app, place ads in the basic tier with 720p, you'll get 1080p with ads for the price of Netflix (probably because of the "premium" HBO content) and then some insane subscription for the full 4K catalogue.

Yes! What the consumer needs! Less competition! Hurrah! Sorry for the sarcasm.

• stavros · 19 hours ago

  Less regulation means more innovation!

  • roroh4310 · 18 hours ago

    I will believe this internet comment. Thanks!

    • stavros · 18 hours ago

      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.

How much did the Gulf states pledge towards this?

• mondrian · 17 hours ago

  Saudis, Abu Dhabi and Qatar put in 24B and own 38.5% of the company.

From what I see on r/stablediffusion, Hollywood has maybe 2 years left, in the optimistic case.

• fooqux · 19 hours ago

  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.

  • holoduke · 17 hours ago

    But why Hollywood?

• john_strinlai · 19 hours ago

  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.

  • beanjuiceII · 19 hours ago

    ehhhh i dunno about that. the stuff i've seen from people, and watched looks much better than most crap hollywood puts out anymore

    • john_strinlai · 19 hours ago

      to reiterate: there is more to the movie industry than putting a video together

    • platevoltage · 17 hours ago

      Please post a link to some of this "stuff". I'm begging you.

    • LunaSea · 3 hours ago

      But nobody will pay for that

  • foobarian · 18 hours ago

    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.

• cdrnsf · 17 hours ago

  I'll pass on slop stories and the quality of the visuals won't change that.

• _sys49152 · 16 hours ago

  im seeing a lot more focus on emotions/emotional acting - its incredible. maybe 3 years and most likely from china.

• johnnyanmac · 15 hours ago

  Can we point to a single good piece of longform content from AI before trying to tick a clock on when Hollywood as a whole will end?

Another nail in Americas coffin.

• stock_toaster · 18 hours ago

  It's yet another oligarchy centralization play. I assume more to come.

• vconnor · 5 hours ago

  Good. Time for someone else to have a go.

So when do they raise prices and start laying folks off?

• cmorgan31 · 19 hours ago

  They already acknowledged layoffs so likely within 30 days the cull list will be presented to senior leadership.

  • toomuchtodo · 19 hours ago

    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

    • cdrnsf · 18 hours ago

      I'm sure they'll figure that out.

      • bigbuppo · 16 hours ago

        Or maybe "because it makes business sense" wasn't the point of it?

        • cdrnsf · 15 hours ago

          Seems more like an ideological project than good business.

  • brnt · 19 hours ago

    Do we really need two Ellisons?

    • thinkingtoilet · 18 hours ago

      Do we even need one?

  • superxpro12 · 18 hours ago

    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

When do we get Bugs Bunny on the Enterprise ?

• wccrawford · 18 hours ago

  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.

• tmpz22 · 15 hours ago

  That would be less immersion breaking then some of the recent Strange New World episodes.

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.

• Y_Y · 19 hours ago

  He has a nice yacht, I bet it's fun on the yacht.

• Hamuko · 18 hours ago

  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.

  • bigwheels · 18 hours ago

    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.

    • scun · 18 hours ago

      Nothing on that list should have lived this long.

      • aleksandrm · 18 hours ago

        As a Trekkie, I'm offended.

        • scun · 18 hours ago

          Then you are too invested for your own good. Do Trekkies not crave novelty?

          • TeMPOraL · 17 hours ago

            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.

            • amanaplanacanal · 17 hours ago

              I thought Trek had turned from hope to dystopia with the release of Picard. Or did we decide that isn't canon?

              • TeMPOraL · 9 hours ago

                Went better with S3. (Within context of larger canon, I take S2 as a cautionary tale about what happens if humanity is allowed to retain an identity of an independent polity on the interstellar stage. Federation's biggest benefit for the galaxy turns out to be keeping humans contained and putting their energy and creativity into more useful pursuits than asserting independence on other people's territory.) But let's not forget that Lower Decks and SNW corrected hard on earier NuTrek transgressions against the utopian future.

        • account42 · 5 hours ago

          As a Star Trek fan, I agree with gp.

      • triceratops · 1 hour ago

        I would say Mortal Kombat slaps but it commits a lot more violence than that.

    • whycome · 18 hours ago

      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.

      • hnlmorg · 17 hours ago

        > 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. :(

        • ern · 14 hours ago

          I've heard that Strange New Worlds was the best of Nu-Trek, so that's disheartening. Star Trek seems to have lost its way from the start of Enterprise (the prequel series) onward.

          • hnlmorg · 13 hours ago

            Strange New Worlds started off strong, so I’d definitely recommend it. But it lost its way in the later series. Lower Decks was a reverse of that. Took a while to find itself but finished strong. I’d also highly recommend Lower Decks, albeit you need to watch it thinking of it as a beta-cannon type show (ie set in the ST universe but not itself a ST show).

      • krapp · 17 hours ago

        Nothing of the sort would ever happen. They would be insane to risk the integrity of their IPs by doing something so ridiculous. That said, as snowflakey as Star Trek fans are, I would love to see their reaction to Dora the Explorer ordering Batman to launch photon torpedos at Unicron. They'd probably complain about "yet another DEI captain."

        • halfcat · 15 hours ago

          > They would be insane to risk the integrity of their IPs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_vs._Teenage_Mutant_Ninj...

      • johnnyanmac · 16 hours ago

        >Maybe a Sora descendant will allow user-directed content to emerge. Sora didn't die because UGC social media doesn't work. Sora died because UGC social media would just be reposted to Tiktok. These new tech companies are still too obsessed with 2000's/2010's versions of monetization. sell it as a service on a subscription (with some free tier rate throttling) focused on content creators (who will make the money back by posting) and it would have at least lasted longer.

    • kridsdale1 · 18 hours ago

      Please enjoy this SlopGen Fantasy Skydance Kingdom. https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6ac56dbab5448191866eb7c80c31c025

    • joquarky · 14 hours ago

      > 1) Agree to production quota of 30 movies per year, Why? Does the population need movies? Who does this even benefit? > (2) Domestic spending commitments, and Never heard of Hollywood accounting? They have mastery of exploiting loopholes. > (3) Separate cable package negotiations. What's "cable"? Is that the 1900's alternative to putting up a TV antenna?

• nutjob2 · 18 hours ago

  If the Trumps get their cut, you're golden.

• yolp5 · 18 hours ago

  > 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.

  • zmgsabst · 17 hours ago

    An extra sprinkle of race-baiting and you’d have the Obama-era Occupy Wall St special.

    • tclancy · 15 hours ago

      Please expand on this. I always find these sorts of comments to be illuminating in one way or the other.

      • zmgsabst · 2 hours ago

        Circa 2008, into 2010, you had the Democrats running on holding Wall St accountable and a genuine class movement to reform capital in the US, Occupy Wall St. Obama et al instead tore open old racial wounds, thereby destroying class solidarity in exchange for Wall St promoting their ideology, thereby creating “Woke”. This was the origin of the Obama -> Bernie -> Trump cohort, who helped bring Trump into power a decade later.

        • thereader12 · 18 minutes ago

          Is there some deeper analysis you can link, right now it is really, really hard to assume good faith.

• lokar · 18 hours ago

  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.

  • johnnyanmac · 16 hours ago

    I don't see it as a great idea to divide how content within a country is presented into 50 pieces based on whatever ideology that state's leadership has at that time. Besides, that does nothing to address this mega-merger.

    • lokar · 14 hours ago

      It’s lower risk than allowing one lunatic to do it.

• anthonypasq · 18 hours ago

  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.

  • rileymat2 · 18 hours ago

    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.

• hilariously · 18 hours ago

  Should we wonder if Goebbels was a fun guy irl? I don't get it.

  • fortzi · 17 hours ago

    Are you seriously making that comparison?

    • DetroitThrow · 17 hours ago

      Should we compare Ellison to a lawnmower instead, as bcantrill so eloquently did?

      • zargon · 16 hours ago

        Never make the mistake of anthropomorphizing David Ellison.

      • fortzi · 3 hours ago

        Is that a reference? If so, I’m not familiar with it

    • hilariously · 17 hours ago

      He's literally the media arm of a genocidal state, what do you want?

      • fortzi · 3 hours ago

        You’re misusing the word “literally”

        • hilariously · 3 hours ago

          He's literally buying up american media to make them the arm of a genocidal state, so no, I am literally not.

    • 8note · 12 hours ago

      i bet warner bros has made an absolute ton of goebbels inspired scenes. goebbels is the movie influence of hollywood. its appropriate regardless

• rwmj · 18 hours ago

  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.

• SpicyLemonZest · 17 hours ago

  There wouldn't be a clear "undo" button after years of joint operation. A future administration could in principle order the Time Warner assets to be spun back off, but realistically that'd be a huge headache, and I'd rather they spend their time and political capital imprisoning everyone who negotiated the deal.

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...

• tech234a · 18 hours ago

  T-Mobile raised a lot of plan prices exactly 5 years after their merger with Sprint.

• thomasjb · 17 hours ago

  Apparently the Force Majeure section of the deal is very weak, so if there's the slightest upset, they get out of that.

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.

• jedberg · 18 hours ago

  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.

  • lotsofpulp · 2 hours ago

    Are they being bought by another company that makes content? Seems like the money is coming from Larry Ellison, whose main business is Oracle. Or the Saudis. Either way, neither Skydance not Paramount’s core businesses perform well enough to get this deal done.

• bigbuppo · 16 hours ago

  At least it drains a few hundred billion dollars from the Ellisons.

You have to admit that David Ellison is extremely talented at being born to one of the wealthiest people in human history.

• jansport123 · 15 hours ago

  he worked pretty hard for that

Seems fine. There are more options for entertainment than ever. Often these mergers don't work out anyway.

• ramon156 · 18 hours ago

  how exactly do they "not work out"? its two behemoths merging for the sake of more money

  • lotsofpulp · 15 hours ago

    ATT shareholders lost $50B on Time Warner. And ATT lost $15B at least on DirecTV. Comcast is desperately trying to get rid of NBC Universal. I would bet Ellison loses on this merger too. No one under the age of 60 cares about these legacy media companies to justify tens of billions of dollar valuations. At best, professional media studios are just an add on business for companies like Amazon and Apple and Disney and Sony, with Netflix being the outlier.

not a fan of CNN, but a very right leaning person is the owner of CNN now. pre-dictatorship vibes!!

• Waterluvian · 18 hours ago

  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.

  • EA-3167 · 17 hours ago

    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.

    • Hikikomori · 17 hours ago

      More importantly he's a zionist and put bari Weiss in charge. It's pretty clear what they want to do.

    • estearum · 17 hours ago

      Well no, the difference is that this merger is in favor with the current administration which has engaged in a broad and pervasive pattern of authoritarian behaviors while being in lock-step with Israel's interests. This merger is only happening because the deal that the seller actually preferred (Netflix buying them) was unlikely to be approved by regulators. The President literally came out right after the deal was approved and said "it could be a problem" and "I would have a say" in whether it went through. In fact the very existence of Paramount Skydance itself , as a merged entity, appears to have been contingent upon Paramount modifying its own HR policies, placing a government ombudsman at their marquee journalistic outlet (CBS), and paying $16 million to Trump's "presidential library fund."

      • EA-3167 · 17 hours ago

        I'm not arguing any of that, obviously this all reeks of corruption and cronyism as almost everything in this admin does. But that's not what people were focusing on here, it's a lot of "Practically Likud" and the increasingly uncomfortable dog whistle "Zionist".

        • estearum · 15 hours ago

          If the correct label for a person's beliefs is "an increasingly uncomfortable dog whistle" umm... maybe the label isn't the problem...

          • EA-3167 · 14 hours ago

            When your label applies to 95% of an ethnicity maybe you’re just a bigot hiding behind a cause.

            • estearum · 14 hours ago

              There are more American evangelicals who are Zionists than there are Jews in the entire world bro.

              • EA-3167 · 13 hours ago

                A weird cult existing doesn’t change tbat “Zionism” remain overwhelmingly popular among Jews. Granted since the term has been demonized and represented as something heinous this is the result: https://www.jewishdatabank.org/api/download/?studyId=1277&me... So 90% believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, but they aren’t stupid and it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that “Zionist” has become a kind of slur in the hands of so many. It really isn’t hard to understand, it’s just convenient for people to hide behind. You meet a white nationalist and they don’t open with a Hitlergrusse, they talk about “preserving the family” or “13/50” and so on. You didn’t invent this shit.

                • estearum · 13 hours ago

                  Well hold on now… you’re upset about people using a term that accurately and precisely describes a set of beliefs… that the believes of those beliefs readily label themselves as… And then you’re calling 50-120 million Americans “a weird cult”? Are you a parody? I’m honestly baffled. And by the way, it’s hilarious to claim that Ellison being Jewish (is he? I honestly have no idea) or Zionism would be “literally the only thing unique about him” compared to the rest of the media barons. Not only is there a lot of other stuff that’s unique about him/his company, as I’ve articulated, but also his Zionist beliefs aren’t unique whatsoever among his peers! You truly live in a hall of mirrors. Zionist is a slur, and not only is Ellison uniquely a Zionist , but it’s in fact the only unique thing about him and his company. Totally insane shit.

                  • EA-3167 · 13 hours ago

                    People who believe in an imminent “end times” are in a cult, I don’t care if the religion is ancient or brand new. “We have to prepare the world for Armageddon, and that can only happen when the Jews return to Israel,” is a batshit thing to believe. Never mind their overall impact on American policy and politics.

                    • estearum · 13 hours ago

                      But someone’s belief that their special book gives them a special right to a special plot of land is in fact so special that it can’t even be labeled with its own name…? Yeah they’re all fucking crazy people. Calling evangelicals evangelicals is fine. Calling zionists Zionists is fine. Both terms have besmirched connotations because both belief systems are besmirched. Simple as that.

                      • EA-3167 · 13 hours ago

                        Zionism isn’t religious for a large number of Jews, it’s just a practical response to centuries of pogroms and genocide. Stellar wordplay though, very much how I expect sincere people to act when pressed on the reality of how the cause they claim to care about has been hijacked by bigots. Best of luck to you.

                        • Hikikomori · 8 hours ago

                          >Zionism isn’t religious for a large number of Jews, it’s just a practical response to centuries of pogroms and genocide And the response is to do your own to another people? Great.

                        • estearum · 5 hours ago

                          If it’s a practical response then where does the “right” originate from? I’m beyond reproach if my practical response to needing a bathroom is to break into your home and defecate in your toilet?

                • 8note · 12 hours ago

                  but uhh, zionism is the same idea as white nationalism. a jewish state is the same in concept as a white state - a place where the non-white or non-jews are second class citizens, and really, should be removed because they have no place in the state. even if 90% of white people believed in a white nationalist state, white nationalism would still be bad on its own merrits. its not racist to be against ethnostates, regardless of whos ethnostate it is

                  • EA-3167 · 11 hours ago

                    Great rant, but there’s a flaw in your otherwise deeply informed and informative analysis. 21% of Israeli CITIZENS… with full voting rights and legal protections, are Arabs. They’re no less citizens of Israel than black Americans are of the US, and yeah that comes with some measure of mutual ethnic and religious tension… it is the Middle East. That’s not the same as a white “utopia” or the usual South Africa comparison. A lot of the talk around this is layered bad faith, misinformation, and outright bullshit that’s accepted simply because it’s convenient to do so. After all if you believe that shit you can feel justified in your enmity towards a whole people in the name of justice. By the way how many Jews are citizens of Arab majority nations? How many even live there? Did they live there at one point and did they all magically leave or was there a huge explosion? Just some food for thought.

                    • ButlerianJihad · 8 hours ago

                      Students of history have noticed an inconvenient truth that Western Europe nations were sort of unanimous in systematically converting, suppressing, and expelling Jews over several centuries. Those students, born in Allied nations since WWII, somehow unquestioningly accept that antisemitism is a cardinal sin, and we conclude that all those kings and princesses and rulers must have been wrong and bad and very evil people for enacting such policies. Russia was historically particularly vicious against the Kievan Rus', and Jews were prohibited from even living in the capital city. The term "beyond the Pale" applied in Ukraine as much as it applied to UK-occupied Ireland. But today on television, we have a pretty and delicate blonde empress making a totes adorbs farce of Catherine the Great's bloody legacy. The democratic West is now a guaranteed safe haven for Eastern Bloc dissidents and refugees, with open arms and blank checks. Arab Muslims and Israelis need to get along now, because there's a significant mosque dropped on top of Temple Mount, and they're our last best hope for something. And "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". For now.

                    • Hikikomori · 8 hours ago

                      There's only 21% because of the nakba, which was done in part because the ideals of democracy was incongruous with the ethnical composition of the land.

        • joquarky · 14 hours ago

          If it makes you uncomfortable, then your subconscious mind is trying to tell you something.

          • EA-3167 · 14 hours ago

            It makes me uncomfortable when people refer to black people as “thugs” with a wink and a nod as well. You aren’t clever for using dog whistles, it’s been a notable feature of antisemitism to “play with words” as Sartre put it. Still if I’m to consult my subconscious… it tells me that a lot of people use causes and movements to justify the sort of bullying, hateful, trend-chasing behavior they always displayed all along. It’s when people feel they have free license to let go that you learn more about THEM.

  • dfxm12 · 13 hours ago

    Don't think about CNN specifically, but rather about one more cable news network lurching to the right & the diversity of viewpoints being reported being decreased. Ellison's effect on CBS News is clear.

• Georgelemental · 18 hours ago

  Where "right" means specifically "Likud"

• BurningFrog · 17 hours ago

  He's donated to and voted for candidates of both parties, and claims to be a centrist.

  • mindslight · 15 hours ago

    "Centrist" in a grassroots political perspective means one sees merit in the values generally (purportedly) held by both tribes. "Centrist" for an oligarch just means they place bets on both horses.

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

• s3p · 18 hours ago

  Oh this is hilarious. Didn't AT&T also acquire HBO and spin them off too?

  • lukemercado · 17 hours ago

    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.

    • rwc · 17 hours ago

      The "credit" for that move actually belongs to WarnerBros Discovery

      • brendoelfrendo · 17 hours ago

        My favorite part of that story is that McKinsey both advised WarnerBros Discovery to make that change, and then advised them to change it back, making millions each time. I wish I made that much money being bad at my job.

        • nikanj · 17 hours ago

          You misunderstand their job. They get paid millions to carefully construct a report that supports whatever stupid plan the coke-fueled execs came up with.

          • paimapi · 14 hours ago

            They are also functionally both a way for certain well-connected shareholders to exert disproportionate influence and a placating propaganda machine for the shareholders who aren't Grease on the very corroded wheel of modern capitalism

        • overfeed · 17 hours ago

          McKinsey and other management consultants exist to launder decisions made by upper management that management do not want to face consequences for. "It's not my fault, the consultants advised me that was the best option"

          • 6510 · 16 hours ago

            One of those jobs LLMs can easily take over.

            • dylan604 · 15 hours ago

              I'm not sure if you are suggesting the CEO hedging their bets or the consultants, but I'd say both of those jobs could be replaced by an LLM.

              • newsclues · 14 hours ago

                You can replace low and maybe mid skill employees with software but it’s the high end ones consultants or CEO that are great at their jobs with good software can be orders of magnitude more efficient.

            • maccard · 15 hours ago

              Nope the entire point of the job is to have a person to blame when it goes wrong.

              • nom · 14 hours ago

                the blame is absorbed by McKinsey the corporation, not the people working there they'll just use AI like everyone else but charge extra for it

          • frmrtntn · 3 hours ago

            Consultants are for decision based evidence making.

        • Melatonic · 13 hours ago

          They also somehow made everyone download new apps because apparently the old one couldn't be updated.

  • lotsofpulp · 15 hours ago

    HBO was part of Time Warner.

• xbar · 17 hours ago

  March, 1989: Time and Warner announce merger, Paramount launches hostile bid for Time. January, 1990: Time responds by buying Warner Communications for $14 billion. ...Paramount sulks, and bides its time....

  • fuzzfactor · 5 hours ago

    Time? Warner? What were they doing in bed together to begin with? That's what I've been thinking about so many "ordained" or duress "marriages" since long before 1989.

• benced · 16 hours ago

  Companies wasting their money is the company's problem and it's really unclear to me why the government should give a single damn.

  • tclancy · 15 hours ago

    Just because they get it wrong doesn’t make it right. You don’t even need to reach back 100 years to sort this.

  • NewJazz · 15 hours ago

    Because big companies destroying value makes the world worse? They're sucking up capital and not delivering anything to justify it.

    • IncreasePosts · 15 hours ago

      Won't investors just learn to avoid investing in companies like that?

      • CursedSilicon · 14 hours ago

        Would you like to buy some tulips?

        • Exoristos · 14 hours ago

          Deep cut, this[0]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania?wprov=sfti1

      • paimapi · 14 hours ago

        are you too young to have lived through the multiple recessions that have happened in the past few decades or Bernie Madoff or Enron? Or Theranos and FTX? and that's just off the top, give me ten minutes to dig in and I'll get you at least twenty more

        • SideQuark · 14 hours ago

          None of those were the result of mergers.

          • paimapi · 14 hours ago

            Pedantic. The point was "aren't investors rational" and they clearly hop on short term fads to their and our detriment. Plus saying Enron wasn't a product of a merger is very funny

            • lotsofpulp · 11 hours ago

              Passive investors earned 10% per year for the last 30 years doing no work and taking on no risk. Seems very rational to me.

              • paimapi · 11 hours ago

                I'm sure passive investors loved the dotcom bubble and the housing market crash I'm sure they'll love it when this AI bubble pops too

                • lotsofpulp · 9 hours ago

                  If they were passive, they wouldn’t care, because they should not have a reason to liquidate all equities during the few down years.

                  • leonidasrup · 9 hours ago

                    It really depends on luck, timing and inflation. For example if you bought S&P 500 in Jul 1929, you got your investment back in 1955 (inflation adjusted). If you bought S&P 500 in Apr 2000, you got your investment back in 2014 (inflation adjusted). https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500

                    • lotsofpulp · 9 hours ago

                      99.99% of people are not investing a lump sum on one date and liquidating it all on another date. Extend this graph to today, and it will be much greener. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011... https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/oLP2K6gdbC Plus it’s political suicide to let SP500 stagnate or drop.

                      • paimapi · 2 hours ago

                        your own NYT link shows the vast majority of withdrawal dates to have a median of 4.1% followed by the 'slightly above inflation' group then the 'did not keep up with inflation' group with the green returns being the smallest likelihood. there's even this literal quote in the article: "Market returns are more volatile than most people realize,” Mr. Easterling said, “even over periods as long as 20 years.” in your second link, a commenter rightfully calls out that the log scale makes the data reductive I think whatever it is that you need to fall asleep at night is your own habit - it doesn't need to be the rest of ours

                    • HWR_14 · 1 hour ago

                      Why would you use inflation adjusted numbers? It seems like the proper comparison would be t-bills or cds.

      • nothercastle · 14 hours ago

        With passive investment everyone is buying crap all the time because they have no ability to discern what is or isn’t crap and the base assumption is 95% of stocks are losers but the other 5% win big

        • lotsofpulp · 11 hours ago

          If everyone is buying crap all the time, how do businesses fail? Wouldn’t they be able to succeed by just issuing more shares?

          • nothercastle · 1 hour ago

            A lot of them do and have. Companies really only fail when lenders stop lending.

    • Ekaros · 8 hours ago

      Really thinking about what happens with these mergers and splits. In the end it is just moving numbers from one pile to an other. Nothing is really created or destroyed... Well there is massive waste of time on doing all the stuff need for it to happen. But I think they would have come up with something as unproductive as that anyway so overall it is not like that time would have been spend for anything actually productive. Made up "value" moving from one place to an other. Just so that some people have something to do. And most likely they would not have much productive things to do in any case.

  • dozerly · 11 hours ago

    If they destroy things that were servicing public good like jobs, the market they are selling into, etc, it becomes the governments job to care. If you are advocating for zero oversight of corporations by government I don’t think you’ve seen the consequences of the last 40 years of the US. Monopolies only serve the owning class at the expense of the people.

• gcanyon · 14 hours ago

  I was at HBO during the AOL merger, and for a time my work email became gcanyon0264@aol.com, because AOL corporate email shared namespace with its customers, and my personal AOL account was… gcanyon@aol.com

  • penskymaterial · 12 hours ago

    > because AOL corporate email shared namespace with its customers I wonder where this ranks in the top 5 stupidest things I've ever heard. It's bad enough merging customer databases when two companies merge. No other major ISP has ever done this that I know of. Likely because it's completely unnecessary . Who made this decision (and why weren't they fired immediately)?

    • mike_d · 9 hours ago

      > Who made this decision Nobody. Going back to 1989 every AOL account had a screen name that was used as your login and your identity. Being an employee was just a flag on your account in the database. In 1993 AOL launched its internet gateway that accepted something@aol.com and put it in your AOL Mail box. You could tell that someone was an AOL employee because a banner (I think it was) appeared at the top of the message telling you. Some of the network engineering folks had real aol.net addresses, but I don't know how that was handled internally. I also think the Netscape folks eventually made enough of a stink to keep their previous email address too.

    • miki123211 · 8 hours ago

      Ah, so this is why our email addresses are @gmail.com and not @google.com. I was always wondering about that; it seemed to me that it would have been free advertising to Google if their users had to write and say @google.com all the time.

    • Garlef · 2 hours ago

      Merging banks also seems to be a fun endeavor

• setgree · 12 hours ago

  By that logic we should encourage giant companies to buy Warner Brothers. Each time it fails, it helps topple leviathans, which decreases market concentration.

  • ethbr1 · 4 hours ago

    Time Warner: "No, I am the pill that poisons."

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.

• lokar · 18 hours ago

  I wonder what that % would look like for US voters over 60

  • fnordpiglet · 1 hour ago

    I imagine that’s a segment with a declining NPV, which is generally not a good thing to finance on debt.

• scyzoryk_xyz · 18 hours ago

  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.

  • patwolf · 18 hours ago

    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.

    • scyzoryk_xyz · 9 hours ago

      Yeah, it's a rhetorical maneuver that's as old as monopoly power when you think about it. "Actually we're really David and we need to band together against Goliath." Points at imagined external threat The part that's wild to me is that we know that this merger extends to politics and control over media. The IP's, studios, franchises, all the actual businesses are just part of the estate. It's the Hearst Media Empire story retold again.

  • jedberg · 18 hours ago

    > 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.

    • mikepurvis · 17 hours ago

      “Being an adult is staring at medium screens all day to come home and stare at a little screen while a big screen is on in the background” https://x.com/andlikelaura/status/1392091221032460291

  • bunderbunder · 17 hours ago

    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.

    • mikepurvis · 17 hours ago

      I kind of agree, and it's interesting how Nebula and Spotify (at least their video efforts) have been based on elevating and funding those ultra-budget YouTube creators. Like I watch Lindsay Ellis and Practical Engineering and SkillUp all on non-YouTube platforms now, despite YouTube being the recommendation algorithm that originally brought me there. It's really the opposite model of the "major" streaming players who fund tentpole releases in the conventional Hollywood way, and then have a long tail of niche content (cooking reality shows and the like) that are clearly on a much tighter budget, but still basically modeled on being a cheaper version of a cable show rather than a much better funded version of a YouTube comedy troupe.

      • bunderbunder · 16 hours ago

        I was just listening to an interview with an up and coming playwright, and he made an interesting point that he really doesn’t like how expensive live theater has become. I guess he has been deliberately targeting super low budget not-even-off-broadway venues because he felt that a big budget stifles creativity. The more money the production stands to lose, the more pressure there is to play it safe. That kind of describes my relationship with Nebula. There’s a lot of great stuff on there, and lately I have been watching it more than YouTube. But still, YouTube is where I tend to go when I’m looking to find something new that I genuinely haven’t seen before. I think the lower floor for production values is a big part of that.

        • mikepurvis · 2 hours ago

          I would definitely encourage folks to seek out community theatre where you are. Not that I don't enjoy a full on broadway-style blowout every now and then, but it's also been shocking to me how much of the difference between a $40 seat and a $150 seat is pyrotechnics and spectacle that don't really make the experience for me. The words and the performances, the chemistry and creativity of the actors, that's the real priceless stuff.

    • autoexec · 15 hours ago

      > despite its offerings being generally lower budget, they tend to represent a wider variety of "editorial voices". There's a huge amount of censorship with youtube though. The movies and shows on cable and streaming services can still talk about dead people without being forced to say they are "unalived". CNN can talk about a pandemic without calling it a "panini". Besides censoring specific words and phrases Youtube demonitizes entire genres of content along with anything that is "unfriendly" to advertisers. If that's the future of media in the US we're screwed.

  • doctorpangloss · 17 hours ago

    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.

    • estearum · 17 hours ago

      You're misinterpreting what "threat" means. And in fact he used the word "competition." He was talking about the "incumbent" they are trying to displace. Netflix's challenge was not getting people to switch from watching Hulu to Netflix, but to get them not to sleep in order to watch Netflix. Evil maybe, but nothing moronic about it.

      • nothercastle · 14 hours ago

        But why? People not sleeping translates to negative profit and value to the company

        • estearum · 14 hours ago

          Why would that be true?

          • doctorpangloss · 12 hours ago

            That's not true. That's the point. It is the same thing as what Reed Hastings is saying. He thinks he is saying some deep insightful thing, and it's ridiculous. It's 200% wrong.

            • estearum · 5 hours ago

              You all seem extremely confused about this statement. Go see it in context lol.

  • to11mtm · 17 hours ago

    > 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? Cantrill tried to, as diplomatically as possible, warn everyone. Nobody listened.

  • AgentMatt · 17 hours ago

    > 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. Yea, and spending time with your friends and family, meeting new people, sleeping... From [1]: > “Think about if you didn’t watch Netflix last night: What did you do? There’s such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect—and we compete with all of that.” When I read that interview, I became a lot more cautious of using Netflix and other streaming platforms, knowing their design is adversarial to my values (I want to be deliberate about what I watch, not be manipulated into mindless consumption). [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastin...

    • nothercastle · 14 hours ago

      Why do they even want you watching? Once the fee is paid isn’t it better you don’t watch kind of like the gym?

      • johneth · 8 hours ago

        They need to keep you watching to a certain extent, otherwise you'd eventually question why you're subscribed in the first place.

• thousand_nights · 18 hours ago

  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

  • BeetleB · 17 hours ago

    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.

    • lallysingh · 17 hours ago

      If you have the ads turned off, it's a lot nicer. I got that with some family bundle for more Drive space.

      • BeetleB · 17 hours ago

        Let me put it this way. Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads. I don't want to pay for that.

        • johnnyanmac · 16 hours ago

          >Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads. Depends on what you watch, as always. my YT feed is a mix of news, random gaming content, documentaries on a variety of topics, and odd little tech trivia. It covers all the bases at once. Any other streaming service is simply "okay, maybe there's 1-2 shows on here I want to watch". Then I just pluck it onto my NAS and move about on my day. Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons? Nebula is the only other service I ever considered paying for. It's not a "Youtube killer" and misses out on a lot of the odd trivia sides of YT, but it overally feels more fleshed out on content than Netflix".

          • BeetleB · 15 hours ago

            > Any other streaming service is simply "okay, maybe there's 1-2 shows on here I want to watch". If there's even 1 show I want to watch, it's great to watch it. The problem with Youtube is even when they have stuff I want to watch, it's a pain to watch it . Their UI is atrocious! > Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons? You just unsubscribe at that point. Know how much stuff I had bookmarked on Youtube that is no longer available? A whole damn lot.

            • johnnyanmac · 14 hours ago

              Maybe I'm missing something, but every video service Ui feels the same these days. Grid of videos with some loose sorting, click to play/pause, seek controls. I wouldn't call any of them good/bad on UI alone.