Larry Ellison Is Very Excited To Destroy What’s Left Of CNN, Sweetens The Pot For Hostile Warner Takeover
from the building-state-television dept
We’ve noted how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison, as part of his attempt to control the entirety of media, had launched a $108 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers backed by Saudi cash.
Larry, as we’ve seen with CBS and his interest in TikTok, is trying to convert what’s left of U.S. media into a giant safe space for affluent right wing autocrats and the right wing culture war grievance and infotainment complex (as we just saw CBS and Bari Weiss demonstrate in vivid detail).
In Larry’s way on the road to dominating media sits Netflix, which had already struck its own $82.7 billion deal with Warner Bros. The Warner board has consistently supported the Netflix deal as the safer option, and last week rejected the CBS/Paramount/Ellison family hostile takeover bid.
The Warner board generally had two major concerns: they were worried that this weird assortment of Saudi money wasn’t fully backed by Larry, and therefore wasn’t particularly reliable. And they were generally worried that the inclusions of the Saudis would trigger complicated national security regulatory review, slowing down the approval process.
Larry, for his part, this week tried to ease Warner board concerns by stating he would personally guarantee $40 billion of his own cash as a backstop to the deal:
“The guarantee, disclosed in a filing on Monday, seeks to allay the Warner Bros board’s doubts about Paramount’s financing and the lack of full Ellison family backing, which had pushed it toward the competing cash-and-stock offer from Netflix.”
Warner has given every indication they’re more comfortable with Netflix, and I suspect won’t be willing to soften their stance. If Warner refuses, it’s almost certain that Ellison will have Trump’s DOJ threaten fake-populist, phony antitrust action in the new year, featuring lots and lots of propaganda about how Netflix is a dire antitrust concern, but Larry Ellison’s ownership would be a gift from the heavens.
Arguably, a country with functional regulators (which we aren’t) would block all media consolidation, since these deals inevitably result in mass layoffs, higher consumer prices, less competition, and shittier overall product (example A: the last two Time Warner mergers with AT&T and Discovery).
But only one of these two options leads to the potential for Trump-allied authoritarian state television owned by a technofascist billionaire (see: Hungary), making it the bigger threat to folks who like things like Democracy. That’s not to soft sell the harms Netflix could cause, which will be ample (especially as they debase themselves to gain approval), but one path is clearly worse.
So in the absence of blocking all media consolidation (which, again, won’t happen because the U.S. is too corrupt to function), Democrats are most likely better served by finding ways to back Netflix’s play for Warner Brothers assets. I’m not sure they’re going to be strategically bright enough to realize that.
It’s worth noting that Netflix doesn’t want CNN and its sorry-ass ratings, and that CNN and Warner’s other cable channels are likely to be spun off and sold anyway, giving Larry Ellison yet another chance to acquire CNN, and like CBS, turn it into a right wing propaganda mill whose primary function will be to kiss the ass of increasingly unpopular autocrats.
Filed Under: consolidation, larry ellison
Companies: cnn, netflix, paramount, warner bros. discovery
Comments on “Larry Ellison Is Very Excited To Destroy What’s Left Of CNN, Sweetens The Pot For Hostile Warner Takeover”
I’m 100% sure Warner would prefer $108B over $83B, but still prefer $83B in cash, over $40B with the rest another day, maybe, maybe not.
But heck, when you’ve get this amount of money, you don’t care about politics or even consequences. You just take the money and run.
Re:
Those particular offers aren’t equivalent – Netflix is only paying $83B for just the Warner part of WBD, while Paramount is paying $108B, but for the entire company, and significantly devaluing Discovery in their bid, which is unacceptable to both the Warner board and shareholders, hence why Netflix’s bid keeps prevailing.
Democrats have stated that they intend to cause problems for any Paramount/WBD merger and may even act to dismantle it if they return to power (which at this rate is increasingly likely, considering the bloodbath that’ll happen in the midterms and Trump having no heir apparent who can feasibly win an election), so that’s something, at least.
Also, Paramount might not even get CNN. According to recent reporting (which I can’t find the link to right now), WBD is looking to sell off Discovery to a particular investment manager who is known for deftly handling debt-leveraged assets, and Zazlav is basically offloading all of WBD’s debt onto Discovery (which is why Paramount is devaluing the Discovery part in its bid for the whole company, whereas Zazlav wants to sell off Discovery for a lot more than Paramount is offering).
Re:
Talk is cheap, but at least they’re talking about it.
Biden made some real moves back toward trust-busting but one term wasn’t enough to see real results. I’m hoping whoever the next Democratic president is takes what he started and runs with it.
Isn’t legacy media dying anyway? Who gets their news from the tv anymore except for seniors, who are already bought in on the right’s propaganda anyway
The TikTok takeover is more disconcerting; that’s about radicalizing people who still have plenty of years (and votes to cast) ahead of them
Ellison’s reach and motivations may be far broader than this article suggests. Several years ago, he told his investors that Oracle was building a dossier on every person in the world. Much of the data is collected surreptitiously by using JavaScript behind the scenes on a vast number of websites. Oracle was sued in California over this privacy invasion and lost, promising to delete the captured data for Californians, but the data collection continues and remains a major source of what various list brokers sell. Combine this with his other assets, such as CBS, and his close relationship with the government (Ellison built the Oracle database under a CIA contract), and his company appears as a significant threat to all of us.
“National security regulatory review”? Not if the Saudis are involved. You remember who’s President, right? Regulations are WOKE.