Warner Bros Discovery Eyes Paramount Merger, Because Its Last Two Disastrous Mergers Apparently Weren’t Disastrous Enough
from the merge-ALL-the-things! dept
By now we’ve well established that this particular series of media mergers — which began with AT&T’s doomed acquisition of Time Warner and ended with Time Warner’s subsequent spin off and fusion with Discovery — were some of the dumbest, most pointless “business” exercises ever conceived by man.
The idiotic saga burned through hundreds of billions in debt, saw more than 50,000 people lose their jobs, killed off numerous popular brands (like Mad Magazine and HBO), created oceans of animosity among creatives, and resulted in a Max streaming service that’s arguably dumber and of notably lower quality than when the entire expensive gambit began.
And executives at Warner Bros Discovery appear to have learned absolutely nothing from the experience.
The New York Times indicates that Warner Bros Discovery boss David Zaslav is in early talks to merge with yet another company, this time Paramount (CBS). These mergers provide absolutely no real benefit to the broader world; they exist exclusively so the fail upward brunchlords in charge can nab giant tax breaks and put “savvy dealmaker” on their resumes.
But they also showcase how the executives in charge are completely out of original ideas.
That said, the New York Times coverage of this latest wrinkle is… not good.
Outside of the massive debt load, the paper doesn’t seem to think it’s important to inform readers about the endless, pointless, and clearly harmful chaos from the company’s last two shitty mergers. The 50,000+ layoffs from the last two deals aren’t even mentioned. Neither is the endless frustration among creatives who lost their livelihoods or watched their projects get crushed underfoot for no coherent reason.
The Times also apparently believes that there’s “ample business logic” in the deal, because they claim it will provide Warner Brothers Discovery HBO Max Paramount CBS Plus with greater leverage in negotiations with cable TV companies:
“There is ample business logic in a tie-up of Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount. Paramount’s bundle of TV networks, which include MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, could give Warner Bros. Discovery greater leverage in negotiations with cable distributors like Comcast and Charter.”
The problem with the NYT’s claim is that traditional cable TV is facing what could be its final death knell. We just got done noting how traditional cable TV networks (many of the ones the Times lists above as important assets) have effectively turned into mindless rerun-airing zombies, and most current cable TV channels likely won’t even exist in a few years.
At the same time, most of the worst executives from cable TV have simply jumped over to the streaming sector, where they’re busy demonstrating they’ve learned nothing from decades of history and mistakes. They’re absolutely dead set on making streaming every bit as shitty as cable TV via worse overall product, higher prices, and endless, often bizarre efforts to nickel-and-dime increasingly-annoyed customers.
Gone is the originality of HBO, replaced with a growing mountain of reality TV programs about dumb people having sex on islands. Accompanied by a huge increase in weird and annoying service restrictions and higher prices. That’s going to drive users not just to free alternatives like YouTube or TikTok, but back to piracy after a decade of inroads with U.S. consumers.
Again, these media mergers are utterly pointless, harmful constructs that actively undermine the brand and long-term health of these companies. And, as the NYT demonstrates, the very real human harms of this pointless consolidation are simply edited out of the frame like one of Stalin’s political enemies, ensuring nobody learns anything as we repeat the process in idiotic perpetuity.
Filed Under: cabletv, consolidation, david zaslav, media, mergers, streaming, warner bros discovery
Companies: paramount, warner bros. discovery
Comments on “Warner Bros Discovery Eyes Paramount Merger, Because Its Last Two Disastrous Mergers Apparently Weren’t Disastrous Enough”
Redstones at the helm did this
Should do an article tracing the history of the Redstone family and the impact they’ve had on the various assets.
This didn’t happen simply because of executive decisions, this is happening to Paramount and properties because of a single shareholder.
I’m not going “back to piracy” – I never left. These companies COULD be making money from me (like other companies in other areas that I pay for their services) but they’re so intent on making the experience absolutely miserable (and increasingly expensive) that I don’t want to pay them. I’d rather pay the pirates, who are intent on making the experience enjoyable and affordable, and who have far better customer service.
(Have you called Comcast lately? First you get to talk to a robot, and then eventually to a person who is no doubt fluent in their native language but not in English – and is thus incapable of understanding what the problem is and has absolutely no chance of solving it. There are profuse apologies and excuses and lots of other useless fluff, but no solutions. And there’s no way to resume a conversation – if you call back you have start over. AND none of them, apparently, put notes in a customer file for future reference.)
Thank goodness for VPNs, pirate streaming and download sites, and torrents.
Re: Just a note:
Just out of curiosity, if you’re going to pirate my work, how dare you! I won’t put up with this petty theft! You should obey the law!
(In all seriousness, I license all my original songs and public domain covers (and Jonathan Coulton covers) with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license, so feel free to share to your heart’s content!)
Re: Piracy
When committing criminal acts, it’s generally wise to avoid discussing them on open forums (e.g. the “Youtuber” who crashed his plane). You never know who might be taking note, and, “anonymous” or not, bragging about such things would hardly be the act of a coward, unless they were exceptionally ignorant.
This is a capitalist society, and you’ll generally pay for things eventually, one way or another, unless your real name happens to be Trump or Thomas.
Re: I wish I could pirate Comcast
Comcast is a terrible company but that’s internet service, not content.
As far as content goes, it’s so easy to just churn around 1 at a time and pay well under $20/month for a lot of great content, that they’d have to honk me off much worse for me to pirate that stuff.
Deal breakers include: no ad free tier; no monthly tiers.
Re: Re:
Considering that they also own NBC and Universal, Comcast also owns content.
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I’m not going “back to piracy” – I never left. These companies COULD be making money from me (like other companies in other areas that I pay for their services) but they’re so intent on making the experience absolutely miserable (and increasingly expensive) that I don’t want to pay them. I’d rather pay the pirates, who are intent on making the experience enjoyable and affordable, and who have far better customer service.
I’ve got the solution- Elon Musk can buy them all and rename them something truly stupid. If “X” is any indication, idiots will keep paying money to use them even though they’ll keep getting even worse than they were to begin with. This will also give him something new to whine about…
That they “killed the HBO brand” is a claim Karl continues to make but it’s just weird. The HBO brand is being used exactly the same way now as it was for most of its history: it’s the name of a premium cable station.
They briefly, confusingly, and idiotically used it for their streaming service (and a bunch of other shit); they don’t anymore. Now their streaming service has another, even dumber name, but that doesn’t mean they killed HBO. That’s just silly.
Facepalm
This merger is great! It will make them even more like regular cable. Hooray! Just what we want…
executives at Warner Bros Discovery appear to have learned absolutely nothing
Actually they learned they get rewarded for doing this, so of course they will do it again.
They’re still using the same formula:
wrong + wrong = right
(which keeps failing them and they still don’t learn).
Zaslav
Having Zaslav in charge is probably the best thing that’s happened to Warner Brothers in a long time. His cancellation of the Batgirl movie before it could lose more money and the firing of those responsible was a fine start.
Re:
If he’s the best thing that’s happened in a long time, then why is he greenlighting another ridiculous merger?
Re: Re:
I’ll assume that Bill Bagel is using sarcasm and failed to comply with Poe’s law.
Or he could just have insane opinions. Either/Or.
Re:
Yeah, because that is what would break the company. @@
This article is simply wrong
In fact, they are having sex in many different types of locations.
IS THERE ANYWAY?
To get Corporate evaluations that arnt based FROM the Corp evaluated?
A TRUE value of a corp without THEIR input and Inflation of Value/worth/without the Corp wage over head.
the Only value you are seeing on the stock market is the Debt value of the top wage earners.
Here in Australia, Paramount+ already has a bunch of WB content so I’m not at all surprised by this latest merger attempt.
'You're jobless now but I'm making $2 more a month, that's a win to me!'
Disastrous for who is the only question that matters to those involved, it doesn’t matter if mergers like this result in mass layoffs and a worse product so long as it makes those at the top that little bit richer and/or more powerful.
What business school teaches that if you’re in charge of a failing business, the path to success is to… purchase another failing business? All of them? It’s all of them, isn’t it? This is why we can’t have nice things.
Re: its a survival trick.
To ADD more to what you have created.
The Problems are many.
Current owners are not creators, and each business design was made long ago. Adapting the New added part to What you have is like wearing Someone ELSE’s Dentures.
In the end, you get rid of everything except the materials you need and Just redesign the NEW part to be the OLD part. AND no improvements.
The medua has describe this proposal as Warnamount. I thought of Paramax.
A redditor proposed Discount.