> 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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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…
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
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.
I wonder what that % would look like for US voters over 60
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.
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.
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?
He’s only making an implication.
It's one big club
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Nothing on that list should have lived this long.
As a Trekkie, I'm offended.
Then you are too invested for your own good.
If the Trumps get their cut, you're golden.
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"
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.
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...
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?
>>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.
Do you have an example of left-leaning reporting that is mass media in the US?
WaPo, NYT, The Atlantic, NPR, and many others.
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?
NPR takes "both sides" reporting to an absurd extreme
Have you read the WaPo and NYT lately?
Yes, all of them, minus the ones you can count on one hand that's missing a few fingers from a fireworks mishap.
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.
His running of Skydance says otherwise. The most formulaic and bland film studio there is.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
You have to admit that David Ellison is extremely talented at being born to one of the wealthiest people in human history.
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
How much did the Gulf states pledge towards this?
Another nail in Americas coffin.
Yet another oligarchy centralization play. I assume more to come.
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.
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