Whoever wins, we all lose.
Seriously, why merge at all? I guess I’m being naive, but would WB really go under otherwise? Can’t we just have a significant number of competing companies?
And what… have communism? No sir, everything must be owned by 6 white dudes like god intended.
I get the point of your sarcasm, but seriously: it would still be just capitalism, within a state of law.
Well, pirate never lose.
There have to be people making things worthy of stealing.
Not really. These brands are hollow shells of former glory. Their output is cynical trash designed by committees to extract maximum revenue, soulless and worthless. They can all burn to the ground for all I care.
They should invest in improving their app instead of buying more companies.
Why make things better when you could make things worse, save money, and still make bank?
Do all the options really involve greater market concentration? Are there no outside companies interested in diversifying?
No one really wants (to simplify) aging cable channels, HBO, and Harry Potter unless they can leverage them somehow.
Netflix can fold them into their streaming and presumably cut a lot of redundancy.
Comcast already owns the Harry Potter parks and cable channels. They very much need the prestige of the HBO brand.
Paramount is freshly flush with cash and presumably just trying to just grab market share to stand a fighting chance.
But… outside companies can’t really use it as well. What would (for example) Sony do with all that?
There are lots of examples of companies declining to consolidate and going on to succeed, and lots of examples where companies consolidate and it’s a disaster (two prior examples for WB alone!). But only one yields a $500 million payout for the CEO.
This is like an ebay auction for billion dollar companies…
