In early August, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a suspension of exports of arms to Israel that could be used in the Gaza Strip “until further notice,” marking a major shift in German foreign policy.
Regardless of how arms exports should be handled (i’d be on the side of banning them until there is actual change), this just seems like bad politics. Why even bother to first suspend them completely after such a long time and then immediately revert back?
Seems to me like this achieves literally nothing, but is the worst option in regard to public perception. Like they could have just kept the status quo, since there all the bad publicity was already “priced in” so to speak. Or they could do a move like in August and change their stance, but then you got to keep it up for it to actually matter and intend to do so from the start. If you revert this fast you get the backlash again for your original stance AND you look weak to the counterparty.
Is it? Paramount+Larry Ellison+the Saudis was not a particular great alternative either. I guess only time will tell, how this turns out.
With Paramount I think there would have been the risk of WB remaining in a similar form, but being ideologically twisted.
With Netflix or course there is a larger risk towards theatrical and physical releases as it goes against their primary business model. And the biggest threat to creativity is not ideology, but in a way the opposite. Lack thereof and instead focus on just metrics like short term viewership numbers.
The best option out of the bad ones would have probably been something like Comcast. Or in my dreams wb would have just stayed independent, splitting of linear assets. They have a ton of debt, but imo eventually they’d have been strong enough to survive. Bur I guess sadly this wasn’t the most lucrative path.