Life in Ell
Because we live in an age when the worst-case scenario is always the most likely one, Larry and David Ellison’s Skydance Paramount “won” the bidding war over Netflix, and is now positioned to own Warner Bros. By refusing to up the ante on an already ridiculously overpriced transaction, Netflix looks like this deal’s real winner. The rest of us are the losers. We’ve already seen the damage that the Ellison lineage has done to CBS News. CNN’s fate is likely to follow a similar path. You may argue that CBS is old news and CNN hasn’t really been reporting on the news since they replaced Bernard Shaw with nonstop, endlessly irritating opinion panels. But the billionaire bankrolling of media includes new and old media. The Ellisons will have CBS, CNN, and a huge chunk of the American version of TikTok. Bezos has WaPo. Zuck owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Elon owns X. The Murdochs own Fox, WSJ, and a host of other sources. Local TV news stations are being bought up by right-leaning conglomerates. From old media printed newspapers to new-fangled AI answer machines, the American brain is increasingly being fed a steady diet of feeds by mega-billionaires who probably have very different political views and goals than you do. And if their media machines don’t sway enough people, their ability to spend endlessly to support political candidates and causes should do the trick.
+ Given the buyers’ relationship with Trump, federal approval of this deal is a given. Can California stand in the way of a merger that will hurt jobs as much as it hurts democracy? California now biggest obstacle to Paramount’s Warner Bros takeover.
+ If you’re looking for a silver lining, this is a really bad deal for the buyers. “Mr. Ellison’s deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, which values the company at $31 a share, is an outcome few would have predicted just months ago. Shares of the media giant were trading as low as $12 a share in September, as it faced headwinds in its traditional television business.” NYT (Gift Article): Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for an Ellison Takeover. (Sort of like the Roadrunner always paves the way for the Coyote to win the race, by stopping at the edge of the cliff.)
