Paramount bids $30 all cash for all of Warner Brothers Discovery. Netflix bids $27.75 “for Warner’s studio and HBO Max streaming business” only [1]. (“$23.25 in cash and $4.50 in shares” [2].)

The latter leaves behind “sports and news television brands around the world including CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., and Discovery, top free-to-air channels across Europe, and digital products such as the profitable Discovery+ streaming service and Bleacher Report (B/R)” [3]. (Paramount is effectively bidding $5.9bn for these assets.)

Note that Zaslav, Warner’s CEO, is a prominent donor to Democrats [4], as is Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder [5]. (Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO with Greg Peters, is mixed, leaning Dem [6]. No clue on the latter.) Ellison is a staunch Trump ally. The partisan tinge will be difficult to ignore.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/media/paramount-makes-hostile-t...

[2] https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-to-acquire-warner-...

[3] https://www.wbd.com/news/warner-bros-discovery-separate-two-...

[4] https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=david+...

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/reed-hastings...

[6] https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=Ted+Sa...