I think Netflix is incredibly foolish for letting Paramount scoop this up, and their leadership is taking a huge gamble that the very broad media empire the extreme right has and is building in combination with unilateral control of the government will not be used to seriously undermine companies like Netflix in the coming years.

Netflix isn't going to be simply competing against Paramount/WBD, they are going to be competing against the State's custom built propaganda machine.

Sure, I'd be willing to walk away with a briefcase holding $2.8 Billion with a B. How much stock would that buy back? Doubtful shareholders see any dividends from it.

Yea Paramounts behavior doesn’t seem rational if the direct economics of the companies involved were the only concern.

But given that Paramount wanted to buy the CNN portion of the business that Netflix wasn’t even bidding on, it kinda seems like they have a longer term goal in place.