Paramount Skydance has completed its $111B merger with Warner Bros. Discovery

Nilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/1004286/senator-adam-schiff...

> One of the longest-running tropes at The Verge is that a workable antitrust policy for the United States would be simply to forbid companies from buying Time Warner because it has never worked and it may never work again, and that we should just pass one law.

Checks out:

Jan 11, 2001: AOL and Time Warner merged to create AOL Time Warner

June 14, 2018: AT&T acquired Time Warner, renamed WarnerMedia

April 8, 2022: WarnerMedia spun out of AT&T, merged with Discovery

A behemoth indeed but the numbers also tell an interesting story. For TV screen share, Youtube has ~13% of total US viewing time vs ~6% for Paramount/Warner. They also go into this merger with staggering debt which does not bode well.

Can this be undone in the future if folks realize it was too monopolistic and it was in fact an anti-trust violation?

I wonder if David Ellison is a fun guy IRL.

not a fan of CNN, but a very right leaning person is the owner of CNN now. pre-dictatorship vibes!!

First it was Time in 1990, then AOL then AT&T then Discovery and now this. That's 5 owners since 90 for Warner Brothers and none of those really worked out well. I don't know enough to know if this stands a better chance, but if I was going to bet, I'd bet Warner has a new owner before 2030.

Yes! What the consumer needs! Less competition! Hurrah!

Sorry for the sarcasm.

I've seen plenty of negative (and legitimate) sentiment around this merger but I'm cautiously optimistic that David Ellison, being half the age of anyone else with greenlight authority, will do something different/better.

Seems fine. There are more options for entertainment than ever. Often these mergers don't work out anyway.

So when do they raise prices and start laying folks off?

You have to admit that David Ellison is extremely talented at being born to one of the wealthiest people in human history.

so does this mean i get paramount plus for free with my hbo?

So they’ve committed to for example releasing 30-32 movies a year for the next five years [1] but after that, no promises. Good thing mergers are famously temporary and we never need to worry about the next 10 years! Oh wait…

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/09/25/paramount-hollywood-prom...

When do we get Bugs Bunny on the Enterprise ?

Let's hope that the fears of new owners being rightwing are correct so we can finally see The Censored Eleven in their full glory.

Another nail in Americas coffin.

How much did the Gulf states pledge towards this?

From what I see on r/stablediffusion, Hollywood has maybe 2 years left, in the optimistic case.