Why the Netflix-Warner/Discovery deal could change news forever
The media company Warner Bros./Discovery has been in play for months. It just accepted a bid from Netflix for $83 billion — for its production studio assets and HBO Max streaming services only.
This deal may face antitrust scrutiny for consolidation in the streaming space and may not go through. Paramount/Skydance and Comcast/NBC were outbid and aren’t taking this sitting down.
But what will happen to CNN?
If this deal goes forward as planned, Warner/Discovery will continue with previous plans to spin out its cable networks such as CNN, Discovery, TNT, and HGTV into a separate company called Discovery Global. Those assets generate cash but aren’t really growing, because the growth is in streaming, not linear TV.
Keep your eye on what happens to the leftovers from the Netflix deal. Because if the history of recent media deals is any guide, the value of news organizations is as house organs for billionaires.
This is not a new idea — Rupert Murdoch has dominated conservative media with Fox News and The Wall Street Journal for a while now — but it’s accelerating. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Sheldon Adelson owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal. And Mark Benioff owns Time Magazine. The degree to which these media properties are editorially independent varies, but their owners do appear to influence what they do (such as the Post failing to make a presidential endorsement in 2024).
I have no idea which billionaire will try to buy CNN (Elon Musk?), but I can tell you that once it’s kicked loose from the content factories and streaming services of Warner Bros./Discovery, its value will increasingly reflect its ability to generate influence, not profit.
CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), recently spun out of Comcast along with other cable networks, will be in play as well. But for a billionaire seeking influence, CNN is the big prize.
Editorial independence is under seige. That’s the unspoken but highly likely consequence of the deal Netflix and Warner Bros./Discovery just announced, and it’s going to have far more far-reaching consequences than what fleeting entertainment diversions Netflix can create with its new assets.
Hubris and greed continue to wreak their havoc on our species. Designer babies, Ai disinformation, “Enshittification” of every commodity and product, takeover of media by the world’s richest, most rapacious and amoral men – kinda glad I’m old. I don’t blame intelligent couples for choosing not to reproduce, but it exacerbates the trend. As a survivor of the Holocaust advised me, “Enjoy what you have.”
What made this even possible was the reversion from the media-as-watchdog era (which in truth didn’t last long) back to being mouthpieces for one ideology or the other. In other words, the thing you are warning against already happened. The trend with billionaires buying outlets is a reaction.