• simonw an hour ago

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

• s3p 35 minutes ago

Oh this is hilarious. Didn't AT&T also acquire HBO and spin them off too?

• lukemercado 22 minutes ago

They did, but first they rebranded them as Max, thus destroying the incredible name value of HBO. It was renamed back to HBO as part of the spinout IIRC.

• rwc 17 minutes ago

The "credit" for that move actually belongs to WarnerBros Discovery

• brendoelfrendo 11 minutes ago

My favorite part of that story is that McKinsey both advised WarnerBros Discovery to make that change, and then advised them to change it back, making millions each time. I wish I made that much money being bad at my job.

• xbar 15 minutes ago

March, 1989: Time and Warner announce merger, Paramount launches hostile bid for Time. January, 1990: Time responds by buying Warner Communications for $14 billion.

...Paramount sulks, and bides its time....

• slowin 36 minutes ago

This is more consolidation of US media under extremely pro-Israel ownership. I don't think this will work out as well as they hope (look at CBS -- Bari Weiss has driven it into the ground) but it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over, including both "news" and "entertainment", including TikTok.

https://www.972mag.com/ellisons-paramount-tiktok-israel-medi...

• fortzi 11 minutes ago

They sure aren’t fooling you!

• melbournesky 8 minutes ago

I was working with some interns and it's interesting to see how the youth knows not to trust Israel. You can see it with them just becoming the butt of more jokes, the shield of ww2 victimhood covering their behavior is slipping.

• lapcat 4 minutes ago

> I don't think this will work out as well as they hope (look at CBS -- Bari Weiss has driven it into the ground)

I think that's actually what they hope, to discredit all mainstream media.

It's the same plan as with the federal government: discredit it and make people lose faith via intentional sabotage.

• s3p 34 minutes ago

Is it possible the next administration sues to break them up? Couldn't they also just launch endless investigations of the owners until they spun it off into its own thing

• slowin 20 minutes ago
• dkobia an hour ago

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.

• scyzoryk_xyz an hour ago

This would be the anti anti trust argument - that it's not studio vs studio, but it's type of screen-time vs other types of screen-time.

Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games? This was during the streaming wars IIRC.

Regardless of how you look at it, this is yet another confluence of IP franchises merging together, whatever juice is left in them squeezed out and reprocessed over and over over time. Kind of what Oracle is in software I guess?

Working in an adjacent entertainment IP focus business myself, my eyes are glazing over a bit at this point.

• patwolf an hour ago

This is the same argument from when Sirius and XM radio merged. It didn't matter that they were monopolizing satellite radio because the real competition was terrestrial radio and internet radio.

• bunderbunder 32 minutes ago

From my perspective YouTube has quietly won the streaming wars. It has a vastly wider variety of content, especially for non-fiction shows. In the cases where there's more direct genre competition, I tend to prefer YouTube overall because, despite its offerings being generally lower budget, they tend to represent a wider variety of "editorial voices". There's a lot of outright slop to wade through, ofc, but there's also a lot of creative risk taking out there to discover.

Meanwhile, yeah, Paramount, Time Warner, Disney, etc. have all become so money-minded and risk-averse that it reminds me of the twilight days of the old Hollywood studio system, where all the major production companies were locked into a heated battle to determine who could be the absolute blandest.

• mikepurvis 11 minutes ago

I kind of agree, and it's interesting how Nebula and Spotify (at least their video efforts) have been based on elevating and funding those ultra-budget YouTube creators. Like I watch Lindsay Ellis and Practical Engineering and SkillUp all on non-YouTube platforms now, despite YouTube being the recommendation algorithm that originally brought me there.

It's really the opposite model of the "major" streaming players who fund tentpole releases in the conventional Hollywood way, and then have a long tail of niche content (cooking reality shows and the like) that are clearly on a much tighter budget, but still basically modeled on being a cheaper version of a cable show rather than a much better funded version of a YouTube comedy troupe.

• jedberg 44 minutes ago

> Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games?

Yes. He always told us that we don't need to worry about the other streamers nearly as much as we have to worry about them turning off the TV and playing games or (gasp!) going outside. TikTok/Instagram Reels wasn't a thing yet, but if it were, I'm sure they would have been on the list too.

• mikepurvis 7 minutes ago

“Being an adult is staring at medium screens all day to come home and stare at a little screen while a big screen is on in the background”

https://x.com/andlikelaura/status/1392091221032460291

• doctorpangloss 26 minutes ago

Reed Hastings may be rich, but he is a fucking moron. By his logic the greatest threat to entertainment is people who parent without screens.

• estearum 12 minutes ago

You're misinterpreting what "threat" means. And in fact he used the word "competition."

He was talking about the "incumbent" they are trying to displace. Netflix's challenge was not getting people to switch from watching Hulu to Netflix, but to get them not to sleep in order to watch Netflix.

Evil maybe, but nothing moronic about it.

• thousand_nights an hour ago

youtube has slowly become like 90% of my TV time over the past few years, I think it's the fact that you don't have to commit to watching 40+ minutes of something every time and there's just way too much interesting content on it

and i'm not even someone you'd class as young anymore, so I don't think this is a younger generation thing

• BeetleB 23 minutes ago

I'm in the opposite camp. I find Youtube exhausting, and it keeps getting worse and worse.

Their ads are terrible. And since I watch via a device like Roku, etc, I have to put up with them. I've actively removed them from my devices. Occasionally, I feel like looking up some video. I install it, and often before I even watch the video I uninstall it because the awful UI reminds me of all the other awful stuff in it.

Curation doesn't exist. I have to work hard to find good content. Harder than any video service out there.

And shorts. Oh. Dear. God.

For some very targeted stuff (home repairs, video game walkthroughs), it's great. For the rest, it just sucks.

• munificent 4 minutes ago

Of all of the various online services, YouTube is the one where I feel I get the most value in return for paying for premium. 90% of my video and music consumption is through YouTube, and it's all ad-free. (Well, except that so much of hobby YouTube is implicitly all ad because the video is about some piece of hobby gear, but that's sort of the nature of the beast.)

I've never watched a YouTube short.

My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.

• lallysingh 16 minutes ago

If you have the ads turned off, it's a lot nicer. I got that with some family bundle for more Drive space.

• BeetleB 8 minutes ago

Let me put it this way.

Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads.

I don't want to pay for that.

• chihuahua 6 minutes ago

Or just watch Youtube on a laptop, and install an ad blocker.

• lokar an hour ago

I wonder what that % would look like for US voters over 60

• bigwheels 2 hours ago

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.

• hilariously an hour ago

Should we wonder if Goebbels was a fun guy irl? I don't get it.

• fortzi 5 minutes ago

Are you seriously making that comparison?

• Y_Y 2 hours ago

He has a nice yacht, I bet it's fun on the yacht.

• yolp5 an hour ago

Probably not if you're an underage girl though.

• fhub an hour ago

Are you insinuating something about David Ellison here?

• yolp5 an hour ago

It's one big club

• kridsdale1 an hour ago

He’s only making an implication.

• lokar an hour ago

IMO, a better solution for the broadcast media part of this is to delegate content regulation to the states when the signal from a tv/radio station is entirely within one state (and some kind of join regulation when it spans >1).

Concentrating so much power in the federal government is problematic, and unnecessary.

• Hamuko 2 hours ago

Seems to me that these companies will say pretty much whatever during the merger process, and as long as there's no concrete repercussions written down somewhere, just do whatever since it's much harder to break a company apart than it is to block a merger.

• bigwheels an hour ago

The pre-merger settlement approved by the current supreme court was that Skydance would: (1) Agree to production quota of 30 movies per year, (2) Domestic spending commitments, and (3) Separate cable package negotiations.

Assets: TNT, CBS, CNN, MTV, TCM, Showtime, Adult Swim, DC Studios, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, HBO/HBO Max, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network

Film Rights: Star Trek, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, DC Comics, Tom & Jerry, Harry Potter, Citizen Kane, Transformers, A Quiet Place, Looney Tunes, The Conjuring, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Dora The Explorer, Mission Impossible, The Lord of the Rings, SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dune 3, Minecraft, MonsterVerse

Remember that Citizen Kane is the movie about a media tycoon who buys everything he can and ends up alone in a mansion full of stuff.

• kridsdale1 39 minutes ago

Please enjoy this SlopGen Fantasy Skydance Kingdom.

https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6ac56dbab5448191866eb7c80c31c025

• whycome an hour ago

So you’re saying this opens up the possibility of some wild crossover media stories. Star Trek exploring new worlds that also include krypton, cybertron, and the game of thrones world. Oh Dune too. And maybe do the time travel thing to see a Lord of the Rings middle earth. And have Dora graduate to captain of a star ship (or explore the sea and encounter SpongeBob and Aquaman). Batman can team up with the Mission Impossible crew to solve a mystery. Ninja turtles in a mortal kombat? Wonder Woman in Westeros with Harry Potter?

Maybe a Sora descendant will allow user-directed content to emerge.

• hnlmorg 27 minutes ago

> Star Trek exploring new worlds that also include krypton, cybertron, and the game of thrones world. Oh Dune too. And maybe do the time travel thing to see a Lord of the Rings middle earth.

Sadly that isn’t far removed from the novelty “Strange New Worlds” series they recently released. What a mess season 4 was. :(

• krapp 12 minutes ago

Nothing of the sort would ever happen. They would be insane to risk the integrity of their IPs by doing something so ridiculous.

That said, as snowflakey as Star Trek fans are, I would love to see their reaction to Dora the Explorer ordering Batman to launch photon torpedos at Unicron. They'd probably complain about "yet another DEI captain."

• scun an hour ago

Nothing on that list should have lived this long.

• aleksandrm an hour ago

As a Trekkie, I'm offended.

• scun an hour ago

Then you are too invested for your own good.

Do Trekkies not crave novelty?

• TeMPOraL 33 minutes ago

You have to cling to some beacon of hope in a world that decided future is dead and proceeded to drown itself in its own dystopia fetishism.

• yolp5 an hour ago

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

I predict the democrats winning, shoving it all under that table and pushing for "reconciliation" and "moving forward" while continuing the rotten status quo that got Trump elected in the first place. Maybe a few token prosecutions of low level wage workers involved.

• rwmj 41 minutes ago

I learned from working with some that psychopaths are a lot of fun going for a drink after work, but at work they make your life a misery.

• nutjob2 an hour ago

If the Trumps get their cut, you're golden.

• anthonypasq an hour ago

serious question how could you possible argue this is monopolistic when Disney, Netflix, and Youtube exist. It doesn't pass the barest level of scrutiny.

• rileymat2 40 minutes ago

Monopoly is the wrong word, but it has a close cousin, “anticompetitive”. For free market people one of the major role of the government is maintaining competition and avoiding collusion, combining to competitors is straightforward collusion.

• prometheus1992 an hour ago

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

• Georgelemental an hour ago

Where "right" means specifically "Likud"

• BurningFrog 29 minutes ago

Antisemitism is growing fast, and I think it's time to become aware and start pushing back!

• kashunstva 18 minutes ago

The other thing that is growing is the conflation of opposition to Israel’s belligerence and human rights violations with antisemitism.

• pyvpx 12 minutes ago

There are vastly more Semitic people than Zionists. In fact most Zionists aren’t Semitic whatsoever.

Post truth world. Sad stuff.

• fortzi 9 minutes ago

What on earth are you talking about?!

• righthand 18 minutes ago

No it’s not, antisemitism is not equal to criticism of Israel.

• jandrese 3 minutes ago

And it's definitely not for being critical of Israel's government's policies. You can believe that the Jewish people deserve to have a peaceful place to live, and also believe that what they are doing to Palestine is wrong.

• BurningFrog 30 minutes ago

He's donated to and voted for candidates of both parties, and claims to be a centrist.

• Waterluvian an hour ago

I don’t follow the sentiment.

Right wing people have repeatedly captured and destroyed journalism outlets they deem undesirable. Not that I’m saying CNN is any good.

• EA-3167 18 minutes ago

Ah yes, but Larry Ellison is Jewish.

Literally the only difference between him and the rest of the wannabe media barons, but you could fart the word “Israel” with your armpit and get upvotes these days.

• Hikikomori 11 minutes ago

More importantly he's a zionist and put bari Weiss in charge. It's pretty clear what they want to do.

• estearum 8 minutes ago

Well no, the difference is that this merger is in favor with the current administration which has engaged in a broad and pervasive pattern of authoritarian behaviors while being in lock-step with Israel's interests.

This merger is only happening because the deal that the seller actually preferred (Netflix buying them) was unlikely to be approved by regulators. The President literally came out right after the deal was approved and said "it could be a problem" and "I would have a say" in whether it went through.

In fact the very existence of Paramount Skydance itself, as a merged entity, appears to have been contingent upon Paramount modifying its own HR policies, placing a government ombudsman at their marquee journalistic outlet (CBS), and paying $16 million to Trump's "presidential library fund."

• nomel an hour ago

Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?

There should be a diverse leaning of news companies, otherwise you'll only get half truths. You can't expect a left leaning news org to report anything bad about the left, or right leaning news org to present anything bad about the right. The left will be motivated to find flaws in the right, and the right will be motivated to find flaws in the left. That's a good thing. I believe an adversarial system is required to find truth. A center leaning news org is nice, but they may be motivated to keep their reporting "even", to not appear biased, which isn't really possible with the tick tock of republican and democrat leadership.

A for-profit news org changing leadership/alignment, in a response to massively falling profits [1], isn't a sign of dictatorship, it's a sign of them being aligned to the reason they exist: making moneys.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cnn-net-worth-sliced-half-192...

edit: It appears the definition of left/right is not from the more average perspective of the American political overtone window, in these replies. Yes, they're all right compared to some definitions, and all left compared to others, but that's not what's being discussed.

• TheOtherHobbes an hour ago

I think the public should be able to view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets, and that is very much not happening in the US.

If - for example - you find a major news outlet that's pro-union, pro-single-payer, pro-wealth-taxes, and pro-debt-free-education, let me know.

• nomel 37 minutes ago

> view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets

Do you think this is being prevented somehow? There are many left leaning news agencies [1]. Maybe the "problem" is that they're all for profit, most of which comes from ads, most of which are anti union companies.

What's the alternative? Mandated reporting?

[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...

• prometheus1992 an hour ago

>>Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?

No! but where did you get that from?

There is Fox news, X, and Truth socia for right leaning perspectives.

• estearum a minute ago

It's the right wing perma-victim complex.

"We'll tell you the truth about the Dominion voting machines, which mainstream media WON'T tell you!" - Fox News, knowingly lying while also being literally the largest broadcast network in the country.

• jasondigitized an hour ago

In a alternative universe, a very wealthy person starts a not for profit news agency and gives zero f's how many eyeballs it gets. Hires an army of world class journalists, investigators, and producers to churn out high quality, vetted, in depth content. Does this exist?

• kridsdale1 an hour ago

Bezos with the WaPo was this until 2024.

• BeetleB 20 minutes ago

Did it improve under Bezos? I remember finding it of poor quality before him.

• philsnow 43 minutes ago

You'll still only get half-truths, but maybe (maybe) the sum of the vectors will be roughly normal

• nomel 11 minutes ago

I'm not saying new should be entirely left and right. My point is that the adversarial system will find more flaws than a more neutral system. There's plenty of time, and all sorts of in-between agencies, to point out the neutral stuffs. My point is that the existence of even super politically aligned news agencies isn't some pure bad thing, or a sign of a dictatorship. We need both. All the news agencies being aligned one way would be a VERY BAD thing. All the news agencies being aligned to some "center" would be only slightly less bad.

CNN nudging more towards the right doesn't somehow influence the overall left leaning spread [1], or is in any way indicative of a rising dictatorship.

[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...

• netsharc 44 minutes ago

This is probably my leftist bias, but ever consider that "leftists" are more interested in laws and decency whereas "rightists" are more interested in protecting their tribe/movement? But you think both sides play like "the right" (each only interested in exposing flaws of the other side) because you're seeing from your right-leaning perspective...

Democrat Al Franken got kicked out of Senate when it was found he inapproprately kissed a woman. I can name a long list of creeps in the GOP side who received protection from their side. Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Sexual Harassment Hegseth, Epstein-Friend in Chief. The GOP doesn't seem to have any principles about which sexual deviant they have, they just care about having the majority (in congress) or the power. Oh yeah, speaking of that, sexual assaulter Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh...

I'd trust left-leaning media to report wrongdoing whoever does it, whereas right-leaning media will gloss or bare-face lie about wrongdoing done by the right, and exaggerate about wrongdoings by the left...

• Terr_ 11 minutes ago

It sure feels like there are people who care about formulating and holding principles (e.g. "adultery is bad") that ought to apply to everyone, and then there are people who claim to believe the same but really they're playing some kind of game in service of their ultimate virtue of loyalty/obedience, to some hierarchy they consider existentially important.

The first group will define good/bad acts and then judge people by what acts they commit, the second defines good/bad people and then judges acts by which person is doing them.

On a similar note, I highly recommend a playlist of long-form videos from ~2016, titled (in the sense of an expose) "The Alt-Right Playbook". In particular, the video "Always a Bigger Fish" [0] tries to make sense of some persistent "how can they possibly believe X but not Y" disagreements when it comes to democracy and egalitarianism.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs&list=PLJA_jUddXv...

• nextstep an hour ago

Do you have an example of left-leaning reporting that is mass media in the US?

• reliabilityguy an hour ago

WaPo, NYT, The Atlantic, NPR, and many others.

• jedberg 36 minutes ago

Only people on the right think NPR is on the left. NPR is the most middle of the road you can get. Just because they report facts that contradict the administration doesn't make them left leaning.

• BeetleB 18 minutes ago

I know hard core leftists love to bash NPR/PBS, but as a non-leftist, non-centrist, non-right wing person, I definitely find NPR to have a left wing bias. Not as left wing as Democracy Now, etc - but definitely left leaning.

• BurningFrog 24 minutes ago

I used to be an avid NPR listener, but after George Floyd it's astoundingly woke when I try listening. That's not very often anymore, to be fair.

• kashunstva 14 minutes ago

I’m curious about how you would objectively define “woke”. I’d also be curious about how NPR scores on those measures relative to other comparable media.

• D-Machine 2 minutes ago

Why do people still trot out this tired argument?

https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...

• penskymaterial 18 minutes ago

The NPR front page right now has a clip from a profanity-filled interview with a drag queen.

Famously fair and balanced, I know.

• lokar an hour ago

NPR takes "both sides" reporting to an absurd extreme

• sailfast an hour ago

Have you read the WaPo and NYT lately?

• prometheus1992 an hour ago

WaPo? definitely not. going through independence crisis.

NYT - i think so.

NPR - funding crisis.

The Atlantic - i don't read this - is this the one who's journalist was added in the top secret signal chat?

• hilariously an hour ago

It's not a clear divide between right and left, and NYT, the Atlantic, and NPR stans right wing voices constantly, have constantly used their editorialization to promote right wing ideals, and have gone out of their way to center right wing voices to give the appearance of being centrist to the right, which has had a direct impact in their perception as not really left wing by any of the left.

Now the center right is supporting concentration camps like "alligator alcatraz" so the overton window has shifted a lot in the last ten years.

• lovich 36 minutes ago

WaPo definitely is not with Bezos at the helm and preventing them from endorsing Harris

• platevoltage 25 minutes ago

To the left of outright fascist propaganda? I'll give you that.

• penskymaterial an hour ago

Yes, all of them, minus the ones you can count on one hand that's missing a few fingers from a fireworks mishap.

• caned 25 minutes ago

It's never been a better time to start consuming less. Let's drive that demand way, way down.

• JKCalhoun 9 minutes ago

So what does this mean? Superman vs. the Transformers?

I'm not sure I was interested in either company by themselves—less likely to be interested in the merged one.

• blakesterz 2 hours ago

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.

• jedberg 35 minutes ago

This is the first time they are being bought by another company that makes content. Every other purchase was to add content creation to an existing company. So maybe there is chance.

But probably not with Ellison in charge. He'll probably just drive both companies into the ground.

• kwanbix 2 hours ago

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

Sorry for the sarcasm.

• stavros 2 hours ago

Less regulation means more innovation!

• roroh4310 an hour ago

I will believe this internet comment. Thanks!

• stavros an hour ago

It is in your best interest. All this innovation is sure to mean better quality of life for the average person, and not at all a widening of the income gap.

• jmyeet 35 minutes ago

Fun fact: Skydance was originally started as a vehicle to buy David Ellison an acting career [1], which spent $60M on Fly Boys. It grossed $17M. There's a very real "failed in Hollywood to alt-right" pipeline, actually.

The truth is that Hollywood was already dying and it had been systematically dismantled by short-term profit seeking. It dismantled the system that created hugely valuable properties like Friends, Cheers, ER, Seinfeld, etc where 22 episodes were created every year to a system where streamers could cut out having to pay for syndication by creating 8 episodes every 3-4 years.

You see a lot of stars of shows having podcasts now from shows that ended years or even decades ago (The Office, The Sopranos). In a healthy ecosystem, successful actors would be working actors.

You see productions chase tax rebates all across North America such as Georgia and Canada where once productions were typically based in LA and that had a ton of ecosystem benefits. As soon as the tax rebates go, so do the productions.

Gavin Newsom clearly isn't serious about becoming president because approving this merger is going to lead to even more layoffs and fewer productions. It's going to be deeply unpopular in California. For good reason.

So what's core to all this (IMHO) is... housing. Housing is an input cost to everything in that locations. LA used to be relatively cheap. It had a mix of housing types from single family homes to mansions to budget apartments so Ho actors, writers, etc could reasonably start out.

And then with declining demand as productions spread out and less pilots and shows were being made overall, the industry has become dominated by nepo babies.

I actually think that in future centuries when history is written about the turning point for American empire, it'll be the downfall of Hollywood. You cannot overstate the value the US had to export culture to the entire world with Hollywood.

[1]: https://brobible.com/culture/article/david-ellison-tried-to-...

• PorciiVorbesc 2 minutes ago

>Fun fact: Skydance was originally started as a vehicle to buy David Ellison an acting career

Damn, I wish my daddy was a multi-billionaire and fund my nepo-baby hobbies with 8 figures.

• xnx 2 hours ago

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

• ramon156 an hour ago

how exactly do they "not work out"? its two behemoths merging for the sake of more money

• cdrnsf 2 hours ago

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

• cmorgan31 2 hours ago

They already acknowledged layoffs so likely within 30 days the cull list will be presented to senior leadership.

• superxpro12 2 hours ago

Its so weird how these layoffs somehow targeted every left wing news organization or show. We just cant be certain how that happened. oh well

• brnt 2 hours ago

Do we really need two Ellisons?

• thinkingtoilet an hour ago

Do we even need one?

• toomuchtodo 2 hours ago

Their debt load is enormous due to how quickly debt costs have risen from M&A talks to issuing the debt.

https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/skydance-credit-rating-down...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-01/paramount... | https://archive.today/SEtX9

• cdrnsf an hour ago

I'm sure they'll figure that out.

• chasing 2 hours ago

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

• Papazsazsa an hour ago

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.

• hilariously an hour ago

As long as you are hoping he has a really, really, really positive view of Israel you're going to be happy!

• developerDan an hour ago

His running of Skydance says otherwise. The most formulaic and bland film studio there is.

• Papazsazsa 35 minutes ago

Skydance/Paramount has had plenty of success attracting young audiences via UFC & gaming partnerships, so I'm not sure that's a counterpoint. Re forumulaic/bland that's a personal taste thing and not worth arguing.

The key contributor to Hollywood's waning influence is the generation gap; it's a cultural institution that is supposed to be culturally salient. Take the Mandalorian movie as an example; the biggest studio using the biggest IP to spend $300M on a movie... which lost $100M. That movie was competing at the box office at the same time with Obsession, which was made for $750k by a young Youtuber has made over half a billion worldwide.

As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older. He can shake things up if he wants to, and I hope he does.

• developerDan 26 minutes ago

Being formulaic and bland is an important aspect of expecting someone to “do something different” or “shake things up”. If the owner of a film studio has so much green light power but the studio has primarily produced film following a single formula, which the audiences have grown bored with (hence bland), then how can there be an expectation of that owner suddenly doing something different simply because they bought another studio?

• yolp5 34 minutes ago

> As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older.

Who do you think he has more in common with? An average consumer his own age, or adult members of any age from the elite class that hes likely spent most of his time around?

• Papazsazsa 2 minutes ago

False dichotomy. He obviously has materially different generational priors.

• platevoltage 20 minutes ago

Who else is mourning the end of Star Trek?

• b0rtb0rt 2 hours ago

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

• throw03172019 2 hours ago

It means they are going to raise prices for both platforms because they can.

• fooqux 2 hours ago

And then everything else will follow suit. Not that they haven't already been doing just that.

• TheOtherHobbes an hour ago

Plus ads. And biographies of Trump's kids.

• 2muchcoffeeman an hour ago

Everybody just stop subscribing and do something else and pirate the shit out of their content.

• rylando 2 hours ago

Free? I don’t think a monopoly knows the meaning of that word

• Hamuko 2 hours ago

It means that Paramount Plus is saddled with debt, and HBO is saddled with debt. And that someone needs to pay off that debt.

• greyw 2 hours ago

If it makes them more money

• cheesecakegood 2 hours ago

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...

• tech234a 44 minutes ago

T-Mobile raised a lot of plan prices exactly 5 years after their merger with Sprint.

• trebligdivad 2 hours ago

When do we get Bugs Bunny on the Enterprise ?

• wccrawford an hour ago

I'm not even mad. Let's do it. With Marvin the Martian.

They had a Lower Decks cartoon crossover already, so they can't even deny the possibility now.

• dyauspitr 36 minutes ago

So all TV is going to be republican propaganda now. Cool from some perspectives, horrible from the other 9 out of 10 situations.

• holoduke 33 minutes ago

In 1 or 2 years AI movies will be better in everything. From acting , to camera work to environments to story telling. Check out the quality of some of work already out there. There is a massive shift going on. China is going full speed mode. The film industry will be reshaped. Warner Bros should have used those billions to purchase products like seadance. Otherwise they are out

• platevoltage 23 minutes ago

Some of you are outright hostile towards art and it's gross.

• ReptileMan an hour ago

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.

• Hikikomori 2 hours ago

Another nail in Americas coffin.

• stock_toaster 2 hours ago

It's yet another oligarchy centralization play. I assume more to come.

• smashah 2 hours ago

How much did the Gulf states pledge towards this?

• optimalsolver 2 hours ago

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

• fooqux 2 hours ago

Even if it gets good enough, you're forgetting about everything else that goes into movie making and distribution. Hollywood will keep their hold on media, they just might use AI to increase profits even higher.

• holoduke 31 minutes ago

But why Hollywood?

• john_strinlai 2 hours ago

i am extremely wary of making any predictions about ai, given what's happened in the last year, but i would put good money on hollywood being around in 2 years. there's much more to the movie industry than slapping some video together.

r/stablediffusion seems to be a bit disconnected from reality, to put it nicely.

• foobarian an hour ago

The vibe I get is like when the Meta VR app store product launched, and there was huge promises and optimism about all the amazing apps and experiences, but when you bought it and actually tried, it was a few juiced up flagship things and a bunch of shovelware.

• beanjuiceII 2 hours ago

ehhhh i dunno about that. the stuff i've seen from people, and watched looks much better than most crap hollywood puts out anymore

• john_strinlai 2 hours ago

to reiterate: there is more to the movie industry than putting a video together

• platevoltage 21 minutes ago

Please post a link to some of this "stuff". I'm begging you.