Well, this is news we didn’t expect last night.
A little bit before going to bed I caught an emergency video from Cord Cutters News on YouTube stating that Netflix had dropped out of the bidding war they started by pursing Warner Brothers in the first place. If they hadn’t, David Zaslav would still be working to make Warner Brothers Discovery into a major entertainment company. I heard someone say they legally had no choice but to at least entertain the offer even though until then I didn’t even hear he wanted to sell. I could have heard or remembered that wrong, but it seems like a dumb law if that’s the case. Whatever said case is, this gives Skydance Media, who just recently purchased Paramount, an open run to buy the company themselves. They’re also responsible for the bidding war as Skydance owner David Ellison kept pushing until they made an offer that was good big for Netflix to pass up, Ted Sarantos (Netflix CEO) claiming WB was “a nice-to-have, not a must-have”. Of course, I had concerns when it came to Netflix taking over Warner Brothers, but not the same ones Hollywood had outside of Sarantos’ stated dislike of the theater system in favor of streaming.
Note that as I write this in the afternoon I have not gone over all the various responses online, just a few news reports to get into some kind of loop when it comes to what’s going on. I’ll adjust this afterwards if I need to before it posts or make updates after, but this is my immediate thoughts. There’s still a lot we don’t know because the new party is just getting started and we were just getting used to the old one. I’m delaying the current Friday night article series, CBS Transformers (which surprisingly has connections to this discussion given Paramount owns CBS and is still involved with some Transformers media), to go over the same and new concerns should all the legal hurdles be jumped.
First, we have a better idea of what’s actually on the table. Discovery Networks, I believe, will be taking all of their stuff back with them, dropping one of the reasons my dad decided to get HBO Max considering some of the shows he liked were on one of the Discovery TV channels and thus on demand there. There are also a bunch of on demand and live-streaming content outside of HBO Max and Discovery+ as well as YouTube offerings, and I’m not sure why they started those. They were getting potentially bought by a company notorious for being insular with their content (maybe plans were too far ahead). The 24/7 livestreaming ad-supported stations are available on various freestream options. Sling and Prime Video especially have shows based on Discovery’s numerous home improvement shows, a few of their science shows, a classic movies channel I’ve also seen on Tablo, and the Cartoon Rewind channel that binges full series on Prime Video’s streaming service. They’ve also let their animation library leave HBO Max slowly migrate to Tubi and MeTV Toons, as well as DC animated movies available with ads on YouTube, which has benefited my Saturday Night Showcase feature at least.
I looked on Pluto TV, which is owned by Paramount, and they do have some of WBTV’s science and home improvement channels featuring Discovery Networks content…and a channel just for Say Yes To The Dress for some reason…but none of the current classic movie or TV offerings. This might change, but will they still be on other services? Possibly. Pluto TV does share a few channels to other services. As far as the YouTube offerings, who knows if those will stay up for free. Both Paramount+ and HBO Max can be subscribed to via YouTube and YouTube TV, but no free with ads offerings on Paramount’s side I’m currently aware of like Warner Brothers and DC Animation works. The exception is a few channels with Nick Junior shows, but Nick tends to be the distributor rather than the studio. On the other hand there’s the Turtles channel, the action show channel that has the Turtles brand for some reason, and they still have shows on regular TV. I suppose the Discovery stuff will rebrand away from WBTV, but what happens to the other WBTV channels or anything licensed outside of HBO Max and Paramount+? And what happens to either network? Home Box Office started the premium cable game that led to today’s internet streaming universe and it still looks like its in danger of going away.
Speaking of DC, everyone’s talking about DC Studios and whether or not Skydance will continue the Gunnverse beyond what’s already in the works (unless they do what Zaslav did with Batgirl and delete it before it ever got beyond studio footage) but once again nobody is talking about the comics themselves. Paramount in the past has licensed Star Trek to DC, except for Deep Space Nine which somehow Malibu got, and Voyager ending up at WildStorm when it was still distributing with Image. (I don’t think anyone got Enterprise, but no loss there.) They also partnered with Marvel in the past via the Paramount Comics imprint (home of a much better Starfleet Academy series than anything Alex Kurtzman is forcing to exist), so they understand comics exist. Meanwhile, Disney pulled a bunch of existing licenses, including the decades long Gladstone Publishing deal with Mickey, Donald and company, to presumably put them under their new Marvel…only to license stuff to Dynamite anyway. Will Paramount be that stupid? Will they bother to fix what’s wrong with DC’s comics division or join in not caring so long as as it generates IP for the “important” media?
Paramount may or may not do anything with WB Games. They certainly understand that video games = money. It’s the banner that they’ll be under I’m curious about, but I trust them more than I did Netflix, and I still don’t trust them with DC Comics. The superhuge animation library from WB, Cartoon Network Studios, Williams Street Productions, Hanna-Barbera, Ruby Spears Productions, also have a better chance with Paramount as they have Nickelodeon, and Paramount have a smaller but existing animation system of their own. Plus it would mean that the Filmation shows with DC and Paramount ownership (Superman, two different Batman shows, and Star Trek: The Animated Series, for examples) would finally be back under the same company. MeTV Toons has the Star Trek cartoon while some of the DC Filmation shows are available on Tubi, with more coming.
I’m just concerned about all of the money involved here. If this is a leveraged buyout where Paramount is taking on all the debt, ask Toys R Us how that worked for them. The dust hasn’t even settled on Skydance getting Paramount and now they’re looking at a huge offer for Warner Brothers that required overseas help, begging Ellison’s dad for more money, and trying to go around the board to the shareholders to get their hands on this. How much debt are they going to have now, including a bit of a payoff for Netflix for dropping out? If it wasn’t worth it, and Warner Brothers is in terrible shape, they have troubles. Zaslav was trying to fix what was wrong at AOL Turner Time Warner, or whatever it was called after all the past mergers and stuff. He didn’t really have a lot of time before Netflix made a move.
What hope is there for all of these properties and classic movies and shows, plus the comics and video games (DC Entertainment has also experimented with audio dramas like High Volume, Batman: The Audio Adventures, and The Flash: Escape The Midnight Circus plus older audio dramas like Legends Of Robin) should the company fold? Does it all go into public domain? What if Netflix is just sitting back waiting to grab all of it if Skydance does fail from all the acquisition debt in a hostile takeover and kill the movie theater industry for good? Will the FCC and FTC even allow such a huge multimedia juggernaut even if they don’t make all of Netflix’s mistakes? Paramount-owned shows, even for kids, have taken sides in the culture war, produced terrible adaptations or continuations “woke” or otherwise, and done everything else movie critics outside the Hollywood sphere (though not as blatant about overspending on a movie as Disney with little return) have pointed out and that audiences seem to not be interested in. You can’t save movie theaters if people don’t go to the theaters.
So the future is still unclear, only this time if Warner Brothers falls it could take Paramount with with. On the other hand, maybe they learn to better use the now larger classic catalog in a way that fans are willing to support with their time and wallets, but it’s what happens to the new material that will decide if this merger does more damage to Hollywood or give it the first chance in years of correcting course and bringing entertainment to the masses and reaping the financial rewards. Time will tell, and as this is how we get our stories I’ll be keeping an eye on it. We’ll get back to the usual Friday night pitch meeting next week.
BW Media Spotlight 