> 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
dkobia 8 minutes 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.
Papazsazsa 41 seconds 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.
bigwheels 32 minutes 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.
Y_Y 29 minutes ago [-]
He has a nice yacht, I bet it's fun on the yacht.
yolp5 9 minutes ago [-]
Probably not if you're an underage girl though.
fhub 2 minutes ago [-]
Are you insinuating something about David Ellison here?
yolp5 2 minutes ago [-]
It's one big club
yolp5 7 minutes 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.
Hamuko 27 minutes 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 22 minutes 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.
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.
nutjob2 9 minutes ago [-]
If the Trumps get their cut, you're golden.
prometheus1992 20 minutes ago [-]
not a fan of CNN, but a very right leaning person is the owner of CNN now. pre-dictatorship vibes!!
Waterluvian 15 minutes 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.
nomel 11 minutes 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.
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?
prometheus1992 5 minutes 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.
nextstep 5 minutes ago [-]
Do you have an example of left-leaning reporting that is mass media in the US?
penskymaterial 8 seconds ago [-]
Yes, all of them, minus the ones you can count on one hand that's missing fingers from a fireworks mishap.
reliabilityguy 2 minutes ago [-]
WaPo, NYT, The Atlantic, NPR, and many others.
kwanbix 45 minutes ago [-]
Yes! What the consumer needs! Less competition! Hurrah!
Sorry for the sarcasm.
stavros 31 minutes ago [-]
Less regulation means more innovation!
roroh4310 19 minutes ago [-]
I will believe this internet comment. Thanks!
stavros 17 minutes 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.
blakesterz 29 minutes 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.
xnx 25 minutes ago [-]
Seems fine. There are more options for entertainment than ever. Often these mergers don't work out anyway.
ramon156 12 minutes ago [-]
how exactly do they "not work out"? its two behemoths merging for the sake of more money
pupppet 12 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
cdrnsf 34 minutes ago [-]
So when do they raise prices and start laying folks off?
cmorgan31 32 minutes ago [-]
They already acknowledged layoffs so likely within 30 days the cull list will be presented to senior leadership.
brnt 31 minutes ago [-]
Do we really need two Ellisons?
thinkingtoilet 19 minutes ago [-]
Do we even need one?
superxpro12 27 minutes 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
toomuchtodo 31 minutes ago [-]
Their debt load is enormous due to how quickly debt costs have risen from M&A talks to issuing the debt.
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…
You have to admit that David Ellison is extremely talented at being born to one of the wealthiest people in human history.
trebligdivad 32 minutes ago [-]
When do we get Bugs Bunny on the Enterprise ?
wccrawford 2 minutes 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.
b0rtb0rt 50 minutes ago [-]
so does this mean i get paramount plus for free with my hbo?
throw03172019 45 minutes ago [-]
It means they are going to raise prices for both platforms because they can.
fooqux 39 minutes ago [-]
And then everything else will follow suit. Not that they haven't already been doing just that.
2muchcoffeeman 10 minutes ago [-]
Everybody just stop subscribing and do something else and pirate the shit out of their content.
rylando 43 minutes ago [-]
Free? I don’t think a monopoly knows the meaning of that word
Hamuko 25 minutes 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 44 minutes ago [-]
If it makes them more money
smashah 40 minutes ago [-]
How much did the Gulf states pledge towards this?
Hikikomori 37 minutes ago [-]
Another nail in Americas coffin.
stock_toaster 26 minutes ago [-]
Yet another oligarchy centralization play. I assume more to come.
optimalsolver 40 minutes ago [-]
From what I see on r/stablediffusion, Hollywood has maybe 2 years left, in the optimistic case.
fooqux 37 minutes 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.
john_strinlai 34 minutes 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 17 minutes 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 32 minutes 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 30 minutes ago [-]
to reiterate: there is more to the movie industry than putting a video together
Rendered at 21:28:06 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
> 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
I wonder if David Ellison is a fun guy IRL.
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.
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.
Right wing people have repeatedly captured and destroyed journalism outlets they deem undesirable. Not that I’m saying CNN is any good.
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...
No! but where did you get that from?
There is Fox news, X, and Truth socia for right leaning perspectives.
Sorry for the sarcasm.
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/skydance-credit-rating-down...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-01/paramount... | https://archive.today/SEtX9
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/09/25/paramount-hollywood-prom...
They had a Lower Decks cartoon crossover already, so they can't even deny the possibility now.
r/stablediffusion seems to be a bit disconnected from reality, to put it nicely.