Netflix’s $83 billion deal to buy most of Warner Bros. would unite Stranger Things and KPop Demon Hunters with Game of Thrones and The White Lotus, creating a streaming powerhouse. With Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters at the helm, the combined company would also be led by the smartest team in the entertainment industry. I know Ted and, like most who meet him, admire him.
I don’t know David Ellison, and I find kids of billionaires trying to reshape the culture with a 12-figure jackhammer a bit … gross. But the Paramount boss — who’s trying to thwart Netflix with a hostile $108 billion bid for Warner Bros. — is right: A Netflix takeover would likely be bad news for consumers at a time when many are facing an affordability crunch. The fight over the century-old studio is also a great example of the cronyism and head-up-your-ass economics of the Trump administration that adds fuel to the crisis.
Anticompetitive
Ellison argued on CNBC that allowing two of the biggest streaming services to join forces is “anticompetitive.” As the son of Larry Ellison, the world’s third-richest person, Paramount’s CEO has close ties to Donald Trump and access to a seemingly bottomless pool of capital. It’s obnoxious listening to a guy raised in a gravity-free financial environment warning others about the dangers of market distortion. After giving that interview, did he go into the kitchen of the restaurant and lecture the line cooks on the dignity of minimum wage? I digress.
Socialism
After giving the elder Ellison a significant role in his plan to transfer TikTok’s U.S. operations to a group of American investors, Trump is pledging to get involved in the regulatory fate of a Warner Bros. takeover. This is straight-up socialism — the state controlling the means of production.
Everyone knows we’re sliding into a stew of autocracy/kleptocracy, so Sarandos also wooed Trump in the lead-up to announcing his agreement on Dec. 5, securing a…