A consolidation of power in the media sector. Good for those who want to control narratives. Bad for the dissemination of opposing viewpoints, and thus bad for regular people. Same as it ever was.

I have mixed thoughts. Overall I anticipate it being a net negative. Mergers like this result in fewer jobs, lower quality products and less competition. However I love movies (check my profile if you want proof) and specifically I love going to the movie theater. Paramount has continued supporting movie theaters which is more than you can say about Netflix and Sarandos. Likewise Zaslav was just making anti-consuner decisions left and right. I can count on more than one hand the amount of times I’ve called that man a piece of shit. Not to mention Netflix’s slavish attachment to “the algorithm” just churns out a lot of slop

So while the merger is bad it’s probably the better of the two options and anything that reduces David Zaslav’s power is a net positive in my book, even if he makes a small country’s worth of money doing it

It will be a Paramount Discovery of new ways to make movies and TV suck.

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Also, what would Marx do?

This is a billionaire buying the good name of trusted companies so he can have a propaganda house that isn’t obviously such.

I’m going to drop my HBO sub and hope others do the same. The right is buying all the truth-telling media and shareholders need to feel this one deeply.

This is the Orbanization of media, in Hungary Orban gave broadcasting licenses to only those who supported him. Here in America instead of using licenses as the mechanism they’re just using money to do the same thing. America needs a serious discussion on trust busting to start breaking up big businesses. Be ready for CNN to become Fox News light.

Terrible, it should never be allowed that companies can grow this large.

I think that the top tier actors that are making statements on social media or when accepting their awards should put their money where their mouth is and work with smaller independent companies that can make this an opportunity to grow.

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Brought to you by Bill Clinton’s Telecom Reform Act. Something like this would have been illegal before then.

Death to monopolies

Monopolies should be treated with a heavier hand than what they are in the US currently.

I don’t agree with just confiscating property without due process and I definitely don’t agree with using tax payer money to buy out the current owners just to give it to the workers.

I think that mergers like this only ever benefit those who are responsible for taking the money out of the companies beforehand.
I believe that there has never been a merger of two near equally terrible companies that has ever benefited the consumers or the general public. It is almost always geared to getting a small number of investors paid.

I’m happy to hear Netflix is not acquiring more. I’m not so sure about Paramount and Warner merging though. Could have been worse I guess.

I think we need to go back to the regulations in the 70’s where no company could own more than one type for an area. one newspaper, one radio station and one tv station.

It’s the same thing Discovery did in the first place. This is the last moment of TV having value before the boomers are dead so Discovery merged with Warner to make a big ball of shit that Netflix would have to buy if they wanted Game of Thrones and Superman. Paramount doesn’t want to be left out so they’re adding all their shit to the ball and they’ll try to sell it to Netflix again in 2 years.

One of these days and god it’s going to happen, but Disney will own everything. They’re just making it easier for them to do so.

Give it time.