Remember when AT&T spent more than $200 billion to acquire Time Warner and DirecTV in the belief it would help the telecom dominate video advertising? Then remember when company leadership was so monumentally incompetent they had to run to the exits in terror? Good times.

After AT&T’s gambit fell apart, the company returned to what it’s best at (lobbying the government to crush broadband competition), and spun off Time Warner into an entirely new company, Warner Media. Warner Media then immediately turned around and announced a blockbuster merger with Discovery, creating the creatively named Warner Brothers Discovery. 

And it’s all going just about as well as most major media mergers go. As in, not well at all. At least not for consumers, employees, and creators, anyway. I’m sure lawyers, bankers, executives and investors are all pleased as punch by this cavalcade of colorful misery.

Hoping to prove the amazing synergies of the deal, the freshly merged company has been consistently cancelling shows and pulling any show from its streaming catalog (like many episodes of Sesame Street) because it’s too cheap to pay residuals.

They’re also super excited to sock their customers with a wide array of price hikes, given the company’s CFO believes services like HBO Max and Discovery+ are “underpriced”:

Wiedenfels suggested the company had ample room to raise prices given the strength of content on the services, which will be merged into one next year.

And then of course there are the inevitable layoffs, which pre-merger executives usually insist aren’t going to happen, right before they do. Axios, in its usual “he said, she said” approach to journalism, notes that the company is preparing for yet another round of head-lopping thanks to inflation:

Hundreds of people are expected to be laid off on the business side of Warner Bros. Discovery, via a round of layoffs that will begin Tuesday, sources tell Axios.

Why it matters: Executives have warned for months that the merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery would yield roughly $3 billion in synergies. Rising interest rates and a weak macro-economic climate has put pressure on media companies to be more disciplined about costs.

Of course it’s not really inflation, it’s that US media megamergers are often completely fucking pointless, outside of short-term stock fluffing, tax write offs, and preposterous boosts to executive compensation. Axios forgets to mention that this is pretty much what always happens with a major US telecom or media megadeal, despite pre-merger claims that deal synergies will border on the Utopian.

Remember, this all began with AT&T’s $200 billion disaster (which came with plenty of its own layoffs, axed projects, and chaos), which the press has already forgotten about. Since then, the whole pointless series of mergers has simply gotten more pointless. Yet if you dig through US press coverage, you’d be hard pressed to find many outlets willing to call this giant, pointless turd of a deal what it is.

You have to head over to smaller, independent news outlets to find anybody being honest about what a shitshow this deal is. Ironically, busted journalism and the merger itself are both in large part thanks to our mindless obsession with consolidation and megadeals that make no coherent, practical sense. It’s all one problem, and Americans are violently dedicated to doing absolutely nothing about it.

Filed Under: cable tv, hbo max, layoffs, media consolidation, megamergers, mergers, price hikes, show canceled, streaming, synergies Companies: at&t, discovery, warner bros.

Executives have warned for months that the merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery would yield roughly $3 billion in synergies

Some Accounting 101 if anyone needs it: The #1 cost for a company is cost of inventory, #2 is payroll. These are the immutable and inescapable laws of business. Everything else is a distant 3rd or lower.

This means that any time an executive claims there will be cost savings from a merger, they mean layoffs. There is no other way.

Warner Brothers Discovery: Our content isn’t valuable enough to pay the pennies it would take to keep airing it, so time to start cutting shows from our service.

Also Warner Brothers Discovery: Our content is incredibly valuable so it’s only right that we charge more for it.

It might well be a shit show for subscribers and staff but it will no doubt be a giant boon for executive pay packets and bonuses.

…and no one was surprised.

Warner Brothers Discovery, brought to you by Warner Brothers’ lawyers in the Animaniacs Court. 😉

Something something didn’t the newest projections show they lost 220 in value while trying to create 3 bill?

I rarely agree with the Stock Market but the market was over 9000% correct here in lowering WBD’s value.

Look no further than Axios’ leadership to see what’s going on here. (Zaslav’s son is in charge.)

The author’s proferred link https://nofilmschool.com/hbo-trouble-diverse-programming sheds no significant light on the matter. It’s merely a collection of thin notions disguised as journalism (par for the course) and is in no way revelatory or incisive (much less original).

One can argue the effects on the consumer, but let’s simply be accurate here: lowered costs, increased revenue, and higher profit sounds like a rather coherent and practical plan for this merged business to pursue.

lowered costs, increased revenue, and higher profit sounds like a rather coherent and practical plan for this merged business to pursue

The problem comes from how WBD plans to achieve that⁠—and from what I’ve read about this whole shitshow, that includes moves such as writing off/getting rid of a lot of animated shows on HBO Max, cutting down on (or stopping entirely) production on scripted dramas in favor of reality TV and sports programming, and literally cancelling a movie that was almost done. That doesn’t even get into expected layoffs, the cancellation of projects that may have been in the pipeline, and a similarly expected drop in trust from outside partners/subsidiaries.

Also: At what costs⁠—to its employees and to art and culture⁠—must WBD puruse “increased revenue” and “higher profit”? Because “Line Must Always Go Up” is how you end up with (among other things) shit like these mega-mergers that only ever seem to make things worse for everyone except the rich-ass executives who end up seeing more of the benefits than anyone else in the companies being merged.

If you want to be an apologist for unchecked capitalism, at least have the balls to admit it.

From the perspective of “let’s turn around AT&T’s flaming disaster,” Zaslav’s moves could be rational:

What works in theatrical movies and streaming? Big IP. So Big IP is golden. Zaslav’s Big IP is DC, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. DC has been mismanaged compared with Disney’s approach to Marvel, which is to turn it into a consistent cash machine. Zaslav wants DC to be like that.

It’s unclear what strategy Zaslav can use to turn DC into a cash machine, but it is clear that the current strategy, if there is one, isn’t working. Batgirl was made under the failed regime so to avoid further damage to a mismanaged brand, he took the hit and squelched it.

Reality TV is good to focus on because it solves a big dilemma for all streamers, namely that with North America saturated, they need to grow overseas, especially in Asia, where streaming is full of free (not cheap – free) ad supported platforms and piracy is rife. Which means cost is a much bigger factor. How to make localized content on the cheap? Reality TV, that’s how.

Animation isn’t going to help much unless it’s an animated Batman spinoff being made under the new strategy, whatever that’s going to be. First Zaslav needs to find his Kevin Feige and hire that person. Then they can craft a strategy. One step at a time.

You can complain this is all brutal and heartless, but it seems like it could work to turn around a debt-laden disaster. If not this, then what would work? Blame AT&T for causing the disaster through mismanagement.

You can complain this is all brutal and heartless, but it seems like it could work to turn around a debt-laden disaster.

And in the meantime, WBD earns a reputation as an enemy of animation in particular and the arts and culture in general. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a good way to alienate a lot of artists and such that the studio might want to work with. I know that if I were someone about to pitch an animation project, WBD would be the last company I’d approach based specifically on the bloodbath it carried out against animation after Zaslav took over⁠—and even if WBD was the last possible choice, I’d probably still consider Kickstarter first.

What works in theatrical movies and streaming? Big IP

Big properties, yes. Big titles? For theatres yes. For digital sales, yes. For streaming… not so much.

Big films creat very brief jumps in subscriber numbers, not revenue. One of the reasons Netflix is playing with advertising. A big film will get a some-odd percentage increase. Nearly all of them terminate before the trial period expires.

However, as we have seen with Marvel (quality) series are retention gold.

While I think they are making the wrong decisions, milking a cash cow is a rational decision they can make. However, we’re going to make our offering worse so you’ll pay more doesn’t even make sense.

Price/service issue not withstanding:

There are benefits in media mergers for consumers. The Disney merger brought Marvel under on owner. As a single example.

There will clearly be potential benefits in content options here too. If they use the IP.

Unfortunately the consumer is usually the least concern for big companies.

There are benefits in media mergers for consumers.

Not…really? Like, what possible benefit am I going to get from WBD?

About them? I don’t know off hand. Disney, Marvel… we get all the properties under the same banner. And there have been quality compilation properties since.

Such combinations and crossovers if done correctly could be great for consumers.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll happily pay a few bucks more for a chance to watch Wolverine continually dismember Deadpool while Groot runs off with his body parts. 😃

And it’s the hope for these types of properties that make them, at least in theory, less-evil.

“The Disney merger brought Marvel under on owner. As a single example.”

Example of what, exactly? Which benefit was available to consumers as a result of that which wasn’t possibly without the merger?

I’ll accept to a small degree the fact that the combination of early deals on Disney+ combined with Star being added to the service and allowing a bunch of horror/sci-fi properties to the EU market was cools for us, because they had to make up for Hulu not being a thing in Europe. But, I don’t think that Prey being on Disney in Europe so that we didn’t have the have 2 subs is what you imagined when making the comment.

I’m thinking of property access. The ability to bring franchises together and grow them. Disney buying Fox’s entertainment assets has provided some fantastic opportunities in art.

“The ability to bring franchises together and grow them. Disney buying Fox’s entertainment assets has provided some fantastic opportunities in art.”

But, it hasn’t given you an accessible release of Song Of The South, has given you apparently censored versions of The Simpsons (at least with screen format), and AFAIK has left you with a higher subscription fee to access Disney+ and Hulu than I have in Europe with Disney+s with the Star add-on we get instead of Hulu.

There’s potentially more crossover opportunities, but I dare say that if you expect them to appear automatically without a merchandising opportunity, you’re be disappointed. Rocketeer vs. Iron Man might be cool for them, but so will a new Kardashian or whatever series. (BTW, Prey was on Disney+ here. Was it for you, or did Disney decide it was better for them to get you to pay more?).

has given you apparently censored versions of The Simpsons (at least with screen format)

In fairness to Disney (ugh), they did make it possible to watch older episodes of The Simpsons in either cropped widescreen or the original 4:3 ratio⁠—but only after a shitload of people complained.

Prey was on Disney+ here. Was it for you

Here in the States, R-rated films (e.g., Prey), TV-MA shows, and anything deemed “too much” for Disney+ is put on Hulu.

To Disney’s credit they aren’t nearly as bad as what I’ve heard about the Simpsons Vs Peacock completely destroying ECW wrestling video. Half the library is missing and what’s missing here is so cut up it’s a joke.

Marvel is apparently acting mostly independently. Which with Hulu leaves hope we may get a real deadpool film eventually.

I wasn’t under stating the issues with entertainment mergers. Just pointing out that for some specific fans there are some benefits

Peacock completely destroying ECW wrestling video

In fairness to Peacock/NBC Universal, ECW was a tricky thing to deal with even before WWE moved its content to Peacock. ECW never had the actual licenses for, like, 90% of the music it used as entrance themes, so of course WWE was going to redub it as best they could. And considering the age of the ECW tape library, that WWE even has as much of it as they do⁠—and how they have it in the shape it’s in⁠—can be considered a minor miracle.

we may get a real deadpool film

We already got two of them. Rated R for Holy Shitballs and everything.

Just pointing out that for some specific fans there are some benefits

And for everyone else, those benefits mean next-to-nothing. Not everyone is enamored with the idea of the arts turning into The Oasis from Ready Player One, where culture is essentially in stasis and characters are mashed together without rhyme or reason⁠—sometimes even in contrast to the original messages and meanings of their root works⁠—based on one old man’s love for a specific era of pop culture. Some people might get a kick out of The Iron Giant fighting a Gundam; I wonder why people think The Iron Giant being violent is a good thing.

WWE was going to redub it

Here I understand. That wasn’t what o meant. Much of the most violent matches are somy gone. Or edited. There’s exceptions, but in general.

Any long time fan will look and tell you deadpool is prime NC-17 territory.

Disney buying Fox’s entertainment assets has provided some fantastic opportunities in art.

On one hand, Disney owns a shitload of properties that it can exploit.

On the other hand, Disney owns a shitload of properties that it can exploit.

The problem I have with mega-mergers and buyouts like WBD and Disney buying Fox is in how these mergers consolidate pop culture under a single umbrella. Consider the following: As of right now, Disney controls not only every last one of its own films⁠—which includes the vast majority of American animated feature films⁠—and TV shows (animated and live-action), it also controls anything made by Fox, LucasArts, Marvel Studios, and Pixar. That isn’t just the MCU⁠—that’s the Alien franchise, the Predator franchise, the Indiana Jones franchise, the Avatar franchise, the Fox-owned Marvel films (e.g., the Deadpool and X-Men films), the Die Hard franchise, the Ice Age franchise, the Planet of the Apes franchise, every Pixar film (feature-length and short), and the entire gotdamn Star Wars franchise⁠. And none of that even addresses the idea of licensing⁠—Marvel vs. Capcom fans know about how much of a pain in the ass that can be, considering the lack of a console/PC re-release of the older Vs. Series games.

Look at all that pop culture that’s in the hands of a single entity. Look at how much control Disney has over our modern mythologies. Now imagine how Disney can fuck with the availability of it all.

Who needs pay-once-to-own-it physical media releases of Disney+ shows when they’re all available on Disney+ for a modest monthly fee? Watching content in its original form is so passé now that Disney can edit movies and shows into a more family-friendly form that Disney+ can carry. And if a franchise happens to perform poorly and need some time away from the public view, well, that’s a good enough reason to remove that content from Disney+ (and any other streaming services that might carry it).

Whatever “opportunities” are opened up by these mega-mergers is undercut by the fact that we’re letting mega-corporations consolidate pop culture into a smaller-by-the-decade number of hands that live and die by capitalism. Consider the WBD situation: Sure, WBD could’ve probably cut executive compensation to make up for a bunch of its debt, but since that wasn’t going to happen, the company axed a shitload of animated shows from HBO Max, cancelled an entire goddamn movie that was damned close to being a finished product, and moved to axe scripted shows on TBS and TNT (reportedly in favor of cheaper-to-produce trashy-ass reality television and sports-related programming, including the existing shows for All Elite Wrestling).

Mega-mergers only ever benefit the executives, both outgoing and incoming. Everyone else gets screwed one way or another. That includes the general public.

I’m thinking of property access.

Runaway Brain would very much beg to differ.

Which benefit was available to consumers as a result of that which wasn’t possibly without the merger?

Benefits to production company: cheaper films and shows due to no requirement for cross-licensing. Benefits to consumers: to be determined.

…there are rumors that Comcast is going to buy Warner Bros Discovery when Zaslav whips it into something resembling shape. Oh joy. Because they’ve done so well with Peacock.

But there’s also a rational factor to this. Streaming content is wildly overbuilt. Netflix spent years overspending by greenlighting everything in sight, most of which failed. Competitors thought they needed to follow suit and soon realized they were bleeding money. People seem to just want their Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Marvel, Game of Thrones etc spinoff series. Those are guaranteed to make money. Look at how bad Boba Fett and Obi Wan were, yet they were hits.

There will be occasional one-offs like Stranger Things and Severance but it takes a lot of failures to stumble across one of those. Really too pricey of a business model unless you’re Amazon or especially Apple.

People seem to just want their Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Marvel, Game of Thrones etc spinoff series. Those are guaranteed to make money.

They’re likely to make money, but not guaranteed. Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain⁠—or the rain of cash that comes from relying on known IPs. Eventually, people will burn out on essentially being sold hollowed-out self-referential copies and pastiches of older material. When the bubble bursts and those franchises you listed are no longer able to hold the public’s attention like they used to, studios are going to be in for a rude-ass awakening.

The test for this is going to be the next couple years of Marvel movies. Middling to poor reviews of Marvel’s Phase 4 efforts haven’t stopped their films and shows from being box office juggernauts, but that can’t hold forever. Eventually, a Marvel property will bomb⁠—even if only in the context of Marvel’s now-typical box office performances⁠—and when that bubble bursts, nothing good will come of it.

Netflix had a good idea in trying to create its own original properties. But they threw way too much at the wall, and only a handful of shows/movies ever stuck. Those mistakes aren’t likely to be repeated by the likes of Disney⁠—they’ll make different, possibly worse mistakes…like, say, relying on Star Wars content that refuses to leave behind the era of the Skywalker Saga.

The only way marvel bombs out completely is if they take some PC spin and change the property‘s history. Marvel is full of alternative characters to begin with. And has always pushed the boundaries from just off to the side. and even when they throw in bizarre, What If isn’t exactly a failure.

As for star wars, you can’t “leave behind” skywalker in the future because the family is the core of universe. Npi. But you can ‘move on’ and that’s exactly what they need to do. Moving away from the dictatorship of the Jedi order and exploring the force and its adherents.

“The only way marvel bombs out completely is if they take some PC spin and change the property‘s history.”

Weird. Most of the complaints I’ve heard recently are from people who have zero understanding of the history.

“As for star wars, you can’t “leave behind” skywalker in the future because the family is the core of universe”

The Skywalker saga, not the universe. The reason it has been as successful as it has been is the rich universe that doesn’t depend on that particular bloodline. Some of the best content has been the stuff that doesn’t deal with them, IMHO.

Time will tell how the future goes for the series, but I think at this point it’s largely agreed that some of the best content in that universe has come from when they didn’t stick to Skywalker’s bloodline and the worst is when they slavishly tied it to them. Some of the best came from Skywalker as well of course, but when people complain it’s usually not about quality. Same as with Marvel – the loudest whiners are from people who think Miles Morales or She Hulk are new inventions.

The only way marvel bombs out completely is if they take some PC spin and change the property‘s history.

You…you really don’t know much about the history of Marvel Comics, do you? I mean, they literally defied the censors of the Comics Code Authority to publish a Spider-Man story made on the recommendation of the U.S. government⁠—and in doing so, they humiliated the CCA into eventually weakening the Comics Code.

As for Marvel bombing out at the box office: Genre fatigue is a thing, and it’s only exacerbated by the fact that the most advertised releases in theaters these days are big budget genre blockbusters (e.g., Marvel films, DC films, the Fast & Furious franchise). Spectacle alone isn’t enough to sustain the box office⁠—it will eventually crash, and an explicit Marvel failure will likely be the first domino. Given that two Phase 4 films are the lowest-rated films on Rotten Tomatoes (Thor: Love and Thunder at 64% and Eternals at 47%) and one of those only barely broke even at the global box office (Eternals), I’d bet on that failure happening well before the end of the planned Phase 6.

As for star wars, you can’t “leave behind” skywalker in the future because the family is the core of universe.

That’s exactly the problem, though. By making the franchise all about this one family, the galaxy seems that much smaller. Think about this: In all three trilogies, the character who becomes central to each trilogy’s story comes from Tatooine in one way or another. That already makes a single planet literally the most important in the galaxy despite it being a backwater desert planet compared to, say, Coruscant. That the first two characters are from the same family and the third eventually chooses to use that family’s name makes things worse.

Now consider the spin-off shows and films. Every one of them, from Rogue One to The Mandalorian to the gotdang Holiday Special, take place at some point between the events of The Phantom Menace and The Force Awakens. There hasn’t yet been one show or movie set beyond⁠—or before⁠—the events of the Skywalker Saga. And making things worse are all the “I clapped” nostalgia bait moments of these spin-off projects. Solo, for example, had to fit nearly all of Han Solo’s major life events⁠—befriending Chewbacca, winning the Millennium Falcon, making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, and even choosing his name⁠—into not just a single film, but a span of a few months at best.

The focus on this one specific era of the franchise’s fictional history ignores all the stories that could be told outside of that narrow context. Some of the games explore pre-Skywalker eras; the Knights of the Old Republic games do this fabulously, from what I hear. The animated anthology Star Wars: Visions didn’t rely on those “I clapped” moments⁠—and if anything, an anthology series set within the Star Wars universe but not focused on the Skywalkers (or their adventures) might be a great idea for a future show. Think something along the narrative structure of Cowboy Bebop…only without thinking about the Netflix version, because bleah. It doesn’t even have to be about the Jedi and the Sith⁠; hell, I’d love to see a Star Wars show that is explicitly not about the Jedi, the Sith, or even the Empire.

I don’t see peacock being so bad as far as use and access. Despite the incessant need to edit acquired content.

I’m honestly surprised you managed to not blame Hillary for this.

Don’t they have universal?

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