unfair<\/a>,\u201d a very Trumpian tactic, and questioning whether shareholders are getting the best deal, an attempt to meddle with an approval vote. Paramount hired Trump\u2019s first-term Antitrust Division head, Makan Delrahim, a signal that Paramount was best positioned to get a deal through.<\/p>\nIf Team Trump tries to block the Netflix merger to put Paramount back in position for a purchase, that is not a welcome scenario. All the same problems of the Netflix-WBD merger would be present with Paramount, plus the ideological concerns for media since Paramount would likely want the cable networks, plus the impact of the rank politicization of antitrust to reward friends and punish enemies.<\/p>\n
But there is a third way here. State attorneys general have every opportunity to sue to block a Netflix-WBD merger. Rob Bonta, the California attorney general who is contemplating a run for governor, is in prime position to protect the entertainment industry and streaming customers by doing so. Doing this would depoliticize a merger challenge away from the Trump administration and send a signal that the same scrutiny would be applied to any attempted Paramount merger as well.<\/p>\n
The fourth way would be Warner Bros. deciding that the market for making movies and TV shows people want to watch can be a moneymaking operation. They have good brands, and ditching the low-performing cable channels sets them up in a better position. This isn\u2019t happening, because \u201cthe financiers who run Hollywood simply don\u2019t believe the movie business can offer the kind of returns they see their monopolist peers in tech getting,\u201d as Stoller explained. \u201cAnd they lack any capacity for creativity or leadership.\u201d Indeed, David Zaslav, the WBD CEO, who ran his company into disaster and auctioned it off, would get $500 million after the merger. The payday matters more than the value of the business for workers or consumers.<\/p>\n
The consolidation of Hollywood has been on the doorstep for a long time. Warner Bros. itself has gone through mergers with AT&T and then Discovery Networks, and both have failed. The public and its representatives don\u2019t have to accept this again. They can prevent a consolidation that harms them in various ways. And they can force the executives in these companies to think past the short-term desires of Wall Street, and just make things people want to watch.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\n
Recommended Reading<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source prospect.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In progressive circles, there is a great fear about the consolidation of Hollywood and the broader media into the hands of allies of MAGA. ABC\u2019s capitulation to Trump is well documented. Larry Ellison\u2019s son David bought Paramount: Stephen Colbert was suddenly off the air, and Bari Weiss was running CBS News. Oracle, Ellison\u2019s company, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2188207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[406702,22691,422240,375245,22389,23032,361352,346502,422241,21912,23191,422242,422243,23808,22205,328922],"class_list":["post-2188206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-antitrust","tag-california","tag-ceos","tag-conservatism","tag-donald-trump","tag-media","tag-mergers","tag-money","tag-monopoly","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-politics-power","tag-state-ags","tag-streaming","tag-television","tag-warner-bros-discovery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Netflix-Aims-for-Entertainment-Domination.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2188206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2188208,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188206\/revisions\/2188208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2188207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2188206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2188206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2188206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}