Hollywood Hostile Takeover: Skydance vs. Time Warner and the Streaming Chaos Ahead
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Yeah, I figured this deal was to get a little bit more complicated was right. Yep, the time Warner deals gone hostile paramount skydance announcing a hostile bid for time wonder they go directly to the shareholders with a cash only bid at $30 a share for all of the assets. We shall see. Okay, first and foremost, the regulatory
approval for the it’s going to take a year, a year for them to go through this. And like I said last week,
There are a lot of butt kissing is going to have to take place in order for this to go through. This is just how these big deals work at this point in time. Netflix and what they’re doing. And again, you got to think about Netflix. Pretty amazing story in of itself. Reed Hastings, Reed Hastings, he got the idea for Netflix. He got pissed off.
at Blockbuster because he brought back a video late and they charged him a $40 late fee. Now, for some of you younger people watching this, Netflix wasn’t always streaming. Yeah, we used to, know, Netflix used to be delivering you DVDs in the mail to your house. Kind of interesting. Take a look at Netflix and Amazon. Kind of started the same way.
You know, Jeff Bezos packing up books with he and his staff and shipping them off to people who ordered them. And that was what Reed Hastings and his staff did. 30 employees to stick them in envelopes and drop them in the mail. Pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. So Warner Brothers, Netflix says they’re going to continue to license some of these.
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names whether it be Harry Potter or DC, I mean they got quite the library to go along with this to other platforms. I don’t know if that’s gonna essentially be the case. I don’t know why they would end up doing that with the type of consolidation that we’re seeing. My concern would actually be collusion between some of these streamers saying, hey listen,
You keep your titles to yourself, we’ll keep our titles to ourselves and we’ll force everybody to sign up for every streaming service out there. I’m exhausted with the whole thing, quite frankly. I don’t know about you. I don’t even know what I am subscribed to at this point in time. I gotta do a bloody streaming audit and I don’t even watch much for crying out loud. But most people show no frustration.
How do I watch the ball game? What channel is the football game on? Where do I watch this? If you want to watch something, it has become difficult. do know that Hulu is going away. And well, not technically going away. Their platform is going away and it’s going to be on the Disney platform. And it’s just it’s one thing after another. Funny line, though funny line I want to share with you. This was back when.
Geez, wasn’t even that long ago for crying out loud. Time Warner, their chief executive, Jeff Buks was asked, this is back in 2007, whether or not Netflix would be a threat to Time Warner down the road. And he said, was a little like the Albanian army is gonna go take over the world. Well, look at that. Look what happened. Anyway, and again,
Netflix I remember their first what was their first real big show was House of Cards With Kevin Spacey and I think that they they took that away from HBO and they brought that and it was it was really First couple seasons were excellent quite frankly then I think they had no oranges and new black and they started developing more and more and obviously stranger things Huge, I think they’re streaming the latest last season which just started just came out broke all the records
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out there as far as and I happen to enjoy that show, but neither here nor there.
Do I think that quality has dropped? Absolutely. Do I think that Netflix, you take a look at Reed Hastings and how he’s run things, he’s all about shareholder value. That’s the reality, he is. He’s all about shareholder value. He’s gonna say one thing, but if he feels that it’s not gonna be worthwhile to put movies into theaters, he’s not gonna do it. I don’t care what he says.
Okay, this is the reality of the terrain right now. And again, the entire industry in of itself, again, they turned into pigs. They turned into pigs, you know, you’re charging $20 for freaking popcorn and $15 for, you know, you tick people off and they’re like, you know what, that’s it, I’m out. And then, you know, you mentioned the fact that you make these movies that are, you know, three hours long and there’s no intermission and you know,
Can I get a break here for a second? Can I run to the restroom when I happen to miss 10 minutes in the movie? Yay, people get tired of it. And this is why they’re continuing to consume at home and nobody wants to go to theaters anymore. So in a bit of a wheelhouse right now. But interesting to have a streamer purchase a library like this. I do think that Trump administration, you got Alison Ties to Skydance, Paramount would rather have a
library, two libraries come together rather than a streaming service. We shall see. Money talks in this one. Money talks and whatever deals are going to be cut behind that’s going to decide this. We’re going to see how this plays out and how shareholder reaction is going to be at $30 a share all cash, which is what Paramount Skydance just offered. Will Netflix have to up their offer? Will they walk away?
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