Paramount Skydance may have won the battle but war against Netflix is raging
Paramount Skydance may have won the battle to buy Warner Bros.Discovery — but its war against rival Netflix is still raging.That, at least, is what some executives inside the media giant known as PSKY are privately saying about the plight of their $80 billion deal to buy WBD, which in February edged out an offer from Netflix.
Specifically, they believe a bombshell lawsuit from 12 state attorneys general filed last week to block the mega-merger has Netflix’s fingerprints all over it.I must admit that this assessment, described to me by multiple people inside PSKY, has a ring of paranoia to it.The evidence, such as it is, is more surmise than tangible.
The gist is that the leaders of the suit, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York AG Tish James, are both fellow travelers in the progressive ecosystem — just like Netflix — and that they are being coaxed by Netflix to bring a case that could disarm a right-of-center competitor.True, Bonta may share some of the same politics as people at Netflix, but he doesn’t need CEO Ted Sarandos to tell him how this case is a gold mine for him.For a California politician who aspires to be governor someday, it’s a no-brainer to make hay out of the fact that Larry Ellison, the mega-billionaire behind his son’s deal, is a close ally of Donald Trump.
DOJ Antitrust greenlighted the deal in record time in the hopes of MAGA ownership over the likes of CNN, CBS and lots of cable channels and studios.And yet Paramount Skydance appears to think some studio executives are pulling those strings.It seems that every press release in response to Bonta’s lawsuit has a Netflix reference, highlighting how the deal will create a viable competitor that can prevent Netflix from overpricing the most popular way entertainment and news is now consumed.“I will say it is odd that Paramount seems weirdly obsessed with Netflix,” Rich Greenfield recently told me and my partner Bob Sloan on our “Risk and Return” podcast.
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