“You know, that’s good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we’d never get anywhere. –Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Warner Bros., 1941
Hollywood is sweating bullets that Netflix might end up with the meaningful parts of Warner Bros., ignoring the news/pay-TV stuff. Hollywood is screaming that the young Silicon Valley kid with deep-pocket “friends” will take the whole package and…. Either buyer represents a bigger problem—one less place in the US creative content market for people to work and sell their projects so the world’s audiences will see and appreciate them.
Look, folks, Warner Bros. needs to be rescued; it’s been passed around, used, abused for more than 25 years. Warner Bros. had a helluva run since its formation in 1923 to become one of the ruling production and distribution studios. Today, it’s tired of being slapped around again and again. But as Sam Spade said in The Maltese Falcon, “When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it.”
It started when Time bought Warner Bros. (renamed Time Warner) a little over 30 years ago, and it became one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, snapping up CNN and Turner Broadcasting in ensuing years. But AT&T boss Randall Stephenson liked the night lights and glamour of Hollywood and snapped it all up for about $85 billion in 2018. It took him four years to learn that the studio streets weren’t real; and after cutting/thinning here and there, finally he decided he’d had enough fun rearranging and found David Zaslav, who was backed by John Malone, who knows his way around town. Sold the whole package for $43 billion to reality house Discovery.
Of course, he quickly found out that things aren’t like reality TV, so he fired, organized, shuffled divisions/people, killed projects for the good of the consumer, but still, something was missing. Then he got creative with names like HBO, HBO Max, all the while getting bigger paychecks while thinning the flock. The result was less mediocre content at a higher cost – an impromptu, unfriendly yard sale. Lots of folks came to the sale to see what was left of the once renowned brand born in 1923 and kicked/passed around over the years. But only two were really serious – Netflix and Paramount Skydance – and they both had different views/values of the stuff that was for sale.
Who knew there’d be an ugly bidding war because what is one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Yeah… everyone. Therein lies the rub.
