Netflix spent the last many months in the driver’s seat for the purchase of Warner Brothers, winning out against Paramount. But political winds and billions of dollars have swung the door shut on the agreement as Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos announced the company would drop its bid.
Paramount, in a new bid, which is expected to be approved, will be purchasing not just Warner Bros. It will be purchasing the combined assets of Warner Bros. Discovery, the company formed when Discovery Networks merged with Warner Bros in the wake of AT&T’s failed stewardship of the multimedia giant. Paramount’s latest bid for the company ,which finally priced out Netflix was for $31.00 per share. The proposed merger was already facing an uphill battle when it came to regulators in the Trump administration.
“We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match,” Sarandos and co-CEO Greg Peters said in a statement. “This transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price.”
The combination of Paramount Inc and Warner Bros Discovery will create a company with multiple traditional TV channels and multiple standalone streaming apps. Most notably among them are Paramount+, Puto TV, HBO Max and Discovery+. Though initial reports when Paramount first entered the bidding said it planned to combine the catalogues of HBO Max and Paramount+.
It will also place CNN and CBS news under the same corporate umbrella and pull HBO into the same orbit as its old chief rival Showtime, which is now built into Paramount+. Our guess is HBO Max content will be all part of the same interface, possibly with branding to differentiate different offerings.
What will happen to Discovery+?
Discovery+ is Warner Bros Discovery’s other big app, offering the biggest collection of reality TV content in the industry. It brings together channels from across the Discovery Networks side of the equation, along with content from The History Channel and other A&E network channels. If the true crime, home renovation, history, cooking, and lifestyle content is also folded into Paramount+, it will be a more than worthy competitor to Netflix and shrink a marketplace that has gotten a bit bloated, according to consumer feelings on the subject.
Until the parties make their plans public, anything said on the subject is no better than pure speculation and educated guesses.
