00:00Do you think that the deal has to be sweetened?
00:02It can't just be about more for a breakup fee or good for the money in terms of Larry Ellison.
00:08Yeah, you know, it's a very clear picture of who's got the leverage here.
00:12Clearly, WBD has suitors.
00:15David Zaslav can just sit and fold his arms and say, look, you're not talking in my good ear yet, Paramount.
00:22And it's not a dumb way to try to drive their offer up even higher.
00:29And that wouldn't surprise me.
00:31What do you think could be the quibbling around the cable networks?
00:34That's the area that you knew, you loved, you performed in.
00:37And there has been, of course, the regulatory concern about who ends up owning CNN.
00:42But more broadly, about what they really are basically priced at, John.
00:47Yeah, and, you know, value really depends on the acquirer.
00:50And there could very well be acquirers out there in the universe of media who value those cable networks much more highly than a Netflix would or even Paramount would.
01:02And, you know, you could see where Versant, for example, which is being spun off from Comcast, which is identical to the cable spinoff that WBD is doing.
01:15You could see them valuing TNT, TBS, True TV, CNN much more highly than these current players are.
01:26So value is in the eye of the beholder.
01:29I could see the local station giants like Nexstar and Sinclair also loving the idea of having both the national footprint as well as their ever-growing roster of local stations.
01:42So, you know, there could be even more money available to WBD if they go ahead and sell those two components separately.
01:50I see. What would you think would happen if, and it's a big if, Paramount Skydance got hold of all the assets?
01:58Because Netflix, we know if that deal gets done, the cable networks would be spun off.
02:02But if Paramount Skydance took hold, what do you think then would be the evolution here?
02:07Well, they could still do a spinoff of their own cable properties and broadcast properties.
02:14There's all kinds of financial engineering that could then take place.
02:17I don't know that it would happen overnight, although this new Paramount management team has moved extremely quickly.
02:25You know, David Ellison gets a lot of attention, but Jeff Schell, who was the chairman of NBCUniversal, is a fantastic operator.
02:34And I could see them moving quickly.
02:36However, it sort of reminds one of the snake that eats the deer.
02:41It's, you know, it unhinges its jaw and it spends the next three months just trying to move that thing down the tunnel.
02:49And it could take a while for all of these synergies to be realized.
02:54How important is the Ellison relationship with the administration at this point, John?
02:58Because that's in many ways what they thought would clinch the deal.
03:02It's been reported.
03:02Well, much as David Zaslav is able to sit there and play one side off the other, so is Donald Trump in a similar position where he has not put his finger on the scale yet in favor of Paramount's offer, despite his relationship with Larry Ellison.
03:22And he has said very nice things about Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix.
03:28And I think that Donald Trump is enjoying being in a position to see who can curry more favor with him.
03:35So there's no reason for either President Trump or David Zaslav to pull the trigger on anything just yet.
03:44They want to see how these deals all get sweetened.
03:47I suppose the other contingent, a stakeholder who has sat there with their arms folded, is the investor base right now.
03:54They've got, what, until January the 21st to digest whether this go direct in the way the Ellisons have approached them, Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders, to be clinched versus going with Netflix.
04:06What would you say to an investor who's holding Warner Brothers Discovery shares right now?
04:10That there's plenty of time for this deal from Paramount to go even higher.
04:17So one way or another, WBD is going to be making out very nicely.
04:23History has shown us that the sellers in these media deals tend to make out better than the buyers.
04:32So they're in a pretty good position in that respect as well.
04:35You look at Disney's acquisition of the Fox assets a few years ago, and Disney's valuation has dropped significantly since then.
04:44And Rupert Murdoch is counting his money.
04:46So they're in a decent position, and there's no need to get too worked up just yet.
04:52Plenty of time for the dollars to increase.
04:54What's so interesting about your trajectory in media is you've sort of been able to see around the corners.
04:59You were in the heart of news, the in the heart of production.
05:01Then you went into the world of AI selling while helping manage a business.
05:05Eventually went to Apple.
05:06You're with Hang Media at the moment.
05:07What does all of this mean for Hollywood and for content creation right now?
05:13Well, we're on at the very beginning of a content creation explosion.
05:19And this deal, however it turns out, is taking place within a much larger environment in which creators who are being distributed by YouTube and TikTok are commanding much more viewing time than the traditional producers, writers, directors, and most of all, studios.
05:45And so in a lot of ways, this battle for the assets of WBD is really all about the way media used to be.
05:56But the big winner here is YouTube because nobody's keeping their eye on that.
06:00I mean, YouTube made headlines last week.
06:01They just stole the Oscars from ABC.
06:04Beginning in 2029, YouTube is going to be where you go to watch the Oscars.
06:09And listen, in the 2030s, I think all those tech giants are going to be running media, and all of these other companies will be significantly smaller.
06:21And we're just seeing the beginning of this.
06:22So in a lot of ways, this matters a lot to the shareholders for WBD, Netflix, Paramount, et cetera.
06:29But in terms of the long-term trajectory of the media industry, that's all happening somewhere else.
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