from the this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things dept
I’ve written a lot about the AOL–>AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery mergers simply because I think they perfectly encapsulate the pointless, destructive incompetence at the heart of modern media consolidation, and the cannibalistic nature of Wall Street’s obsession with illusory quarterly growth propped up by smoke, mirrors, and complex accounting.
Ever since the original AOL Time Warner merger back in 2001, an endless wave of pointless mergers promised no limit of innovative “synergies,” but instead resulted in more than 50,000 layoffs, shittier product, higher prices, the death of a ton of well-loved brands and IPs, decades of chaos, a decline in quality journalism, and a bottomless well of shit.
All so some overpaid execs could nab some tax breaks and short-term stock boosts and put “savvy dealmaker” on their resume — before failing upward to the next bad idea.
Mass U.S. media is the purest form of enshittification. And because nobody in this chain of dysfunction is financially incentivized to learn from experience, we’re about to do it all over again.
Time Warner has formally announced that it’s once again up for sale. The most likely buyer? Larry Ellison’s nepobaby son David, who just bribed the President so he could buy CBS and turn it into a right wing propaganda mill (he’s also likely a new co-owner of TikTok). If Ellison wants Time Warner, it’s estimated that it will cost somewhere around $60 billion:
“David Ellison’s mission: grab Warner Bros Discovery before it splits. The freshly minted media mogul behind Paramount is considering various options, including possibly bypassing the board of the HBO and CNN owner and going straight to shareholders instead. To tempt them will probably cost about $60 billion.”
Ellison is on an acquisition spree (CBS, CNN, TikTok) trying to build a major modern media giant with a decidedly right wing bent (see the whole Bari Weiss fracas). Which isn’t great for a media and journalism environment already dominated by right wing billionaires trying to blow smoke up their own asses.
I’d like you to play a little game with me. Pluck any of the hundreds of stories of Time Warner’s latest likely sale from the newswires, and see if they there’s any mention of the disastrous recent history of Time Warner Discovery and AT&T’s mergers under the leadership of CEO David Zaslav. Or the terrible real-world impact this sort of consolidation always has on market health, labor, or consumers.
You (usually) won’t see it because consolidation creates a media that’s too broken and feckless to honestly report on itself. Instead you get a lot of journalistic-simulacrum that kind of mimics the look and style of journalism, but is just as hollow as as a jack-o-lantern.
Time Warner will be sold, again. The resulting debt will result in all manner of cost cutting from the acquiring company to pay off unmanageable debt (see: CBS already firing employees en masse). The executives responsible will profit from short term stock boosts and tax breaks, but will be nowhere to be found when layoffs abound, prices, soar, customers flee, and the whole thing starts to unravel. Again.
But however bad past media mergers of this type have been, you should prepare for everything to get much, much dumber now that the U.S. government has eviscerated whatever was left of regulatory independence and our already flimsy dedication to antitrust reform.
Despite what Matt Stoller types promised during the last election season, The Trump administration isn’t even bothering with America’s usual half-assed pretense at caring about corporate power. His FCC is gutting whatever was left of media consolidation limits across all sectors. His courts are making it so serious corporate accountability (of any kind) is effectively now legally impossible.
That’s going to result in all manner of massive, harmful deals we couldn’t have imagined previously across telecom, media, and tech, as oligarchs try to goose earnings and dominate the entirety of modern media. With zero functional regulatory oversight. In a country controlled by unhinged zealots.
What could possibly go wrong?
Filed Under: consolidation, david ellison, david zazlav, journalism, larry ellison, layoffs, media, mergers, synergies
Companies: skydance, warner bros., warner bros. discovery
