In This Episode
We’ve been talking about the Paramount Skydance/Warner Brothers Discovery/Netflix Billionaire Boys Club Spectacular for a few days now. But it’s really worth digging into the details to understand how all of this could reshape our media diets – and our politics. If Netflix buys Warner Bros. Discovery, that could be very bad news for Hollywood. But if Paramount buys Warner Bros. Discovery, the Trump-supporting Ellisons would own: CBS, CNN, HBO, Paramount, DC Studios, TNT Sports, Warner Bros., Oracle and a whole bunch more. It’s basically a big, complicated mess — so to unpack what it means for consumers and why on earth President Trump is involved, we spoke to Ben Smith. He’s co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor, and host of the Mixed Signals podcast.
And in headlines, Trump brings his economic message to the American people on the first stop of his affordability tour, the Supreme Court hears arguments over campaign finance limits, and will Americans follow Australia’s footsteps and ban social media for children?
Show Notes:Check out Mixed Signals – https://tinyurl.com/ycxvkz6fCall Congress – 202-224-3121Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast
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TRANSCRIPT
Jane Coaston: It’s Wednesday, December 10th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show asking that the next time you gather 2,397 golden retrievers in a park in Argentina. Can you invite me? Please. [music break] On today’s show, President Donald Trump brings his economic message to the American people on the first stop of his Eras Tour. Specifically the era of a mass affordability crisis. And go play outside. Will Americans follow Australia’s footsteps and ban social media for teens? Well, let’s start with mergers and acquisitions. No, seriously. We’ve been talking about the Paramount Sky Dance Warner Brothers Discovery Netflix Billionaire Boys Club Spectacular for a few days now. But it’s really worth digging into the details to understand how all of this could reshape our media diets and our politics. Let’s start with Paramount Skydance, which itself is the result of a 2024 merger. It owns CBS and Paramount Pictures, and is run by CEO David Ellison, son of Oracle Corporation founder and chairman Larry Ellison. And President Trump has been a big fan of the Ellisons. Not in small part because Larry has donated millions to Republican causes and was one of the buyers that took over 80% of TikTok. Got all that? Good. Because the next players in our story are a little easier to understand. Netflix is Netflix, you know, where you watch the great British baking show, and also a ton of lifetime-esque movies and shows ranging in quality from Squid Game, to Emily and Paris, which whatever you need to get through the day. Then there’s Warner Brothers Discovery, which is up for grabs. It owns CNN, the Discovery Channel, HETV, and more importantly to the people fighting over it, movie franchises like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane. You know, movie movies. Of course, there’s a massive orange elephant in the room, President Trump. As we’ve mentioned, last week, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos announced that the streaming giant was buying most of Warner Brothers Discovery. He did so after meeting with Trump in November and getting what he thought to be the president’s blessing. But, plot twist, over the weekend, David Ellison hung out with Trump at the Kennedy Center honor ceremony in DC. And on Monday, he announced his plans for a hostile bid for all of Warner Brothers Discovery. According to the Wall Street Journal, Larry called Trump to tell him the Netflix deal would stymie competition. David separately told Trump officials that if he got control of Warner Brothers Discovery, he would make, quote, “sweeping changes to CNN.” Changes Trump, who hates CNN, would love. If Netflix buys Warner Brothers Discovery, that could be very bad news for Hollywood. But if Paramount buys Warner Brothers Discovery, the Trump supporting Ellisons would own CBS, CNN, HBO, Paramount, DC Studios, TNT Sports, Warner Brothers, Oracle, and a whole bunch more. It’s a big complicated mess, so in hopes of making it less messy, I spoke to Ben Smith. He’s co-founder and editor in chief of Semafor and host of the Mixed Signals podcast. Ben, welcome to What a Day.
Ben Smith: Thank you for having me.
Jane Coaston: Over the past few decades, we’ve watched a ton of powerful companies try to consume their less successful or struggling competitors, resulting in larger and larger parent companies and less competition. And this has been so clear in the media industry where we both work. So who are the major players in the Warner Brothers Discovery merger talks?
Ben Smith: Well, it’s funny you say that, because I think most consumers would say not there are too few monopolistic giants out there, but there is too much stuff, too many substacks to subscribe to. I mean, in my personal case, and certainly too many streaming services. And the basic kind of commercial thing that is happening here is that if you are a smallish streaming service, a smallish media company, which is what Paramount counts as, they do produce Yellowstone, but they don’t have the kind of scale of Netflix. They’re not churning out kind of mediocre rom com seven times a week. You find it hard to compete with Netflix, with Disney. And the people in that industry all believe they’ve just got to get bigger to survive. And so David Ellison, the son of um one of the richest men in the world, the Oracle founder Larry Ellison, bought Paramount. And I think a lot of these purchases, historically, many of these purchases are not really economic, like rich people love to own movie studios. And then follows the economic logic to well, it’s not enough to own just like a smallish, medium-sized movie studio. You got to own a really big one or else go home. And so he right now what is happening is he is trying to take the small Paramount and buy the larger Warner with it. That’s the home of like, you know, everything from like North by Northwest to Harry Potter, and build a giant mega streaming service to compete with, say, Netflix.
Jane Coaston: Now, Warner Brothers Discovery first started exploring a sale in October after receiving three consecutive offers from Paramount Skydance, reportedly not long after it had completed its own merger, which happened fairly recently. At the time, even though other companies showed interest, Paramount seemed like the obvious victor, partly because the Ellisons had a ton of money, and partly because Larry Ellison is close to Trump. Why didn’t Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav bite?
Ben Smith: David Zaslav had his own plan, which was to do what companies like the parent of NBC and MSNBC have done, which is to take all the cable television channels, which are highly entertaining for people who follow politics, but like a really rapidly dying business and kind of slice them off and put them over here, and then take your vibrant entertainment business into the future. And he was in the middle of trying to do that, and I think was probably going to sell each of those things off, but Paramount came in before they were ready and said, we’d like to buy the whole thing. He has now successfully created a huge a massive bidding war and taken his stock, which was like at $7 up toward $30. So there’s a level of kind of merger kabuki here. And ultimately, like his job is to get the stock price as high as possible at the moment they sell.
Jane Coaston: Now, typically, in normal times, the President of the United States is not like a big player in merger talks. When and why did Trump become part of the conversation?
Ben Smith: So Trump is, you know, an obsessive media critic who has made no secret, and Brendan Carr, his FCC chairman, has made no secret that they they view it as a mandate of the government to make the media nicer to Donald Trump. This is not in the constitution. And in fact, they haven’t bothered going to court to try to do this because they would lose. But mergers are one of the many places that the government can really screw up your business without winning a court case. They can sue you, they can tie you up for years while your competitors race ahead of you. And so currying favor with the government, even in normal times, is very important in big mergers and acquisitions. But right now, you know, Trump has said he plans to be involved in this decision. You know, the Ellisons, who to some degree I think share his politics, who certainly supported him financially, who are making rush hour four because he asked for rush hour four, were thought to be like on a glide path to buying it until Netflix itself jumped in and said, no, actually, we’ll take this asset, offered arguably more money for a slightly different configuration of a purchase, got a deal, and now the Ellisons are coming back and trying to um outbid Netflix. But there’s this other thing about Trump that he’s not big on other people going out and making money off of him. And the Ellisons, I think unwisely, and certainly some people involved in the process think unwisely, went out and basically said, well, because the Republican, the governing party is so corrupt and transactional, we’re gonna win this because we’ve bought them off. And that was basically like their pitch to investors. And I think that backfired to some degree. If you are, you know, at the FTC, the FCC, at the Department of Justice, even if it’s true, maybe especially if it’s true, you don’t really want the companies that you regulate going around saying we’ve bought these schmucks off.
Jane Coaston: Typically, but you know, we live in strange times.
Ben Smith: Even in strange times, it turns out, that annoys people.
Jane Coaston: As you mentioned, on Friday, Netflix and Warner Brothers Discovery announced a deal, which stated that Netflix would acquire most of the company, including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO. Then on Monday, Paramount Skydance responded with a hostile bid for the whole company, including CNN, and offered a lot more cash, some of which is being put up by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner’s investment fund, as well as some sovereign funds from the Middle East. How wild is this move from the Ellisons, especially because now we have some allegations that there was a conversation with Donald Trump about what the Ellisons might do to CNN?
Ben Smith: I mean, yes, it is quite wild for a number of reasons. One is because they reportedly have promised to make CNN nicer to Donald Trump. One is because they managed to unite three very rivalrous countries in the Middle East, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, all united behind this bid to buy a movie studio. Well, I mean, it’s all a very risky bet in an industry that’s changing fast, also an industry that is, and this is actually very important for merger regulators, a little hard to know what the industry is. If the industry is streaming video services, Netflix is in a dominant place, and it’d be hard to imagine giving them another one. If the industry is stuff you watch on your phone, Netflix represents a very small part of it. If the industry is scripted shows on television, on YouTube, again, Netflix is a fairly small part. Actually, I think nobody really totally understands like what is the actual industry we’re talking about here. How do you draw a circle around it?
Jane Coaston: Why should all of this matter to American consumers who basically watch CBS to watch the NFL on CBS and pay attention to the news, but not like us?
Ben Smith: I mean, I think from a consumer perspective, this is part of what was an inevitable consolidation around the question of there are like too many goddamn streaming services and I can’t be subscribing and unsubscribing to like MGM plus every time I wanna watch a movie. You know, I mean, I think everybody has that experience. But the other question is yeah, it’s it’s an effort by the president of the United States to seize control of a couple of pretty troubled, less relevant than they used to be, but iconic news organizations.
Jane Coaston: And where do you think this is all going to go next? Like what happens now?
Ben Smith: You know, the Wall Street view is that it’s probably a bad idea to bet against the money. Whoever bids higher will probably get the thing. And and Netflix is ultimately a public company trying to build a great business. And the Ellisons are ultimately a family who really, really, really want to own this thing and are among the richest people in the world. And so often I do think like the non economic bidder is gonna win.
Jane Coaston: Ben, thank you so much for joining me.
Ben Smith: Thank you. It’s good to see you.
Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Ben Smith, co-founder and editor in chief of the news site Semafor. You can check out his podcast in the show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]
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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today.
[sung] Headlines.
[clip of President Donald Trump] Remember when I said tariff? My favorite word is tariff. True. But then I got a lot of heat from the fake news.
Jane Coaston: President Trump touted his tariff policy during his lower prices bigger paychecks rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Trump, who was an hour late to the event, rambled about affordability, how much he hates windmills, Karoline Leavitt’s lips, and how prices are coming down. Are they? No, but sure. And that’s all on top of his typical racist and offensive comments. His remarks come as recent polling shows that public trust in Trump’s economic leadership isn’t looking too great. And remember those November elections when Democrats trounced Republicans? Actually, just Tuesday, a Democrat won Miami’s mayoral election for the first time in three decades. Well, the White House is trying to convince voters that the economy is stronger and inflation is easing. Also, it was all former President Joe Biden’s fault, remember?
[clip of President Donald Trump] You know, I do my own polls. I go to a big arena, we have twenty thousand people, I say, which you like, Sleepy Joe or Crooked Joe? And I learn. I save millions of dollars, I don’t have to do any polling, okay? Typically Crooked Joe wins. I’m surprised. Because to me he’s a sleepy son of a bitch. You know?
Jane Coaston: Again, this speech was supposed to be about affordability. For what it’s worth, inflation started to ramp up after Trump announced his sweeping Liberation Day tariffs in April. Companies warned that the import taxes could be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices and reduced hiring. The US Supreme Court heard more arguments on Tuesday, this time over the limits on campaign financing. Some conservative justices appear to back a Republican-led push to erase limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with congressional and presidential candidates. Keywords there. In coordination. The lawsuit was brought by Republican committees and vice president J.D. Vance, who was running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio at the time. Attorney Noel Francisco argued on their behalf that the limits are at odds with recent First Amendment rulings. But liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor said, quote, “Every time we interfere with the congressional design, we make matters worse.” Sotomayor noted that other legal avenues like independent expenditures already allow for large donations, alluding to President Trump’s extra rich friend.
[clip of Justice Sonia Sotomayor] You mean to suggest that the fact that one major donor to the current president, the most major donor to the current president, got a very lucrative job immediately upon election from the new administration, does not give the appearance of a quid pro quo.
[clip of Noel Francisco] Your Honor, I’m not a hundred percent sure about the example that you’re looking at.
Jane Coaston: I wonder who that could be. The limits are meant to stop large donors from getting around caps on individual contributions to a candidate. The limits are meant to keep elections clear of bribery, corruption, and influence. Ha! As if. A ruling in the case is expected by summer. A federal judge has allowed a PhD student from Turkey, who was detained by the Trump administration earlier this year, to resume research and teaching at Tufts University. Rümeysa Öztürk was detained by immigration officers in March. Her arrest was one of the first in the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign-born students and activists involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Öztürk had co-authored an op-ed in her student newspaper criticizing her university’s response to Israel and the war in Gaza, which made her a target. Again, she co-authored an op-ed in the student newspaper. She was released from a Louisiana immigration detention center in May and has since returned to the Tufts campus. But her student visa record was removed from the government’s database, barring her from teaching or participating in research. The ruling Monday orders Öztürk’s record be restored. In a statement, Öztürk said in part that while she’s grateful for the court’s decision, she feels, quote, “a great deal of grief” for the education she has been, quote, “arbitrarily denied as a scholar and a woman.”
[clip of Rahm Emanuel] Today Australia is banning all TikTok, Instagram and all social media from kids that are sixteen and younger. I think it’s time for America to pick up its game and do the same.
Jane Coaston: Former Democratic mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel encouraged the US to emulate Australia’s social media ban on children younger than 16. The 66-year-old potential 2028 presidential contender safely posted the message to social media on Wednesday. In Australia, a new law kicked in this week requiring social media companies to shut down accounts belonging to users under 16. No cap. Companies that fail to comply face fines of around $32 million. The law covers platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Kik, Reddit, and Twitch. It’s the first regulation of its kind anywhere in the world. Emanuel cited the growing concerns about social media’s addictive design and its risks to young people, and hopes the Australian law will migrate from down under and influence lawmakers here in the US. And it may do just that. Here’s South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham at a Senate judiciary hearing on Wednesday.
[clip of Senator Lindsey Graham] In February, we should have like a social media week where we take all these good ideas and we dedicate a week or two weeks to doing nothing on the floor but this. To try to take these laws that everybody coming up with and put them in a big package.
Jane Coaston: For our listeners, 16 and under, please like and subscribe to What a Day on social media while you still can. And that’s the news. [music break]
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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Better plan your prison drone deliveries of steak, crab legs, cigarettes, and marijuana, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how prison officials at a facility in South Carolina intercepted a drone carrying steak, crab legs, old bay for the crab legs, because that’s how you do it, cigarettes and marijuana, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and honestly too bad, because that sounds like a fun party. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our associate producers are Emily Fohr and Chris Allport. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters and Matt Berg. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of News and Politics is Adriene Hill. We had help from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]
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