I would argue it’s worse (and not because of Ellison’s politics).
Paramount has far less liquidity than Netflix does, and this is going to be a lot of borrowed money. A not-insignificant portion is coming from the Saudis, and that money will have strings on the strings attached.
More broadly, it also means that WB is once again under new ownership by a parent company who took on a destabilizing amount of debt to get the deal done. That’s the same thing that happened with AT&T and then Discovery. And under Zaslav and Discovery, the job cuts have been significant.
Paramount also has a lot more redundancy built in since they basically have an identical business model and similar assets. Why do they need another Burbank lot? A bunch more shitty, unprofitable cable networks?
I would argue it’s worse (and not because of Ellison’s politics).
Paramount has far less liquidity than Netflix does, and this is going to be a lot of borrowed money. A not-insignificant portion is coming from the Saudis, and that money will have strings on the strings attached.
More broadly, it also means that WB is once again under new ownership by a parent company who took on a destabilizing amount of debt to get the deal done. That’s the same thing that happened with AT&T and then Discovery. And under Zaslav and Discovery, the job cuts have been significant.
Paramount also has a lot more redundancy built in since they basically have an identical business model and similar assets. Why do they need another Burbank lot? A bunch more shitty, unprofitable cable networks?