Video Transcript:
I want to talk about this Warner Brothers hostile takeover, which now we know involves Jared Kushner, some foreign governments. Can you break this down for us, what it is and in your opinion about this?
We’ve seen an extraordinary amount of consolidation already happen in Hollywood. And this would just mean that people have fewer options, that writers and creators in Hollywood have fewer options in terms of where they can sell their ideas, where they can distribute their ideas. Prices would go up. There could be, you know, horrible ramifications for just the future of Hollywood generally.
And so there are a lot of major, major red flags from a law enforcement perspective. I mean, we have in this country still antitrust, anti monopoly laws that are supposed to stop this type of extreme consolidation and on their face, both of these deals look illegal. What’s striking is that in this Trump administration, we’ve seen that everything is up for sale, potentially, and that even if companies are proposing illegal deals, maybe the administration will be willing to look the other way if they just sweeten the deal in terms of what the president or his family get, in terms of which hosts they agree to take off the air.
And so it’s going to be a fluid situation, but there’s a lot of legal risk and risk for real people here.
So explain to us, Netflix announced it. And then this news broke that I saw David Ellison, who I think is the son of Larry Ellison that it was now a hostile takeover. And then you have Trump basically admitting that he had a phone conversation with Larry Ellison, that if he bought it, he would rework CNN to be less critical of him.
And then it’s also revealed his son-in-law is involved in this thing with the Ellison family AND foreign entities, foreign governments and foreign wealth funds.
Is this or is there anybody left at the FTC that will monitor this and do anything or what is happening, Lina?
I know it’s a great question. I mean, both deals are super problematic, right. I mean, with Paramount, if Paramount was allowed to buy, if the Ellisons were allowed to buy Warner, you basically be putting CNN now alongside the owners of CBS, of TikTok, of a whole set of media assets that they’ve already bought. We’ve seen that they’ve been willing to, you know, do the ideological bidding of what the administration wants.
And similarly, if Netflix was allowed to buy up Warner Brothers, you would have, you know, the top streamer combining with the third biggest streamer. So the number one and the number three. And so both of these would just result in a lot of consolidation. You’re right that the Paramount deal is pretty shady. If you kind of get into the paperwork of who’s really financing this.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is involved. There is Abu Dhabi involved. What is their role going to be? And, you know, we’re not just talking about any sort of market. This is the market for ideas. This is the market for creativity. What this market looks like, it’s going to determine what type of ideas, what type of free expression is even able to get out there.
And so the democratic stakes of this are huge.
I think sometimes people think of antitrust and anti monopoly as kind of arcane and technocratic. But I think what we’ve seen is that how much concentration of economic power we allow, whether we put all of the control of Hollywood and media in just a small number of hands, or whether we actually have a decentralized, competitive market has huge ramifications for the health of our democracy.
And I think that’s why there are so many red flags here right now.
