from the 24/7-clown-show dept
We’ve nicely documented how the AOL–>AT&T->Warner Brothers->Discovery collection of mergers had been amongst a number of the most harmful and pointless “enterprise offers” ever conceived by fashionable man. Simply a long time of “savvy deal-making” that resulted in an more and more shittier product.
The mergers resulted in bottomless layoffs, the closure of quite a few beneficial and well-liked manufacturers and reveals, and far worse product as incompetent, fail-upward executives shifted the corporate’s focus away from high quality programming towards lowest-common-denominator engagement slop.
After countless chaos, the businesses are successfully unwinding the unique deal, splitting the media big again into two firms: Warner Bros. and Discovery World. The truly semi-valuable stuff — together with HBO, HBO Max streaming, and their gaming properties can be a part of a slimmed-down Warner Bros.
The extra problematic albatross across the firm’s neck, its dying cable networks (together with TNT, CNN, HGTV and Animal Planet) can be spun off into Discovery World. This can, violently overcompensated CEO David Zaslav insists, proceed a legacy of excellence on the media big:
“We are going to proudly proceed the greater than century-long legacy of Warner Bros. by our dedication to bringing culture-defining tales, characters and leisure to audiences world wide,” Zaslav stated.”
A part of this proud legacy, you would possibly recall, included sidelining the HBO model, which Zaslav initially claimed mirrored a savvy evolution within the firm’s considering. Executives believed that the “the HBO identify turns off many potential subscribers,” in order that they renamed their streaming service “Max” within the perception this may give them a recent branding begin.
However the identify modifications had been so quick and frequent they befuddled even the corporate’s personal staff.
Executives like Zaslav are all out of any kind of unique concepts, assuming that they had any within the first place. The sort of stuff that actually pleases prospects (low costs, larger high quality, improved buyer assist, higher characteristic units) prices cash and erodes quarterly earnings and the purpose of not possible development.
So as a substitute, these executives have embraced a purely extractive “development for development’s sake” mindset by which they pursue purposeless consolidation whose solely operate is to quickly goose inventory valuations, present massive tax cuts, and flimsily justify outsized compensation for fail-upward brunchlord media executives who fancy themselves savvy dealmakers (see the Ellison household and CBS).
And there’s been a whole technology of this, in the event you lengthen your view again to the unique, equally disastrous AOL deal again in 2001. When the press covers these pointless offers, they very not often assume it’s price mentioning the technology price of carnage and layoffs this kind of consolidation at all times creates; a tone-deafness that itself is a direct results of consolidation and dangerous administration.
Zaslav has acknowledged repeatedly that he sees Trump 2.0 as a chance for extra dangerous media consolidation, which can solely proceed to make the underlying merchandise worse. Wash, rinse, repeat, with completely no one studying something from the expertise because of all method of perverse monetary incentives which have nothing to do with constructing actual worth or making your prospects completely happy.
Filed Underneath: brunchlords, consolidation, movie, media, mergers, streaming, synergies, video
