from the dealmaking-for-dealmaking’s-sake-is-not-a-business-model dept
You might recall how AT&T spent nearly $200 billion on megamergers thinking it was going to dominate the online video advertising space. But after spending a fortune on DirecTV and Time Warner, laying off 50,000 people, and killing off popular properties like Mad Magazine, it quickly became clear that AT&T executives had absolutely no idea what they were doing.
That forced AT&T executives to spin off Time Warner for a loss, triggering yet another disastrous and pointless merger between Discovery and Time Warner. That in turn has created all manner of additional problems as cheapskate Discovery executives attempt to cut even more costs by firing thousands of additional employees, and cancelling a parade of popular shows.
But execs have taken things even further by pulling huge swaths of popular content off of their flagship streaming service, HBO Max, simply because they were too cheap to pay royalties to the actors and writers who created them. That’s resulted in a long line of shows (from Westworld to Euphoria) being pulled off the Internet (driving people to piracy if they want access).
It’s resulting in a pockmarked HBO Max lineup that’s notably shittier than ever, with entire seasons of classics like Sesame Street, Looney Tunes, and The Flintstones simply disappearing from the Internet. In some cases, I’ll note, because the company didn’t even want to pay itself (I shit you not):
Variety explains that these shows were licensed to HBO Max by Warner Bros. (once more for those in the back: THAT COMPANY OWNS HBO MAX), but the streaming service reportedly decided not to renew those licenses (with ITS OWN COMPANY) to save money. That’s in keeping with Warner Bros. Discovery’s crusade against animation and animators, with WBD boss David Zaslav having already gutted his company’s cartoon offerings earlier in 2022.
Where are customers going to go when they can no longer find any of this content? Piracy, of course. At which the entertainment industry will, as is tradition, blame everyone but itself.
It’s just so perfectly demonstrative of the absolute pointlessness of our obsession with megamergers, “growth for growth’s sake,” and “dealmaking for dealmaking’s sake.” Hundreds of billions of dollars exchanged in a completely pointless dance, resulting in little more than a parade of layoffs and a demonstrably shittier end product.
All so a handful of executives and investors could enjoy some short-term tax breaks and compensation boosts at the cost of the company’s long term health and longevity. Super innovative stuff.
Filed Under: competition, consolidation, consumers, hbo max, layoffs, megamergers, mergers, streaming, video
Companies: at&t, discovery
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