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> everyone knows why this purchase was made you should say what you're talking about because I for one have no idea.
by rgbrgb 7mo ago
> everyone knows why this purchase was made
you should say what you're talking about because I for one have no idea.
- cyanydeez 7mo agoIts a cynical media control strategy to prevent taxes on the rich.
- ViktorRay 7mo agoThis doesn’t make sense. Surely paying taxes would be cheaper than buying Warner Bros?
- cyanydeez 7mo agoThat's what a poor person would say. Fox news managed to get Donald Trump elected, whose net worth has gone up by billions. Also, it's not real money, it's debt equity. Equity transfers are just rich people toys. They move the actual cost into the entity they purchase, and if it fails, whatever, it didn't cost them anything.
- lotsofpulp 7mo agoAnd all the other investors in the market just ignore this debt when deciding the price they are willing to pay for a share? Shares of businesses with excessive debt relative to income do not do well for their shareholders.
- cyanydeez 7mo agoRuining society is a long term objective. Normal 6month profteers need not apply.
- lotsofpulp 7mo agoI don’t know what that means. You wrote something about debt equity not costing shareholders anything, but it’s trivial to see that all else being equal, a business with more debt will have a smaller market capitalization than a business with less debt. The debt from the Time Warner and other purchases dragged ATT down from the top spot to 3rd, and boosted Tmobile to the top. The shareholders of ATT lost and the shareholders of Tmobile gained.
- afavour 7mo agoI assume OP is talking about an ideological motive to take over the media industry and pivot it in a rightward direction. That’s certainly what happened with CBS News, I think it’s fair to speculate about CNN too. No idea why OP alluded to it rather than just said it though.
- warkdarrior 7mo agoEven if that is indeed the motive, the article is useful in showing how from a financial perspective this is bad deal for Paramount.
- afavour 7mo agoAbsolutely. But it’s still relevant because depending on your goal (and your resources) a bad deal that burns cash might still be a positive outcome. Not dissimilar from Musk buying Twitter, objectively he overpaid by a ton for a business that wasn’t thriving. But I think time has shown that his purchase has paid political and ideological dividends. Which might be worth the money to him.
- bdangubic 7mo agodidn’t think I had to actually explain it :)
- DaveFr 7mo agoThe idea is that this is a political deal, not a business deal - by buying WBD, the Ellisons add CNN to a portfolio that already includes CBS and TikTok, and shaping coverage matters more to them than the stock price.
- CodesInChaos 7mo agoIf that's the case, shouldn't they have been able to work out a much cheaper deal with Netflix where they get CNN and Netflix everything else?
- jandrese 7mo agoProbably hard to cut a deal like this with someone you are actively engaged in a hostile bidding war with.
- jasonfarnon 7mo agoI think this was actually on the table and rejected. Which is why the "control the narrative" argument is fishy, or at least missing something. And now having just defended Oracle I have to go take a shower.
- ajb 7mo agoHe's probably talking about this: https://www.972mag.com/ellisons-paramount-tiktok-israel-media-empire/ https://www.972mag.com/ellisons-paramount-tiktok-israel-medi...