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Larry Ellison's son had to scale down his media and TV empire ambitions when Oracle stock crashed. That's one thing to celebrate, because we don't want CNN to b
by petilon 19d ago
Larry Ellison's son had to scale down his media and TV empire ambitions when Oracle stock crashed. That's one thing to celebrate, because we don't want CNN to be controlled by the Ellisons.
- jgalt212 19d agoThat's true, but then again, CNN is a mere husk of its former self. Something needs to change, but maybe it's too late for profit-driven news media.
- abeppu 19d agoBut isn't not-for-profit news media also struggling?
- saturn8601 19d agoFrom what I can see, online media has finally taken over. The horrendous coverage from the 2024 election may have finally been the last straw for many people. People seem to be focusing more on individual reporters, subscribing directly to good journalists who have gone out on their own. We are also seeing a thing that pleases me ver much: Reporters focusing on the subjects they are experts in and not doing a jack of all trades master of none. Its made me accept that I wont get top tier news in every subject so I have to pick what really matters to me(Tech, Food, entertainment, geopolitics of specific regions of the world etc.). On the low end though its more bleak. TikTok slop, Youtuber "commentators" etc.
- dylan604 19d ago> From what I can see, online media has finally taken over. Makes me think of Neil Gaiman's American Gods
- xp84 19d agoIt’s been more than a decade when CNN was a respected institution. I agree it’s too late for the news media in general. Their incentives are unfortunately all lined up just like social media: pure ragebait is the fully optimized product. The only thing changing from now on is fine tweaks to get it slightly more… ragey.
- petilon 19d agoBloomberg and Economist seem to be doing OK, so it is possible.
- xp84 19d agoI'd roughly agree they are, but they have clearly positioned themselves in the opposite way as the mainstream media - the rest compete for ad-supported clicks and views; those two are fully paywalled and at a price that deliberately drives away anyone below say, the 90th percentile by income or wealth. That resembles, to me, how newspapers used to be - except instead of a small fraction of people being willing to pay for quality news, roughly two thirds were (62 million subscribers out of 92 million American households in 1989 [1]). Like Bloomberg today, their incentives were to provide information for serious people and to cultivate a trustworthy reputation, rather than to enrage people into commenting and sharing articles. The decline of newspapers is of course too much of a tangent, but I think it's interesting how the math kind of illustrates why most 'news' has to be trash now.
- xp84 18d agooops, forgot citation: [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/ https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers... and https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/families/households.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/families... (Table HH4)
- cbsmith 19d agoI kind of like the whole Paramount acquisition as something that is just going to drag them down.
- CPLX 19d agoCNN is mostly a lost cause, though I do agree with your statement. The real problem with that one, though, is it would utterly destroy the American movie industry, which is a crucial part of our economy and culture.
- Terr_ 19d ago> it would utterly destroy the American movie industry I don't understand, if Oracle etc. has financial problems, why would movie-making bits be destroyed as opposed to sold to new owners? If the American movie industry got "destroyed", what would that look like, and how would it lead to long-term malaise? Offhand, I can't imagine the same kind of supply-chain/infrastructure rot-problem as, say, the "destruction" of the automotive industry.
- dcrazy 19d agoBecause David Ellison’s explicit plan is to run Warner Bros. Discovery (owners of CNN) and Paramount (owners of CBS) as two divisions within Skydance Media. He committed to keeping a 20-odd film slate at WBD as part of antitrust negotiations with the U.S. and other countries. So he has to keep the studio running while figuring out how to pay off the investors with depreciating Oracle assets.
- CPLX 19d agoIt's the merger. That's the problem. Consolidation into one company with a huge amount of market power ruins the market, destroys innovation, and destroys infrastructure and capacity within the vertical.
- Terr_ 19d agoOh, I see, I thought you were saying that Oracle's financial woes would have a ripple-effect that's negative for everyone else, as opposed to the mergers being a bad thing regardless of Oracle's financial situation. Yeah, America is way overdue for some trust-busting.
- Helloworldboy 19d ago
- martin1975 19d agolast time I found CNN appealing was in the early 90's...if that tells you anything about it.
- soperj 19d agoBourdain worked for them after that
- miohtama 19d agoLarry is also the reason why all new Star Trek series have been cancelled: https://www.cbr.com/paramount-dismantling-star-trek-9-year-streaming-run-real-reason/ https://www.cbr.com/paramount-dismantling-star-trek-9-year-s...
- SOLAR_FIELDS 19d agoI do love how the software world has the caricature of a comic book villain in Larry Ellison
- smegger001 19d agoI always thought of him as if he was angling to be a bond vilian but thats kind of a potayto, potahto thing
- croon 18d agoWell, he owns 98% of Hawaii's sixth largest (volcano) island, which certainly fits the motif. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%81na%CA%BBi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%81na%CA%BBi
- glaslong 18d ago"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle." — Bryan Cantrill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
- bigstrat2003 19d agoWell, that's a blessing at least. It was painful watching the butchering of Star Trek over the last decade.
- testdelacc1 19d agoMaybe some in this thread won’t celebrate CNN staying out of the clutches of the Ellisons. But think of it this way. If Ellison’s acquisition of Warner Bros falls through Ellison must pay Warner Bros a $7 Billion breakup fee. That’s on top of the $2.8 Billion they paid Netflix to abandon its pursuit of Warner Bros. So Ellison would have wasted $9.8 Billion and years of his life for absolutely nothing. And I think we can all agree that the world would be better off.
- FireBeyond 19d agoAnd will be still worth a quarter trillion dollars. Years of his life, perhaps, though a large part of that will be banks and lawyers, not him grinding it out. He won't even notice the money being gone, not even close.
- awakeasleep 19d agoI’m worried your cynicism is overwhelming your capacity for rational thought. Years of his life and 5-10% of his net worth. That’s the kind of thing people notice.
- FireBeyond 19d agoIt's definitely not 10%, more like 3%. His net worth is currently listed as $248B. If he has to pay out the penalty on both acquisitions, his net worth will still be about $240B. There's nothing articulable about the difference in his life as a result. I will give you the time though, or the motivations (however appalling they are) for his exertion of energy on these.
- Lammy 19d agoI lol'ed in the theater when I watched Top Gun Maverick as a double-feature with the original and the first thing you see is PRODUCED BY DAVID ELLISON — very “ecrof ria eht nioj”