What’s News in Earnings: Merger News Dominates the Entertainment Business

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  Hey, listeners, it's Thursday, March 5th.

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  I'm Ben Fritz for The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's New in Earnings,

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  our look at some of the biggest themes standing out this earnings season.

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  Today I'm speaking with Wall Street Journal media and entertainment reporter Joe Flint.

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  It's been a dramatic few months for the media business.

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  Warner Brothers Discovery agreed to sell itself to Netflix,

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  then left the streaming giant at the altar for a better proposal from Paramount.

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  Disney picked a new CEO who will be the second person to replace Bob Iger.

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  This is all against the backdrop of rapid declines in the linear television business and struggles by entertainment companies to grow other businesses like streaming and theme parks fast enough to make up the difference.

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  So let's talk first about consolidation and spinoffs.

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  So Skydance bought Paramount last summer, and now Paramount Skydance has a deal to buy Warner.

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  Comcast spun out its cable networks into a new company called Versant that isn't doing very well

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  since its public debut in January.

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  What's up with all this reshaping of our media giants?

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  Well,

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  both the Paramount-Warner deal and Comcast cable spinoff are driven by the desire of these companies to be more focused on streaming,

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  try to offer real competition to Netflix and Disney Plus.

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  And we look at David Ellison, the head of Skydance, he bought Paramount last year.

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  But even then, he thought this is too small to compete with those bigger giants.

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  So from the get go, he went after Warner,

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