Who Should We Want to Buy Warner Bros. Discovery? Ranking the Outcomes

You may have read the headlines about various media giants jockeying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. The owner of HBO Max, Warner Bros. movie and TV studios, CNN, TNT, TBS, and many more media assets is apparently up for grabs. A decision on a sale (if any) is expected within days. But who should we want to own it? Here’s our assessment.

Best Case Scenario: WBD Remains Independent and Splits

Here’s the deal: when media companies merge, everything gets worse. Disney buying Fox’s movie and TV assets didn’t really result in a net benefit to the audience. Sure, Disney has done some nice things with the Alien and Predator franchises, but we’re not getting as many movies as we did when the two companies were rivals.

If WBD is gobbled up, we’ll still get Batman and Superman movies, but there’s no real incentive for a new owner to add 10-12 movies per year to their operation. When a media operation gets too big, everything suffers. And WBD is already too big on its own.

After merging the Warner Bros. properties with David Zaslav’s junk drawer o’ reality shows (Discovery), the newly combined company has been limping along. This has become so evident, WBD announced plans to spin off their underperforming linear TV assets (and a boatload of debt) to a new company.

If Warner Bros. execs could focus on churning out great movies and TV without having to program their decaying linear channels, it would make for a leaner, meaner company. It would likely increase the quality of the entertainment, presuming company leaders could keep Zaslav’s butterfingers out of the process. HBO chief Casey Bloys is excellent at his job.

As for the channels that would get dumped, the only one of real importance is CNN. The news icon has been adrift for several years and a new owner (or independence) could jolt it back to life. TNT and TBS still have a handful of important sports rights, but their original programming has dwindled to almost nothing. A monkey with a Speak N Spell could program TLC and Discovery Channel these days.

Second Best Option: Comcast

Comcast may not want all the WBD linear channels. After all, they’re in the process of spinning off nearly all of their cable assets to a new company called Versant.

But Comcast’s Peacock streamer is still searching for an identity. After an endless round of “originals” that were mostly reboots (“Saved by the Bell,” “Bel-Air,” “Punky Brewster”) or thinly veiled remakes (“The Paper”), Peacock seems to be ready to duke it out on the sports front. But it’s always felt like half a streaming service. If you combined Peacock’s catalog and sports portfolio with the good stuff on HBO Max, you’d have a much stronger streamer.

Since Comcast is dumping MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) to Versant, gaining CNN would re-establish their cable news offering. NBC News is still a strong organization, and CNN could use some stability.

Importantly, Comcast would be unlikely to do serious damage to the WBD brands. It may not be the best steward, but they’re generally benign owners. That’s likely better than the other alternatives.

Not the Worst, But Not Great: Netflix

If Netflix grabs WBD, it’s almost certainly for the library and the IP. Netflix is great at what they do, but it’s hard to compete with media companies with decades worth of old shows and movies to pull from. The Warner Bros. movie library is filled with gems that Netflix could paywall and promote.

But Netflix surely has no interest in linear channels like TLC or HGTV. I’m sure they’re trying to strike a deal without all that baggage. An alternative would be to buy the whole portfolio and then dump the linear assets after the fact.

A huge question would be whether Netflix would honor the tradition of putting Warner Bros. movies in theaters. They’re claiming they would, but filmmakers shouldn’t trust that a streaming-first company would really give films the full theatrical runs they deserve.

Netflix leaders are pretty good at cranking out the kinds of movies you used to see as TNT originals, but all their films have sort of a direct-to-video stink on them. Would Netflix let Warner Bros. be Warner Bros.? Or would they force it to become an assembly line of paint-by-numbers content for streaming?

The Netflix team loves movies, but the jury’s still out as to whether they can make them worth seeing in the theater.

Panic Button Scenario: Paramount

David Ellison’s pockets overflow with daddy’s money and he’s willing to break the bank to land Warner Bros. Discovery. There are reports he’s even trying to get Saudi investors to jump in on the deal.

But we’ve already seen the results of Ellison’s ownership on CBS News. It’s been an outright disaster. Giving him control of CNN would merely expand the Fox News-lite directive to a larger sphere.

Paramount already has its hands full trying to prop up dying networks like MTV, Comedy Central, and VH1. Adding even more cable channels wouldn’t help that effort. There are too many holes in too many boats.

As a competing movie studio, putting Warner Bros. and Paramount under the same ownership would mimic the Disney-Fox takeover. Neat at first, but simply less rewarding as time goes on. We’d still get reboots of Batman and Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Matrix, but consolidation means less focus on the new stories for the next generation. It’s just 85% franchise output.