Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount are Combining (Merger)?

Warner Bros., the creator of iconic movies like Barbie, recently combined with Discovery in 2022 to form Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount has iconic content like the Mission Impossible and the Indiana Jones series. Talk around town is that these companies might be in early merger talks. But why would they even want to merge?

Nowadays, most folks are moving away from cable TV. Digital streaming services are all the rage. Large, older companies feel they must catch up with the new digital media streaming companies. They might be worried they might lose out on the streaming side of things. Both these companies have streaming services that are less popular than top streaming services like Netflix. To put that into perspective, Max, Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming platform, has approximately 95M subscribers, and Paramount +, Paramount’s streaming service, has approximately 75M subscribers. Netflix has approximately 250M subscribers.

Another significant benefit for these production houses is that they will have the added benefit of saving money in the production of new content as they now have more resources (two heads are better than one?) at their disposal.

Even if Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount can decide to move ahead with this deal, their deal may still be halted by the Fair Trade Commission (the guys and gals responsible for making sure that companies don’t become too powerful). On the one hand, these companies are both very powerful individually in the traditional media space, and it wouldn’t be great for other competitors if they joined hands together. On the other hand, competitors like Netflix may make traditional media houses obsolete. Which end should you look at it from? It’s tricky. Let’s see what happens next.

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