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Comment by rgbrgb | Hacker News Reader

> everyone knows why this purchase was made

you should say what you're talking about because I for one have no idea.

The 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.

If 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?

Probably hard to cut a deal like this with someone you are actively engaged in a hostile bidding war with.

I 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.

I 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.

Even if that is indeed the motive, the article is useful in showing how from a financial perspective this is bad deal for Paramount.

Absolutely. 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.

didn’t think I had to actually explain it :)

Its a cynical media control strategy to prevent taxes on the rich.

This doesn’t make sense. Surely paying taxes would be cheaper than buying Warner Bros?

That'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.

And 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.

Ruining society is a long term objective. Normal 6month profteers need not apply.

I 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.

He's probably talking about this: https://www.972mag.com/ellisons-paramount-tiktok-israel-medi...

Indeed. I have tried to say it more bluntly, Galloway is pro-Israel and vehemently so.

Did you mean to write Ellison, rather than Galloway?

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