Episode 14: Netflix Will Destroy Warner Brothers

Episode 14 of The Reagan Faulkner Show breaks down Netflix’s bid to buy Warner Bros, HBO, and HBO Max, and explains Paramount’s hostile takeover attempt that outbids Netflix by tens of billions of dollars. The episode connects this fight to broader control of movies, streaming, and even TikTok, arguing that no matter who wins, legacy media power remains firmly in charge.

Transcript

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What's up guys, and welcome back to the Reagan Faulkner Show. Today, we're going to be talking about Netflix, the bidding war for Warner Brothers, and what's going to come next and the consequences if Netflix actually does win the bidding war and they get Warner Brothers. So, let's dive right into it. On December 5th, the announcement came that Netflix was officially the frontrunner, they'd won the bidding war against Paramount, against Comcast for Warner Brothers, and for their entire laundry list of movies over the last century. So, in this acquisition, Netflix is going to acquire Warner Brothers Film and Television Studios, HBO Max, the streaming service, and then HBO overall. This really accounts for about a total value of $83 billion if you include all the equity, all the assets, everything that Netflix is going to acquire within this overall purchase. And then, like I said, in the contest was also Comcast, so they own Xfinity, NBC, Universal, and yes, if you're thinking theme parks and resorts, they also own the entire universal resort and theme park industry. And then, they also have Vudu streaming service and Peacock streaming service. And then, you've got Paramount, and they own Pluto streaming service, Paramount Plus streaming service, and then iconic cable networks that are just, historically, they've been around for what feels like forever. They have Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, True TV, and what I'm getting at when I say that is MTV, and then they also have BET and Showtime, and a lot more that weren't super familiar to me, so I didn't include all of them, because the list just goes on and on for all the things that Paramount owns when it comes to cable. So, since it was announced on December 5th that Netflix had won this bidding war and that the paperwork was being signed and that they were going to be the new owners of Warner Brothers, Paramount came in and they're attempting a hostile takeover, offering $30 total per share to shareholders, and they're offering this all cash. This compares to Netflix's deal, which is a cash-stock mix, coming in at about $27.75 per share, so for comparison, Paramount's offering$30 per share, straight cash, just cash. Netflix is offering $27.75 per share, but it's a cash-stock mix, so shareholders will get some cash and then they'll also get some Netflix stock. How this equates out to, in the end, in subtotals and everything, is Paramount is going to pay about $108.4 billion for the$83 billion worth of assets, while Netflix's payment was that of about $72 billion for those$83 billion worth of assets. So, Paramount has outbid Netflix by over $30 billion at this point, and if y'all aren't familiar with really what a hostile takeover is, it's basically where a company, the company that wants to buy the target company, subverts the management, they subvert the board, and they go straight to the shareholders, and they say, hey, we don't want to push this through the board, we don't want to push this through management, they've already made this decision, but we want to offer y'all $30 per share, all cash, instead of $27.75, cash-stock mix, are y'all interested, and then the shareholders will go back to management and the board, and tell them, hey, we like Paramount's offer better, whatever company it may be, and they just completely subvert the actual leadership within the company, they go straight to the shareholders, and this is actually how Elon got X, interestingly enough. So, a little bit of background about Paramount, their owner is David Ellison, and he is the son of Larry Ellison, who founded Oracle, and if that name sounds familiar, it should. So, in addition to Paramount's ownership of streaming services, of movies, of television assets, they also own a major stake in Oracle, which, as many of y'all know, is the company that took the majority stock of TikTok when Donald Trump said that TikTok had to be primarily owned in the U.S. in order to operate here. So, Paramount has streaming, movie, television, and then they also have a huge chunk of one of the most popular social media apps or services, however you want to categorize TikTok, they have a huge, huge stake in the social media market as well. So, whether Netflix or Comcast or Paramount ultimately retain ownership of Warner Brothers, one thing is ultimately holding true in this entire situation of bidding for Warner Brothers. So, really, legacy media, they're always, always, always going to be in control. No matter who they are, no matter what it is, legacy media will always be in control. Warner Brothers own CNN, so, and Netflix won't get the CNN, that's part of what they call Warner Brothers Discovery, which is a subgroup of Warner Brothers, and it's really, really confusing, but basically, Netflix isn't going to retain any part of Warner Brothers that has to do with cable. So, no CNN, none of their actual, like, television channels, none of that type of thing will go to Netflix in the purchase. But Warner Brothers owns CNN, Comcast owns NBC and MSNBC, and then Paramount owns NBS. So, all of it, whoever buys Warner Brothers, whoever gets it, whoever does what with it, regardless of if they get the television channels and CNN or not, it's just going to keep proliferating the liberal ideology and the radical left-wing agenda that we've been talking about since the show started, and quite frankly, that we've been talking about since 2016, when Donald Trump ran for office the first time, and the establishment lost their minds. It is just legacy media, it's legacy billionaires, it's legacy liberals, as I like to call them, and they're just pushing this liberal ideology and this agenda through all of their shows, through all of their news sources, through absolutely everything. So, there's absolutely no good choice for who can buy Warner Brothers, for who can take it and actually do the titles that Warner Brothers has created justice. But Netflix is definitely, definitely not the answer. I am very, very anti-Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers, regardless of how much they pay for it. So, Warner Brothers has spent over a century, they were created in April of 1923, they have spent over a century creating some of the most memorable cinematic masterpieces that we have. They created Casablanca, they created The Wizard of Oz, and these movies really define very early on in cinema what a movie masterpiece is. And then they went on to create modern movies like The Hangover that define comedy and they're just household staples. I mean, that's a movie that in my boyfriend's house, you just walk in and there's a good chance The Hangover's on and somebody's sitting down just watching it, being on their iPad, whatever, it's a household staple. And then you have movies like The Blind Side and American Sniper that Warner Brothers created that define American values, American pride, and American culture. And more and more and more they have Harry Potter, they have Batman and all the DC superheroes. I don't know anything about superheroes, so I'm not even going to try to get into that, but they own so many different franchises. The Matrix, Mad Max, they have some of the most profitable and beloved movie franchises in history. And if we compare this to Netflix, Netflix creates half-baked movies and half-baked shows that are just constantly pushing out new media for subscribers to consume. I mean, that's really all Netflix is at this point. I'm not going to belittle any of their shows specifically. I mean, well actually I am, we're going to get into that. I do have a problem with some of their shows, a lot of their shows. But, I mean, they're half-baking these shows and these movies and these docuseries because they have a quota to meet. They constantly have to get more media out to you and I, to their subscribers, to the people paying for the service, so that we don't run out of things to watch. Which, if anybody has run out of things to watch on Netflix, I would truly love to meet them because every time I go on Netflix I find some random thing that I've literally never seen before that came out of the ether. But that's aside from the point. So, Netflix, they're not focused on beauty. They're not focused on ingenuity. They're not focused on creativity. And they're certainly not focused on cinema when they're creating Netflix originals that can only be found on Netflix and nobody else has access to them. They don't come out in theaters. It's just for them and them alone and whoever decides to have a subscription to Netflix. And they want to profit and they want to crank out whatever they need to to keep an audience mildly interested enough to retain their subscription and keep paying. They don't want to be excellent. They just want to have a good enough show and they have some good shows. I mean, I know that a lot of people love some of the Netflix originals and they have enough to be like, oh my gosh, Netflix is amazing. They have like these five great titles. But what about like the 500 Netflix originals we've never heard of? It's mediocre at best. So like I said, they do have some good titles. They have Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Wednesday, Squid Game, Outer Banks. If you haven't heard of any of these, I don't know where you've been because these are mainstream media now. You have to have heard of them. Everybody's talking about them. Maybe not Wednesday. I don't hear a lot about Wednesday, but the other four definitely, definitely huge names for Netflix. So they also have more popular shows that have come out recently. Boots, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and then Jenny in Georgia just dropped a new season. But that shows about three or four years old, I think. Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. But almost every single one of these agendas or every single one of these titles has some liberal woke leftist agenda within it. So Boots, it came out in October and I watched it and I thought it was just a really cool show about Marines and boot camp. And I could not have been further from the truth. It is about a gay Marine in the military around the 1990s before Don't Ask, Don't Tell and his hardships and discrimination as he went through boot camp. And then another character that had a gay relationship when he was in Guam and the consequences of that when he got involved in a criminal investigation for being gay. The whole thing was gay. At the beginning, it wasn't really like you knew one of the characters was gay, but it was like fine. But then by the end of the series or the end of the first season, the whole thing was gay. All of it was gay. And it was really disappointing because I thought it was going to be this great patriotic show about the military and boot camp in the Marines. And it was definitely not that. Stranger Things, not really woke, but they did introduce a lesbian character in the middle of the series. I think it was season three. I'm pretty sure it was season three when they did the whole Fourth of July thing in the mall, and there just wasn't a point to it. I mean, I don't I can't remember. I haven't watched the new season. Don't don't come after me. But I can't remember if there was a plot to her being gay or if she was just a lesbian and they like went on their adventures and she was just a lesbian with like no plot. But I feel like it was half baked. I feel like they just introduced her as a lesbian with no plot and then didn't really do anything with it. But I don't know why that needed to be involved. It was the 80s like people weren't really openly gay, especially not in a small town like Hawkins. So again, it was a half baked plot. It didn't really make sense. It just popped up in season three like, oh, there's a lesbian character. OK, and then they just kind of moved on like it was really weird. It was super weird. And then we've got Jenny and Georgia. They also romanticize being gay and lesbians. And one of the main characters, the main character's best friend is a lesbian. And it goes through a lot of her romantic interest in her dating as a lesbian and what it's like for her to be a lesbian. And it's not what the show is about. The show is about a mother and daughter, and they're really messed up weird relationship. But it's also really funny. And I don't know why that was necessary for the plot. It wasn't necessary for the plot. And then they also in this again, because Netflix loves doing this in season three, once you're hooked, once you've spent so much time watching a series around or it was season three, one of the main characters had an unplanned pregnancy and got an abortion and they romanticized it. They made it out to be this great thing. It was a form of birth control. It was easy. She solved her problem like it was absolutely wild. The way that they presented this and the way that they made abortion look like it was just the all encompassing answer, which it is not. And they didn't even bring up the fact that there was a living thing inside of this girl. It was 100% a propaganda push for the pro-choice community. It was wild. And then there's another movie called Dear White People. I have not watched this one. I'm not super familiar with it. But from my understanding, it's just an entire movie addressing white privilege. And it's about African Americans in Ivy League institutions and their thoughts on white privilege. So if anyone knows any more on that, I would love to learn more. I couldn't really find any more. And I'm not particularly interested in watching it. So now a new study came out or I don't know how new it is, but Concerned Women for America released a study. I couldn't find when it was released. But they showed that LGBTQ messaging appeared in one third of all Netflix contents. That's 33%. With that number jumping to 41% in TVG and TVY7 programming. So that is programming meant for children. TVY is TV Youth 7. TVG is general audience. And then at 21% of programming is TVY. And that is meant for preschoolers. That is meant for whenever you stick your child in front of a TV until they hit that TVY7 age or that TVG age. That is meant for like 2 and 3 year olds. And they have characters identifying as transgender, as non-binary, and other characteristics of the gender ideology movement. And these are like 3 to 7 year olds or 2 to 7 year olds. And I don't know, you don't even know if you're gay at that point. And all they're doing is putting ideas in these little kids' heads. They don't know what this stuff is. And likely because statistically speaking like 0.01% of the population identifies as any of this. Legitimately identifies as any of this. I'm more if you're attention seeking and you're just confused and you've been brainwashed by your school and by Netflix. But legitimately 0.01% identifies as some form of LGBTQ. So putting 41% or 1 third, 1 third of programming, 41% in children's shows is absolutely ridiculous. It's not statistically accurate and it's just going to confuse the mess out of our American youth. It really is. So jumping from this, let's talk about Netflix's main shareholders because this is super, super interesting. One of their biggest shareholders is Capital Research Global Investors. And they hold a significant amount of shares in AbbVie, which is the manufacturer of the drug Lupron Depot. Now Lupron Depot is FDA approved to treat prostate cancer and central precocious puberty, which is just a really long medical way of saying early onset puberty. So that is what it's FDA approved for. But doctors are using it off label to treat gender dysphoria in minors. And this is not FDA approved and they're doing it anyway. So I know that doctors do use various drugs off label to treat different medical disorders. And from my understanding, it's completely legal. I've had doctors that have done that. So but it's really interesting that Netflix is pushing this whole gender ideology stuff. I can't say what I really want to say about it, but they're pushing all of this gender ideology. They're pushing the gay. They're pushing the trans. They're pushing the bi and the non-binary and all of the things. They're pushing all of the things. And then they're confusing kids. And then kids are going to go tell their parents. And their parents are going to be watching the other adult content that's also gay. And they're going to end up at the doctor. And then they're going to be getting Lupron Depot, which is benefiting Netflix shareholders. Very interesting is all I'm going to say. Netflix's other top three shareholders, to absolutely nobody's surprise, are number one Vanguard, number two BlackRock, number three Fidelity Investments, which Vanguard and BlackRock also own, I think, respectively a 3% and a 1% stake in Paramount, if I'm not mistaken. So you're not going to escape them, which is really interesting, because the people that are going to profit the most, aside from the CEO and the employees and things like that, I guess really not the employees, maybe the high-ranking employees, but not the everyday dude on set of Stranger Things. Aside from management, I guess I should say, benefiting and profiting off of this, Vanguard and BlackRock are going to make a huge amount of money either way, whether it's Paramount or whether it's Netflix. I didn't look into Comcast, but honestly, who doubts that they're invested in Comcast as well? So jumping back into Netflix and their liberal, radical, left-wing ideologies, their leadership is also insanely liberal. Very, very interesting things going on with their leadership. So their co-founder, Wilmot Reid Hastings Jr., sits on the board of Microsoft, Facebook, and Bloomberg, which are some of the most liberal corporations in America. I mean, Microsoft is Bill Gates. We don't even need to talk about him. We all know about Bill Gates. If you don't message me, we'll talk about it. Facebook was the one that was blocking your posts about masks and the 2020 election and all of that. And then Bloomberg is Bloomberg. We don't even need to talk about Bloomberg. Now, Susan Rice sits on the board of directors, and she also served under both Presidents Clinton and President Obama. So very interesting, Susan Rice having some political ties there, having some experience working in the White House with two very liberal presidents. Richard Fartin, founder of Zillow, was named the Presidential Ambassador for Continental Entrepreneurship by Obama. So we have another Obama tie with Netflix. And then Jay Hoag, I'm so sorry if I butchered that name, co-founded Technology Crossover Ventures, which invested nearly $260 million in Facebook in 2013. So we're seeing another Zuckerberg, another Facebook tie. Leslie Kilgore serves as the director of Discord, which is the messaging app that Tyler Robinson used where he allegedly planned the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And it's also where far left ideology like transgender ideology, furry ideology, and assassination culture just freely proliferate. And not all of Discord is bad. My boyfriend and I have talked about this a lot because some of his friends from high school were into gamer culture and things like that. So there are somewhat normal people on Discord, I guess, that literally just use it for gaming. But then there are people involved in gaming culture that are gaming. And then they're messaging about all this weird stuff like Tyler Robinson. I think he was messaging about his furry cosplaying video game or something weird in Discord. Like there is some weird, weird stuff being talked about in Discord. But it's not it is not Discord's inherent fault. It's not the structure of Discord. It's the people that use Discord. It's kind of like the people that use Reddit. Like Reddit isn't inherently wrong. Reddit's just really, really bad because of the people that use it. That's kind of how Discord is. But still very interesting that she serves as a director to Netflix and a director to Discord and that nobody's really tried to rein in Discord. Maybe they can't because of freedom of speech violations and things like that. It is a messaging app. But I thought that was at least a minorly interesting connection and coincidence. So we're talking about all this. But we haven't even mentioned the fact that Obama actually produced a Netflix original movie. It was Obama and Michelle called Leave the World Behind. And if you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. It's actually a really good movie. And it is detailing apocalyptic America with blackouts. Um, all the servers go down. Everything that controls self-driving vehicles goes down. Basically, the entire U.S. infrastructure crashes and the entire power grid crashes. And then around the end of the movie, you realize it's actually a foreign adversary that has done this. And they're leaving mixed messaging to try to get Americans to infight and create a civil war. So this foreign adversary is dropping leaflets from China. And then they're dropping leaflets from the Middle East with, um, I think like Islamic writing and things like that. And then the whole goal is to make Americans infight against each other with this collapsed power grid and resort to anarchy so that we destroy ourselves from the inside out without the foreign adversary ever having to physically lay hands on us besides the power grid attack. So maybe this is something they're warning us about. Maybe it's just a good movie. Highly recommend you watch it either way. Um, ultimately, Netflix's acquisition of Warner Brothers is going to bring half-baked plots. It's going to bring a desire for profit above everything else, above cinema, um, above good stories, movies that are interesting and captivating. And it's going to bring radical left-wing ideologies to this century-old storyteller. Classic films like those that we talked about, like The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, amazing movies like Harry Potter and the Matrix, they're all going to be under Netflix's umbrella. And they're going to be susceptible to remakes. And these remakes might have woke messaging. They might change the messaging from what it was supposed to be. They might completely remake it into who knows what and completely ruin what it used to be. And I think we all like these movies how they are. Honestly, I don't know how y'all feel about remakes, but some things just need to be left alone. Some things just need to be allowed to stop and die and exist in history and not be remade 42 billion times. And then Netflix is also pushing to confuse our most innocent and our most susceptible population, American youth. They're trying to confuse our kids to earn shareholders' profits. And I didn't mention this when we were in the section, but Vanguard and BlackRock also have huge, huge, huge stakes in various pharmaceutical companies. So I'm not 100% sure if they also own shares or stock or any portion of AbbVie or Lupron Depot or any of the other medications, because other medications are used to treat gender dysphoria and push the gender ideology movement, but be really an interesting thing to look into. We also are looking at the risk of creating a monopoly. And maybe this is something that the FTC will push back on. I surely hope they would. But we've got... So back in, I think it was 1948, the US versus Paramount Pictures Supreme Court case came out. And basically what this ruled is that film producers, people with film studios, the people that make the movies, cannot own their own movie theaters. And the point of this was so that they couldn't push their movies in their theaters and then, I guess, potentially prevent other movies from coming out in their theaters. But really, they couldn't own the means of dissemination and the means of production. They had to pick one or the other. I'm really interested to see how this is going to pan out with Netflix, because they are acquiring this entire studio industry of Warner Brothers, and they have the means of dissemination, i.e. through their streaming platform. And because they have this, they don't have to send anything to the theaters anymore. Now, one of the really nice things about Paramount was they were saying that they were going to send 14 Warner Brothers films to theaters every year. They weren't going to completely stop and absolutely crumble the theater industry in American cinema. But Netflix hasn't said anything about this. And I don't have the quote right here, but basically what one of their, I can't remember if it was the CEO or one of their leading board of directors members or top management, but basically what he said is that cinema and theaters are outdated and that they're going to modernize it by destroying it, which is really sad. That's something that America has stood on for years, I mean, for decades with drive-ins and cinema culture in the 50s, this was a really big thing for America. So it'll be really interesting to see what the FTC says about this, to see how U.S. versus Paramount Pictures comes into play with Netflix owning the production and the means of dissemination. But they also have, like I said, they have the opportunity to completely bypass theaters now, which is also going to be catastrophic for people that enjoy going to the theaters, even though it's not as common anymore. But Netflix, they don't have the creativity, they don't have the track record to be able to obtain the greatest, one of the greatest film companies in history. They really don't. I mean, like I said, those titles are fine. I don't think they're anything special. You can have different opinions. I know a lot of people love Stranger Things. I like it. I think season one was really good. I think that by season four, I completely lost interest and lost the plot and it was mid. So I don't know. I don't think Netflix is going to be able to handle the titles that they're getting. I don't think they should. Like, I just don't think this much power should be given to Netflix, to be quite frank. They're led by woke billionaires. Their producers are literal former politicians, as well as their board of directors with Susan Rice. And they're creating content that's attempting to brainwash and indoctrinate the American youth with radical gender ideology. And not to mention talking about white privilege, talking about white guilt in their shows. It's just really devastating to see the film industry and American media to have stooped so incredibly low. It's really disappointing. And Netflix is going to destroy 100 years of history, 100 years of cinema, and all of the success of Warner Brothers as they go about their agenda to indoctrinate American youth and destroy American cinematic culture. It's truly devastating and truly heartbreaking. But we'll see if Paramount can pull off this hostile takeover. And again, they're not a great option either because they own that huge stake of TikTok and they own, I think it was CBS that they own. I can't remember off the top of my head, but they do own. No, Paramount has all the NBCs and NBCUniversal. So yeah, that'll be, no, that was Comcast. I don't remember what Paramount owns. But it'll be really interesting to see how this plays off and even if Comcast tries to come back into the running. But yeah, Netflix, they are going to destroy Warner Brothers, those great titles. They're going to remake it 42 billion times and they're going to turn it woke. They're going to turn it into junior ideology messaging and they're going to continue indoctrinating our American youth. And it's really sad and it's really heartbreaking. So let's just hope that the FTC blocks it or that something else comes into play or that Warner Brothers can somehow erase its$33 billion of debt and keep operating. But we know that won't happen. Thank y'all so much for joining me on today's episode of The Reagan-Faulkner Show. I really enjoyed it. I love talking about this topic. And if y'all want more, remember to check us out on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook X. That's going to be at The Reagan-Faulkner Show and at The Wilmington Standard. Like I said, last episode, we got some really cool merch out for the holidays. So check that out at thewilmingtonstandard.com. And for more, check me out at reaganfaulkner.com. Thank y'all so much and I'll see you on the next one.