WBD Acquisition Thread

[Insidus]

It seems to me that if there are conditions from the European regulators, they will probably have to exit their stake in Boing or something else. It will be like Disney when they left History in Europe.

Or Paramount could offload their own assets rather than WBD but I get the logic with Boing.

 

[themidnightlore]

Pretty sure they can't offload Boing. Mediaset is out of channel slots both in Italy and Spain.

 

[TVArchive]

Or Paramount could offload their own assets rather than WBD but I get the logic with Boing.

I’m basing this on the fact that this channel operates jointly with another company. Also they can exit True Crime UK. The channel is no longer branded with the CBS name from Paramount anyway.

 

[themidnightlore]

I’m basing this on the fact that this channel operates jointly with another company. Also they can exit True Crime UK. The channel is no longer branded with the CBS name from Paramount anyway.

Yeah, leaving True Crime and Legend to AMC Networks makes more sense.
(Honestly, not sure if Boing in Spain is under Mediaset or Boing S.p.a (spelled right?) - In Italy is under the latter)

 

[Moe]

"I'm tired of this, grandpa!"
"THAT'S TOO DAMN BAD" - David Zaslav, probably

My advice to all - don't celebrate the news about combined is good thing.

Why? Paramount+ removed a lot of contents to keep residual payment and licensing cost down with goal to achieve the profit, so combine Paramount+ and HBO Max will lead to have fewer or same numbers of libraries that is available on HBO Max. It means they have to remove a lot of Paramount contents and WBD contents to keep the number lower, so they want to make as profitable and price will go up. If merged service keep all HBO Max and take some Paramount contents, so monthly price would go up to $20 per month for standard tier, or may go higher because of debt and interest rate.

There is bright side - if Ellison decide to keep same numbers of contents as HBO Max, so a lot of Paramount contents would be licensed out to any companies like Tubi to make more money, even they may attempt to license out to Netflix too.

 

[TVArchive]

Yeah, leaving True Crime and Legend to AMC Networks makes more sense.
(Honestly, not sure if Boing in Spain is under Mediaset or Boing S.p.a (spelled right?) - In Italy is under the latter)

In Spain, it also belongs to Mediaset and Warner.

https://www.mediasetinfinity.es/directo/boing/

 

[themidnightlore]

In Spain, it also belongs to Mediaset and Warner.

https://www.mediasetinfinity.es/directo/boing/

I'm shocked that the Spanish Mediaset Infinity doesn't redirect me to the Italian one (like I would expect?).
(I like the detail that the Spanish one has España in the favicon, in case you somehow have both open, though?)
But yeah, you're right.

 

[JulianRO]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-03/paramount-debt-downgraded-to-junk-following-warner-purchase-deal

Ellison, any word about this?

 

[lowell]

Can't speak for Ellison because he is too reckless.

Right now, WBD deal is just significant overpriced for Paramount because cost won't go down if linear networks lose the value. If M&A gets drag longer, it will be more costly imposed on Ellison.

I'm surprised that Paramount shareholders didn't confront Ellison about costly M&A.


Yes, if you have bad credit, you cannot get loan or get secured loan with higher interest rate. As for businesses, they are more complex with AAA as most preferred for investors but drop to BB+ is bad (junk) for investors, so interest rate would go up to compensate for risky business. As for business, you need to keep AAA as much as possible to get lower interest rate, so less risky. Even, AAA to D applies to cities, counties, states too.

Well, Larry's the largest investor in Paramount Global so that's why David's running rampant right now.

Zaslav making sure that the breakup fee is $7B is still relevant here if Oracle runs into financial trouble and affects Larry's stock as funding collateral.

That would make a nice dent in WarnerDiscovery's debt load if the deal collapses due to financial reasons.

Brendan Carr's comments about being fine with Middle Eastern wealth funds is also pretty interesting:

"The deal is also being financed by a group of Middle Eastern sovereign wealth investors, all of whom agreed to forgo governance rights, as well as tens of billions of dollars in debt.

Carr said: “All the information that I’ve seen about that foreign debt . . . is that would qualify under FCC rules as what we call bona fide debt, meaning, it would be a very quick, almost pro forma review.”

“We’re looking at changes from a regulatory perspective to try to encourage more investment and more scale in broadcast,” Carr said."

FT article link:

Client Challenge

If he's that okay with foreign ownership, then in the scenario Sony buys Paramount Global from Larry Ellison's hands down the road if he decides to close his purse strings to David and puts rescuing Oracle as priority if the AI bubble does pop, they can certainly use these talking points for CBS.

A Sony-ran CBS would certainly be an improvement than Skydance because Sony actually do have veteran CBS executives that know how to operate the network instead of the Ellisons hiring people with no network experience at all like The Free Press founder, for example.

 

[RandomMe]

It seems to me that if there are conditions from the European regulators, they will probably have to exit their stake in Boing or something else. It will be like Disney when they left History in Europe.

Leave the Spanish and Italian feeds entirely to Mediaset and retool or close the African feed, which is not under its jurisdiction.

 

[themidnightlore]

Leave the Spanish and Italian feeds entirely to Mediaset and retool or close the African feed, which is not under its jurisdiction.

Mediaset can't own more channels both in Spain and Italy, at least on the TDT/DTT. 101% sure for Italy, they're out of LCN slots.

 

[RandomMe]

Mediaset can't own more channels both in Spain and Italy, at least on the TDT/DTT. 101% sure for Italy, they're out of LCN slots.

By that I meant that Mediaset would take on complete editorial control of the channels. The Spanish feed would be detached from CN EMEA's stunts for example, as well as being free from its editorial control which it imposes onto Mediaset Spain.

 

[themidnightlore]

By that I meant that Mediaset would take on complete editorial control of the channels. The Spanish feed would be detached from CN EMEA's stunts for example, as well as being free from its editorial control which it imposes onto Mediaset Spain.

I think they can't take over as the channels are registered under a different company. Unless Mediaset can keep Boing S.p.A as it is, even with the 100% owned by them... Yeah, I don't think it would fly. I mean, in Spain they even had to close channels because they went overboard, if not wrong.

 

[RandomMe]

I think they can't take over as the channels are registered under a different company. Unless Mediaset can keep Boing S.p.A as it is, even with the 100% owned by them... Yeah, I don't think it would fly. I mean, in Spain they even had to close channels because they went overboard, if not wrong.

They could at least take over Cartoonito Italy under a new name or sell it to the merged company but I doubt it because this would cause a conflict of interest between multiplex owners (Persidera and Mediaset).

 

[themidnightlore]

They could at least take over Cartoonito Italy under a new name or sell it to the merged company but I doubt it because this would cause a conflict of interest between multiplex owners (Persidera and Mediaset).

Same thing, they can't open new channels. There's a reason why Radio Montecarlo TV isn't on the DTT.

 

[RandomMe]

And regarding what happened in Spain, the channels that closed in 2014 were because there were no regulated frequencies.

 

[TheGreatToon]

I think they can't take over as the channels are registered under a different company. Unless Mediaset can keep Boing S.p.A as it is, even with the 100% owned by them... Yeah, I don't think it would fly. I mean, in Spain they even had to close channels because they went overboard, if not wrong.

Yeah, They were forced to close La Siete and Nueve in 2014 because their license was awarded without a proper public tender process in 2010

 

[RandomMe]

Yeah, They were forced to close La Siete and Nueve in 2014 because their license was awarded without a proper public tender process in 2010

That affected nine channels IIRC

 

[TheGreatToon]

That affected nine channels IIRC

Yeah, Atresmedia were also forced to close 3 of their own channels: Xplora, Nitro and laSexta 3, Not sure what the other channels impacted were

 

[themidnightlore]

Yeah, They were forced to close La Siete and Nueve in 2014 because their license was awarded without a proper public tender process in 2010

...2014. Be Mad started after that issue, if not wrong.
Hm...
But yeah, in Italy they're really out of slots. Maybe in Spain they aren't, but TDT is way smaller there and when someone closes a channel, you gotta fill that slot (Hi Squirrel and Veo7)...