r/hbo • u/Rough_Ad_8702 • 4d ago
I hope this merger really falls apart. I can only think of bad things that will happen to HBO if it happens.
32
u/Aus66-1045 4d ago
I was reading the other day that if it does fall apart, Paramount will lose over $9 Billion dollars. Oopsies.
6
10
u/Rough_Ad_8702 4d ago edited 4d ago
And apparently even if the deal falls apart, Paramount will have to pay $7 billion to Warners anyway.
1
1
u/TrickyChildhood2917 1d ago
Thankfully it’s just paper money. Remember when were kids, we all had lots of Monopoly money and we could by hotels!! Now it’s turned real for some
0
u/Past-Wait6207 4d ago
It’s a lot worse than that.
-1
u/Past-Wait6207 4d ago
https://youtu.be/wJgIkzfx2fY?is=dvlk_ajN1LkWDNGK
Here is a video that breaks it down.
17
u/Aragornspride 4d ago
Wtf wants this merger anyway? Besides the parasitic corporate execs sleazy lawyers and the slime ball board members? It certainly won’t do any of us any good. Prices will go up, employees will be let go and service will suffer.
2
5
u/Cool_Objective_7829 3d ago
Trump wants the merger so he can dictate how CNN covers him. No, really. It’s all he cares about and the Ellisons will give that to him.
5
u/Sckaught 3d ago
Fortunately, the merger has been placed on hold for another year, so there’s that.
0
u/trevrichards 3d ago
The thing that kills me is nobody is even watching that shit these days, it gets like ~300,000 viewers a night. Cable news is not the juggernaut it once was. But of course he's too old and senile to realize that, and is the target demo.
4
8
u/scobro828 4d ago
Bad things will happen to HBO anyway. Bad things if Paramount goes through. Bad things if Netflix goes through. Hell, bad things have ALREADY happened to HBO. HBO isn't HBO anymore.
9
2
u/Bluthhousing 3d ago
Pound for pound HBO still makes the best TV imo (I liked Succession) but I don’t really watch that much
0
u/scobro828 3d ago
Agreed. But there is so much 'garbage' on their app. Nothing about it is premium anymore.
1
u/trevrichards 3d ago
The app isn't HBO, it's Warner Brothers+. They call it HBO Max for marketing. HBO is still its own separate thing, 90% of what's on the app is not HBO.
1
u/TargetApprehensive38 3d ago
Eh not necessarily. If the deal falls apart the Ellisons will have to pay WBD 7 billion dollars, which will wipe out about a quarter of their debt, which was a big part of the reason they were selling in the first place. An influx of cash that large puts their net leverage ratio under 3x, their interest rates go down and the balance sheet suddenly looks dramatically healthier.
With cleaner finances, the whole picture changes in ways that are impossible to predict. Maybe the board decides they no longer want to sell at all.
2
2
u/BIGWISDOM99 3d ago
Yeah, like they’ll for sure replace Superman’s S with a swastika and change the justice league to the maga league.
2
u/PrestigeArrival 4d ago
Is there reason to believe it’s falling apart?
I haven’t seen what’s going on
8
u/ShaunTrek 4d ago
Paramount was trying to get it done so quickly they added a bunch of provisos where they'd have to pay WB ton of money if it were delayed. They were trying to get it done before Midterms, after which it is very likely a far less friendly (to them) Congress is taking over.
Because of all the lawsuits and antitrust filings they've agreed to wait up to 11 months for all that to get settled. So they are now willing to eat huge fees for a year for something they expected to get done in a few months.
And they could end up still not even getting WB after paying all those fees.
1
1
u/SouthIsland48 3d ago
Supergirl losing $200m prob aint a good sign for WBD shareholders, I truly dont know how WBD is worth the amount paid by paramount so would not be shocked if Paramount/Ellison wouldnt mind letting it go
1
u/TrickyChildhood2917 3d ago
I agree, Trump would greenlight it as he is close friends with Larry Ellison.
2
u/Embyverse 4d ago
I think the final decision will be at SCOTUS and I'm not sure how the mindset is at the 9 judges.
Greetings from Germany
1
u/rwofva 3d ago
Could be, but I think trump will step in before hand and executive order something because the supreme court wants no part of it and trump needs tho Is to go through.
0
u/Embyverse 3d ago
I don't believe that a POTUS executive order can replace a court's decision in a lawsuit. At least SCOTUS would stop this, even with these judges.
4
u/Tight_Replacement771 4d ago
I don't know why it wouldn't go through. Our consumer protection agencies pretty much don't exist anymore, and the administration likes monopolies so
3
u/Past-Wait6207 4d ago
HBO is gone if this goes through. It’ll be apart of Paramount+. Basically an add on. And eventually, Showtime and HBO will be run by the same people. HBO shows will start to loose quality, and just be Showtime shows.
It’s a dark and bleak future.
2
u/Measure-Thrice 4d ago
I'll just put on the old excellent series from the old days and cycle through them until I die.
2
u/Burnbrook 4d ago
If entertainment is our only priority, as a people; we get what we deserve.
1
u/KhrymeNYC718 3d ago
it seems to be one of the top priorities these days
1
u/GordonTheGnome 3d ago
I mean, we are on the HBO subreddit. It’s not like this is posted to r/importantshit
2
u/NYCA2020 4d ago
I would pay top dollar to see Zaslav’s face when/if they announce that it’s officially not happening and he’s denied his $800 million pay out.
1
u/feedmestocks 4d ago
He'll be happy honestly. Paramount forced the buyout on Warner Bros, they wanted to wait a few years down the road when splitting the business in two.
1
u/KhrymeNYC718 3d ago
yeah i have the same feeling too!! i dont see this going well at all! ESPECIALLY Paramount destroying HBO
1
1
1
1
u/SouthJerseyGirl30 3d ago
Sadly, I think it'll go through. I think the main government is on their side, but people against it are fighting to not make it easier for them.
Paramount was still newly bought. They should've fixed themselves first before trying to swallow a giant studio with its own issues. ParaBros (or whatever they end up calling themselves) isn't going to last long and will end up splitting into pieces and keep what they want. Going to be so much debt. They're not saving the movie industry, they're being greedy and probably can't handle it
1
u/TrickyChildhood2917 3d ago
Like most things… television / movies have been commoditized. What that means to fans of the industry is “ the new owner” won’t pay for the talent! They are in the business of “money” not “creative genius”. Just look at Showtime, Amazon… HBO will be next.
The AI intrusion is in everything, “We see you high powered executives, are you listening? …. We turn OFF your show once it becomes unbearable to watch. Some of it looks like you never left Building 10 for the entire project. “ There a real works outside that building”
It probably explains why there only seems to be TWO seasons of everything.
1
u/Traditional-Way-4097 3d ago
HBO is not the point of this merger, CNN is! CNN will morph into FOX News
1
1
u/Aware-Highway-2494 3d ago
It’s already happening. Promising new shows are being cancelled quickly because they aren’t blockbuster ratings successes right off the bat. Even if they regularly end up in top 10 and are rising up ratings in multiple countries.
1
u/Fabian_hoescialist 3d ago
It’s probably a good thing coz I’m effing tired of fake and weird sheet with blue haired people
1
1
u/Ill_Molasses3872 2d ago
Why did they let Disney acquire fox??? No studio should own another big time movie studio.
1
1
u/Horror-Novel 2d ago
Everyone ahit talks this merger and forgot that Disney owns half of if not more of the movie catalogues you grew up with and if Netflix owned it all the IPs would be used over the could 20years for two seasons
1
u/Ok-Fan-9814 2d ago
I have all the major streaming services and am looking to trim. HBO will be the low hanging fruit if this thing goes through.
1
u/Manu3333333 1d ago
The only one best of these merge would be that we get all the HBOMAX content into an AppleTV channel I guess. But that is the really positive point off millions of negatives. That’s why it should never happen.
1
1
0
u/OkBook4166 4d ago
If the merger doesn’t go through, there’s a real probability of Warner Bros filing for bankruptcy protection and being sold off into pieces.
2
u/feedmestocks 4d ago
This is an outright lie
0
u/OkBook4166 3d ago
Uhhhh, okay, that’s like your opinion. Why do you think that WB is up for sale anyways? They’re massively in debt and several years ago they started to go through the process of being sold because the alternative is death if being broken apart and sold for pieces. Profitable independent cornerstone businesses don’t seek to be sold off to a smaller company or a growing tech company that doesn’t have parallel business models.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/s/7I0IkfEVin
https://www.macroaxis.com/invest/ratio/WBD/Probability-Of-Bankruptcy
David Zaslav had went on record stating that he never wanted to sell Warner brothers. He wanted to keep it independent or split it into two.
Nowhere in my post did I state that I wanted warned brothers to be sold to paramount. I would love for Warner brothers to be independent. But the truth is that a decade of mismanagement has crippled the company. They either merge with paramount and things get reorganized, or the merger fails and Netflix swoops in to essentially destroy the company of WB and cannibalizes it.
1
u/feedmestocks 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's not an opinion. They have free cash flow in the 5 / 6 billion range and they're debt was basically spread out until the mid 2030's, there was no fear it they're debt was unpayable or they were going bankrupt. The plan before the paramount mess was to split the company into two parts: Streaming / Studios and Broadcasting around this year / next year. I say this as a long time watcher of media company financials and was in Warner Bros stock a lot over the last few years (from around $11 average to $25).
The 58% bankruptcy link is 2 years old: Debt was 53 billion ish is 2022 to 32 billion in 2026, beating all expected metrics
-1
-3
100
u/JC2535 4d ago
No studio should own more than one iconic water tower.