But until we as a country decide to start actually having antitrust laws again, and stop equating free enterprise with capitalism, this is going to happen. So if it had to happen, I guess it's the least bad of the options.

7/7

And on a creative level I would hate for the relative innovation and quality of HBO to be subsumed by the middlebrow blandness of HBO.

6/7

Don't get me wrong - it's still bad. Concentration in an industry leads to monopsony - workers and creatives have fewer purchasers of their services than they would otherwise, holding down wages. Oligopoly - capitalism's inevitable result - leads to higher prices and fewer options for consumers.
5/6

- Not insignificantly, Netflix has not bent the knee to the current administration like the other tech and media companies. Reed Hastings is a big donor to the Democratic Party - unlike, say, the Ellison family who put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News to turn into a right wing echo chamber.
4/5

- Unlike Paramount/CBS or Universal/NBC, Netflix doesn't have much existing IP with long term value. It's hard 2 build that ending shows after 20 episodes. So Bugs Bunny &"Friends" and DC & Harry Potter won't be controlled by a company that already has a Mickey Mouse/"Star Trek"/ "Jurassic Park"
3/x

And if Netflix ends or shrinks theatrical releases, that's probably something that would have happened anyway in the industry.

- Warner Bros has been bought & sold multiple times over the past 30 years - AOL (remember that?), ATT, Discovery - so it's not like it's been a standalone company lately

The one person ahead of me just stormed off spewing profanity

Really no excuse for a wait this long @firstentertainment.bsky.social

I hear he’s through with cars and through with bars. Not sure what he’s eating these days.

And Jay Leno!