Valuetainment - February 27, 2026


“Retaliation is ON THE WAY” - Panama Kicks China & CK Hutchison Out of Panama Canal


Episode Stats

Length

10 minutes

Words per Minute

187.37837

Word Count

2,022

Sentence Count

152


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.300 Paramount's newest bid could open door of beating Netflix deal, Warner says.
00:00:07.520 And this is a Wall Street Journal story.
00:00:08.980 Rob, I think you got a clip on this.
00:00:10.900 Is this just an AI reporting it or is it an individual, Tom?
00:00:13.960 It's an individual.
00:00:14.840 Okay, go for it.
00:00:16.240 Warner Brothers' Discovery on Tuesday reopened the door to a takeover by Paramount's guidance.
00:00:20.920 That is after Paramount raised its offer for the studio to $31 per share.
00:00:24.960 The intense bidding war for the far behind Batman and Harry Potter has reached a fever pitch.
00:00:28.980 With the board signaling that Netflix may lose its place as the preferred suitor.
00:00:33.360 In its revised bid, Paramount also raised the termination fee it would pay should the deal fail to gain regulatory approval to $7 billion, up from $5.8 billion.
00:00:41.740 It also agreed to pay Warner shareholders $0.25 per share per quarter for every quarter beyond September 30th that the deal does not close.
00:00:48.920 The rival bidder also agreed to contribute more equity should banks raise concerns about Paramount's ability to finance a deal when it closes.
00:00:54.540 Warner's board said it has not determined whether the revised proposal is superior to a merger with Netflix, but said directors would give it further consideration.
00:01:02.380 Should a superior deal emerge, Netflix has four business days to revise its offer.
00:01:06.540 The streaming giant has offered $27.75 per share in cash for the movie and television studios, its catalog, and HBO Max streaming service.
00:01:14.680 None of the firms involved commented on reports of the new offer.
00:01:18.520 Yeah, so the $27.75 at $72 billion and the prior bid by David Ellison was $30 a share at $77.9 billion.
00:01:26.640 Tom, what's going to happen here, Tom?
00:01:27.740 So it's a tale of two cities.
00:01:30.020 Netflix wants to buy the library, and then Warner Brothers Discovery will take the cable nets, most notably CNN, and put them in a small public stock and throw it out on the stock market where it will languish during the conversion and the deterioration of cable subscribers.
00:01:46.380 That is my supposition, but many, many analysts are behind me on that, and that is, okay, all these cable nets go here and Netflix gets the library.
00:02:00.780 Paramount is saying, no, no, we'll take the whole thing, and we'll take the whole thing for $31 a share.
00:02:05.080 You don't have to spin out the cable nets.
00:02:08.060 We'll take the whole thing.
00:02:08.900 People in Hollywood have been behind the scenes.
00:02:12.500 They don't want Paramount to do that because they don't want to have CNN moderated or worse, eek, gad, made slightly conservative, which is what they've seen happen to CBS.
00:02:25.740 They said, oh, my gosh.
00:02:27.360 Well, there's only one Barry Weiss, but she's at CBS.
00:02:30.600 Eek, what sort of horrible person could he put on top of CNN?
00:02:35.840 This will be terrible.
00:02:36.860 We would have left, right, and center media.
00:02:39.520 People would have ways to make up their mind.
00:02:41.540 We can't have that.
00:02:43.660 So Paramount, so that's – I'm not being silly.
00:02:46.980 That literally is the playing field.
00:02:49.040 So Paramount has come back and said, look, we're going to sweeten the offer.
00:02:52.220 We're going to take it to $31, and here's this.
00:02:54.660 And by the way, you said we couldn't get the debt.
00:02:57.200 The number one to number four richest guy in the world, depending on what day it is, is backing it up with the family office fortune.
00:03:05.160 So he doesn't even have to go to the banks to go get the money.
00:03:11.500 He doesn't have to go to Wall Street to get the money.
00:03:13.480 He has the money.
00:03:14.880 And so this is what's going on right now, and industry insiders all wanted it to happen.
00:03:20.700 However, it is also a truth, and the Federal Trade Commission feels this way, and it's not a bunch of Trump people that say, oh, Larry Ellison is the friend of Trump's.
00:03:31.200 No.
00:03:31.760 The Federal Trade Commission is saying, now, wait a minute now.
00:03:34.160 What's better for the consumer?
00:03:35.500 Where will the consumer get something of a benefit in prices?
00:03:39.880 Because consolidation is bad.
00:03:41.700 You just brought up the defense industry, and you did a story on this podcast over maybe two years or less ago about how there was 15 major defense contractors,
00:03:52.720 and all of a sudden they'd end up down at Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and a couple friends, and that's why there's no choice for the procurement officer at the Navy,
00:04:03.220 and you have to pay whatever they'll charge you for a hammer.
00:04:05.840 This is why Federal Trade Commission said, look, the Netflix library going to Warner, going, you know, to WBD, consolidating it is not good.
00:04:17.260 It'd be better if a third party emerges in all of this.
00:04:22.080 So you've got Disney over here, you know, Paramount, and Warner Brothers over here, and Netflix over here.
00:04:28.000 We think that's better.
00:04:29.220 And that is what was happening a couple weeks ago.
00:04:32.440 What are you at with this?
00:04:33.140 Well, the consolidation is offering less options for creatives to market things.
00:04:40.740 And I think the bigger picture here that I worry about is that, you know, our soft power, Hollywood, has been one of our, you know, big exports.
00:04:50.400 And it's destructing.
00:04:52.800 It's self-destructing to some extent.
00:04:55.100 The strikes were a disaster.
00:04:58.080 Like they said, no AI.
00:04:59.860 Well, that means that other countries that use AI are going to crush us with stuff.
00:05:06.940 So my, I mean, Tom gave a great summary of what was going on.
00:05:12.200 But my big concern here is where are we in the future of creativity and what we watch and what we see?
00:05:19.060 Is it going to just be like a couple of competitors?
00:05:22.120 I mean, already it's much harder to get sort of middle price movies produce, say, $50 to $75 million.
00:05:28.780 I know that sounds like a lot.
00:05:30.080 But, you know, instead it's the $300, $500 million blockbuster or you make it for $3 million.
00:05:36.280 And that's partly a problem of all this consolidation.
00:05:39.640 So I think there's a real concern about, Trump said it, of how we keep Hollywood on top.
00:05:45.340 And having just a couple places you can sell your stuff to is not helpful.
00:05:51.980 But wait, one add to that.
00:05:55.340 Paramount says that there's less risk for us because we're actually going to try to sustain and keep theaters there.
00:06:02.360 Whereas Netflix is a pure streamer, they specifically have decimated the theater business.
00:06:10.020 And Paramount says we want theatrical releases.
00:06:13.520 We want people to come together in community and see movies.
00:06:16.680 We want it to be profitable, but we want to do that.
00:06:19.640 And Netflix, people say they're giving lip service to it.
00:06:22.640 It's going to be all streaming.
00:06:23.960 Yeah, I took the kids to go watch Goat this weekend.
00:06:29.120 I don't know if you've seen Goat, the new cartoon, the movie by Steph Curry.
00:06:34.500 Yeah, right there.
00:06:35.800 It was great experience.
00:06:37.960 No weird things in it.
00:06:40.160 Entertaining.
00:06:41.300 Laugh.
00:06:42.220 Inspirational.
00:06:42.940 Motivational.
00:06:43.460 It was fantastic.
00:06:44.540 We went home.
00:06:45.420 And I looked at the theater to see how it was.
00:06:48.220 It's the first time I went to a theater where half the room was full, which was actually pretty good.
00:06:51.940 I haven't seen that in a long time.
00:06:53.160 And it's part of one of the American things.
00:06:55.520 My son the other day says, what would you say is the most American thing to do?
00:07:01.220 Dylan said, owning a gun.
00:07:05.080 And then he goes, you know what?
00:07:07.120 I would say it's joining the military.
00:07:09.640 And then I think Senna or Jen said, having pizza, right?
00:07:13.240 You know, you're just kind of going through a list.
00:07:15.160 What other thing is going to the movies, man?
00:07:17.260 Getting your popcorn and your IC and sitting there and, you know, maybe getting a hot dog and enjoying.
00:07:24.200 It used to be three or four commercials.
00:07:25.840 Now, it's like 72 commercials they play for you with everything that's going on.
00:07:29.360 But still sitting there and enjoying a movie.
00:07:31.120 So, I don't know.
00:07:32.000 I think the bigger disruption here with all of this stuff that's going on to me, I think the bigger disruption is the independent creators.
00:07:40.740 I think it's the young guys that are coming and creating content.
00:07:43.820 A Mr. Beast did a video one time.
00:07:46.520 I don't know if you've seen this video.
00:07:47.720 He counted backwards from 100,000.
00:07:49.600 I don't know what it was.
00:07:50.800 He did one crazy video at the beginning of his career.
00:07:54.080 He said, I'm going to count from 1 to 100,000.
00:07:57.060 It took him like 10 hours, 8 hours, 15 hours, 20 hours.
00:08:01.040 Somebody may say, who has that kind of time, right?
00:08:03.540 Rob, can you find this video when he's counting?
00:08:06.360 Oh, I counted to 100,000.
00:08:08.120 Yeah, right there.
00:08:08.720 Don't play it.
00:08:09.700 But I counted to 100,000.
00:08:11.100 Look how many hours it is.
00:08:12.640 Do you see the hours?
00:08:13.360 23 hours and 48 minutes.
00:08:17.560 That's insane.
00:08:18.060 How many views does it have?
00:08:19.240 33 million views.
00:08:20.920 By the way, for each million view, AdSense pays you roughly 5,000 bucks, give or take.
00:08:27.260 So what's 5,000 bucks times 33?
00:08:30.280 That's $150,000 getting paid to count to 100,000.
00:08:34.920 Okay?
00:08:35.520 And by the way, his company that he started, smaller to YouTube channel, 2024 did $480 million-ish top line revenue.
00:08:45.320 Last year, he did $889 million.
00:08:47.360 And a new CEO of his company is a previous CEO, I believe, of SoftBank.
00:08:52.620 And guy who was with, who was the guy, Rob?
00:08:55.040 Who was the company that the CEO was with before?
00:09:00.200 He came to him from, he was previously with SoftBank and one other company.
00:09:05.300 One other company was with, very well-known company that he was a CEO of, that he left to come, go down, Rob, so it shows his background.
00:09:14.280 Go a little bit lower again.
00:09:16.580 Go a little bit lower.
00:09:17.460 No, this isn't the guy.
00:09:18.240 It's a different guy that he literally just brought on board.
00:09:20.740 And they're talking about what they're going to be doing.
00:09:22.720 Company's valued right now anywhere between $5 to $10 billion.
00:09:25.240 So I think no matter what they're talking about, Mr. Beast is going to build something that's probably going to be worth a half a trillion dollars, okay, over the next 5, 10 years.
00:09:35.880 So all this stuff that they're talking about, disruptions coming from the independent content creator and how they're going to control them, I don't know how you're going to control them.
00:09:44.560 I don't know what you're going to do with those guys.
00:09:46.540 I think that is coming and it's going to be exciting in the game.
00:09:49.080 Different types of sales leaders I've worked with the last 20 years.
00:09:51.940 One of them are those that are boss, that are telling you what to do.
00:09:54.500 One of them is one that wants to be a friend.
00:09:56.240 He wants to say, hey, Johnny, let me help you get to this next level.
00:09:58.800 And then the other one is the leader, the leader that's sitting down with you, accountable, challenge, pushing you.
00:10:03.060 You can do more expectation, business planning.
00:10:05.380 Each one of them has pros and blind spots.
00:10:08.940 Once here I host an event called the Sales Leadership Summit.
00:10:11.640 This year we're doing it at the beautiful Trump throughout March 25th through the 27th where we talk about topics like this, 200 plus pages in a manual where people from around the world,
00:10:21.260 you have to do a minimum of a million dollars a year and five salespeople to qualify to attend this.
00:10:26.040 So if you're someone that's watching and saying, I think I'm like a boss, I think I'm like a friend, I think I'm a leader, I want to find my blind spots,
00:10:31.860 click on a link below, fill out the information.
00:10:33.740 One of our consultants will get a hold of you.
00:10:36.180 Click on a link.
00:10:37.120 I do believe the executive tickets have sold out, but there's two other tier tickets for those I want to find out about it.
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