On the Thursday, January 15, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: CNN Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter explains how a high-stakes battle involving Netflix, Paramount and Warner Bros. reflects deeper shifts in media power, consolidation and the streaming economy — and why the ripple effects could shape entertainment for decades.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
A potential deal involving either Netflix or Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery has become a flash point for much bigger questions about media power, consolidation, and the streaming economy. At the center of it all is a shifting balance of power, tech-driven platforms with massive reach and data on one side, and legacy studios and institutions struggling to adapt on the other. While executives from all three media players battle behind the scenes, the ripple effects could shape what audiences watch, how much they pay, and which voices get heard for decades to come.
Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY’s the Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, January 15th, 2026. To help us understand what’s really at stake. I’m joined by Brian Stelter, Chief Media Analyst with CNN and longtime reporter on the media business. Brian, thank you so much for coming on The Excerpt.
Brian Stelter:
Great to be here. Thanks.
Dana Taylor:
This story has escalated quickly from deal speculation to lawsuits. President Donald Trump even weighed in, saying, “I think it’s imperative that CNN be sold.” If we zoom out, what does this moment tell us about how the media business is adapting to huge shifts in the creation and consumption of content?
Brian Stelter:
I would say number one, these media companies, which have historically been viewed as giants on the landscape, leaders in Hollywood telling stories around the world, now they look a little bit small in comparison to TikTok, and YouTube, and Meta, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp. You see these big studios, they are still very big, all having to adapt, and respond, and readjust in an environment where Apple’s making television shows. I’m a consulting producer on The Morning Show on Apple. That’s my side hustle. So I have one foot in that world.
I’ve seen Apple, and Amazon, and these big tech players come in and reorient Hollywood, and that is why you see Paramount, for example, the new Paramount, the new owners, trying to get really big really fast by trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. This hostile takeover bid’s going to probably take months to play out. In the meantime, Warner Bros. Discovery already has a deal with Netflix. They’re moving forward with that deal to sell assets to Netflix, and even Netflix, which people think of as the streaming king, the dominant player in streaming, even Netflix feels they’re not big enough. They need to get bigger in the face of TikTok and YouTube. So it’s an environment where tech is totally reshaping media.
Dana Taylor:
Warner Bros. represents legacy media or legacy Hollywood, while Netflix represents an algorithm-driven data-first model. What tensions do you see between these two philosophies and how they shape what content gets made?
Brian Stelter:
Warner Bros. represents that legacy that you just referred to, that tradition, making movies for a hundred years. The Warner Bros. lot is in Burbank, and movies are being made there, TV shows on any given day. There is so much history there, so much potential there, as well, so much intellectual property there, as well. You think about DC Comics, another IP. I mean, think about HBO. You think about Game of Thrones. All of these are valuable assets to any number of bidders, and that’s why this bidding war kicked off when these assets were clearly for sale last year.
All this started because Paramount made an unsolicited bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Then, Netflix came calling. Comcast came calling. There’s this firm deal now between Netflix and Warner, but you have Paramount trying hard to interrupt that deal and try to win all of WBD. So there is a lot of tension, and one of the tension points is, of course, this idea of movies released in movie theaters, the old-fashioned way, the way it’s been done for a hundred years, versus Netflix’s model of streaming, and on demand, and mostly at home.
Now, Netflix has tried to say all the right things, tried to reassure filmmakers, tried to promise up and down that it will continue to release Warner Bros. movies in theaters the way they always have been if this Netflix deal goes through, but a lot of people are skeptical of that. A lot of people have doubts about that, and I would say that’s the biggest tension point that you can see specifically in this deal. But then, the broader tension is about, who owns entertainment, who owns these studios, and who’s in control?
Dana Taylor:
I want to dive into the hostile takeover bid from Paramount. How did that come about?
Brian Stelter:
Right. This is something right out of HBO’s Succession. I know it’s a cliche at this point to point it out, but it is true that what you saw if you watched Succession on HBO is exactly what’s playing out now, both behind the scenes as well as, to some extent, in public view between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. Now, you have … Look, I work at CNN. I watched the stock for CNN’s parent company. I have watched it fall for the better part of three years. This company, Warner Bros. Discovery, was formed through a deal with AT&T and Discovery in 2022. The stock was around $25. It fell, and fell, and fell below $10.
It was not until Warner decided to break itself into two pieces and basically solicit bids that the stock began to move. Now, you have a company, Warner Bros. Discovery, stock near $30, Paramount offering $30 per share. So in many ways, this auction process has resuscitated a struggling media company, and in some ways, Paramount CEO David Ellison believes he deserves credit for that. Because until he came calling, until he made his first bid for the entire company, WBD’s stock was still languishing.
So he kick-started this auction process by making this unsolicited offer, and like I said, that began an auction process that led Netflix and Comcast to get involved. Ultimately, WBD settled on Netflix. This was in December. This was a deal to sell HBO and Warner Bros., but not CNN or other cable channels, over to Netflix. But it’s not that simple, because now, Paramount is going straight to shareholders. A hostile takeover offer means you go straight to shareholders. You offer to buy up their shares. You basically go around the corporate management. You go around the board, and you try to buy up shares directly from shareholders. We don’t know if Paramount will prevail with this or not.
Dana Taylor:
Brian, with Paramount, what other assets are we talking about, and what might the impact be for audiences?
Brian Stelter:
I mean, Paramount is a fascinating tale in and of itself, because this is an example of a legacy smaller movie and TV studio, the owner of MTV and Paramount Pictures. I was talking about WBD being a beleaguered stock. Paramount’s been a beleaguered stock. It’s really fallen on hard times. Take MTV for example. Right? When I was a teenager, MTV was must-see TV, and now, it just mostly runs reruns of viral video shows. So Paramount has struggled. It has needed some attention, maybe some TLC, you might say. It was owned by this family, the Redstones for decades, and there was a lot of corporate infighting, a lot of family drama.
But last year, David Ellison swooped in. David Ellison and his father Larry, Larry, the Oracle billionaire, represent a long line of corporate titans who want to buy their way into Hollywood. We’ve seen this over, and over, and over again, dating back to the era of the black and white pictures, where big businessmen will make a lot of money, and then they’ll try to make it rich and make it big in Hollywood. Sometimes, you can make it big but not make it rich.
So the Paramount playbook is clear. Go out there. Try to reinvigorate this flailing movie studio. Create new hits. Infuse technology. Figure out how to make Hollywood relevant in the AI-driven era. Paramount’s trying to do that now with this hostile takeover bid. What’ll happen next is very unclear, but in the meantime, it is one heck of a corporate drama, and lots of lawyers are getting richer having to deal with it.
Dana Taylor:
Brian, I have you here, so I have to ask. If Paramount does end up winning here, and CNN is absorbed by the company which owns CBS News, now controlled by conservative David Ellison, as you mentioned, and led by Bari Weiss, how do you think it will impact news content?
Brian Stelter:
This is a question that’s on the minds of CNN staffers. It’s been something that’s been talked about for months at this point, and there’s no clear answer. Number one, David Ellison, he’s the first millennial to become one of these media moguls, to own one of these big media companies. He’s in his early forties. He’s a gamer. He wants to invest in video gaming. He wants to make hit movies. He has all sorts of ambitions for Paramount, and people close to him say that he cares deeply about the news business, which is why he acquired the Free Press and brought Bari Weiss aboard to CBS News.
Bari Weiss has been running the news division for a few months now. I think the New York Times called it a bumpy start for the evening show there. That’s a pretty accurate description. She’s gotten a lot of attention, some of it positive, some of it negative. Whether any of that translates to CNN if WBD is acquired by Paramount, I think it’s just unknowable. There obviously are concerns not just inside CNN, but much more outside CNN about whether Paramount is trying to appease the Trump administration.
Trump’s comment on the record, saying it’s imperative that CNN be sold, that speaks to Trump trying to have his personal whims and predilections influence M&A, influence merger and acquisition review. That’s totally out of line with what’s been happening in the US for decades. Normally, presidents are hands-off about merger reviews. Regulators, experts in the field handle these things, but Trump, of course, is very different. But as with all these sorts of business relationships, you see people trying to do what they believe is best for their shareholders, best for the bottom line. Whether it’s best for Paramount a year or two from now to appeal to Trump or his supporters is, again, I hate to use the word again, but it’s unknowable.
Dana Taylor:
Critics warn that whether it’s Netflix or Paramount that takes over Warner Bros., the deal would give a single company outsized control over one of Hollywood’s most valuable content libraries. How real is the concern that this crosses into monopoly power, and what should regulators be paying attention to right now?
Brian Stelter:
Well, I would say the history of media is a history of consolidation. Companies get bigger. They merge. Some of them end up failing, or fading, or collapsing. Then, new ones arise, and startups emerge. They get bigger again, and then you have another wave of consolidation. So I would say the history of media has been this continual wave of consolidation, and it happens in part because we can’t predict 10 years from now who the dominant players will be. Will Apple be around? Yeah. Probably. Right? Will Amazon be around? Yeah. Probably.
There’s certain things that we can feel pretty confident saying, but 10 years ago, TikTok was barely on anybody’s radar. 10 years ago, nobody was talking about TikTok being a threat to Netflix. Well, now, that’s a very real conversation. This Chinese startup has changed the way people watch videos on their phones, mostly short-form videos. It’s caused YouTube, and Meta, and other companies to come out with their own rival services to try to compete. Now, if you talk to Netflix executives, they’ll tell you … What do they worry about? They worry about YouTube. They worry about TikTok. They worry about that competition for people’s time.
So even though Netflix will face a tough regulatory review for this deal to buy HBO and Warner Bros., Netflix, they’re going to turn around and say, “We actually have relatively small amounts of your attention span.” If we were to measure people’s time spent viewing, how much time do they spend with screens per day, Netflix would say, “Actually, we have a relatively small share of that screen time, and actually, YouTube is bigger than us.” So that’ll be the argument from Netflix.
However, when you think about the streaming wars and the streaming universe, Netflix is the dominant player when it comes to premium, long-form, high-quality stuff, the shows that you want to binge over and over again. Of course, HBO is known for that, as well. So putting Netflix and HBO together, it is, of course, an example of consolidation. Of course, it’s an example of the marketplace shrinking in that way. But again, Netflix would say, “Hold on. We’re not just competing against HBO. We’re competing against everything on the internet and everything on your phone. We’re competing against Instagram.”
So ultimately, these regulatory discussions are about how you define the marketplace. How do you, and how does a regulator, how does President Trump, how do viewers size up the marketplace, and how do they decide what counts as competition? The way I look at it, consolidation, and by the way, some would disagree with this, I would say consolidation is inevitable. It’s just part of the process of the business environment. Some people would disagree with that, and they would say regulation’s not inevitable. It’s what’s controlled by the government. The government can choose to stop it.
But we’ve seen this happen again and again, and these cases go to court. Sometimes, the government loses. Ultimately, that might happen in this case. President Trump has already signaled that he might oppose the Netflix deal. The government might try to slow the Netflix deal down. But I lived through one of these when CNN’s parent company was being acquired by AT&T in 2017 and 2018. There was a delay by the Justice Department. Eventually, there was a lawsuit. There was a legal trial. The government lost, and the merger went through.
So we do hear a lot about Trump’s impact on the marketplace, how his political pressure could influence companies, how the regulators might be taking action based on what Trump wants. All of that is real and important to be aware of, but at the end of the day, it’s a legal process. These companies can still pursue the process and try to merge even if they’re challenged in court.
Dana Taylor:
Brian, finally, let’s talk about how any deal, whether by Netflix or Paramount, will impact viewers. Could it end up being a win for audiences in terms of cost and choice, or do we need to just wait and see?
Brian Stelter:
Right now, we’re living in a moment of rebundling. So if you think about the last 10 years, it was all about unbundling, streaming services, in some cases, replacing the old-fashioned cable bundle. People have been able to choose one streaming service at a time, but look at what’s happened. Right? A lot of people subscribe to three, or four, or five streaming services. In some cases, you might be paying more than you paid for cable 10 years ago. On the other hand, there’s more to watch than ever before. There’s more options than ever before.
So we live in this age now of rebundling, where, yes, media consolidation is happening. Streaming services are offering bundles together. They’re trying to get you to pay for three in one or four in one. There’s this inevitable kind of process underway of the bundle coming back. I think a combination of HBO and Netflix probably hastens what’s already happening. You can see it at Disney, where they want you to buy Hulu, and Disney+, and ESPN all together. So you can expect to see more versions of that across the media marketplace.
Is it better for consumers or is it worse? I think different people would have different answers to that question. I certainly noticed that prices keep going up. I’m sure most listeners have noticed that, as well. Right? Streaming bundle prices tend not to go down. They tend to only go in one direction. They only go up. But on the other hand, I go back to that point about TikTok, and about YouTube, and about Instagram Reels. There are always these startups or these tech giants coming in and disrupting the marketplace, and none of us can really imagine where that next disruption’s going to come from.
So yes, streaming prices will probably keep going up. Yes, consolidation will probably keep happening, but maybe the most disruptive technologies, the most disruptive forms of communication, the most interesting new entertainment, it’s whatever is being dreamed up right now by some 25-year-old film school grad, or at least that’s what I like to think. Because that’s been the history so far, and I believe that’ll be the future, as well.
Dana Taylor:
Brian Stelter, CNN’s Chief Media Analyst. Brian, thank you again for coming on The Excerpt.
Brian Stelter:
Thanks.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for our senior producer, Kaely Monahan, for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I’m Dana Taylor. I’ll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY’s The Excerpt.