Netflix Walks Away from WBD

M.G. Siegler on his blog Spyglass:

Congratulations on saying the biggest number, Paramount. $111B for a company that a year ago had a market cap of around $20B. For a company that shrunk in their most recent quarter, and in fact, for the entire year, with revenue down 5% to $37.3B. Paramount may not be buying the Titanic, but only because they already own that IP.

We (trail media fans) sort of had this all figured out: Netflix, home of much-loved ‘Drive to Survive’ would own WBD and with it the Golden Trail Series coverage. This seemed… fun, and the correct move for the sport, and well, the world in general. Now, WBD will be owned by Paramount and that means it’ll be owned by Trump-friendly Ellison family—billionaire Oracle founder Larry and his son David.

I don’t want to me a massive doomsayer here, but it’s worth nothing that the the people who are increasing own all our media platforms are all, well, massively compromised, to say the least.

Starlink, WBD, Substack, Instagram. What would our trail media be with these services gone, or toxic enough that they really really shouldn’t be used anymore? Or do we just not care enough?