1. Will Netflix Buy Warner Bros?
Hot on the heels of all those “Paramount is going to buy Warner Bros” is the rumor that Netflix is going to buy Warner Bros.
And sources tell me that it is a legit rumor, that Netflix is indeed interested.
This may sound counterintuitive to some—why would Netflix possibly want Warner Brothers other than to prevent Paramount from having them and to stop Evan Shapiro from making more “Disco Bros” jokes.
But scratch the surface and it makes a lot of sense. Warner Bros has a much deeper catalog than Netflix and a whole lot of valuable franchise IP, two things that Netflix most definitely needs more of.
Why It Matters
Stranger Things is not a franchise.
Harry Potter is.
Batman is.
With that sort of IP, Netflix becomes a more powerful company.
With HBO shows like The Sopranos and Succession in its library it becomes more powerful still.
HBO still stands for a certain type of quality TV. Which is remarkable given everything the company has been through, but like Gloria Gaynor, they have survived.
The combined company would make Netflix even more untouchable as The Streaming Service You Never Churn Away From, everyone’s top pick for the three or four “must have” streaming services.
It would also make Warner’s current management look like geniuses, thus angering that segment of the industry who have deemed them to be the antichrists.
But…
(You knew there would be a “but”)
It is unclear how much of Warner’s catalog Netflix would have ready access to—so much of it is licensed to other companies worldwide.
So it could take the better part of a decade for Netflix to get much of the value from the deal, making it a much riskier proposition.
More than that though, a successful merger would change the shape of the industry, making Netflix a far more impregnable number one.
I have long thought that we would eventually go from eight or so major streaming services down to three or four, given that most industries work that way (remember the post-AT&T breakup days of dozens of small phone companies?)
So the reunification, if you will, is not the least bit surprising and there will be more to come.
They just may not be as high profile.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are Warner you need to try and make this happen, selling out to Netflix will have all of Hollywood eating crow after years of whinging about your incompetence.
If you are Netflix, this is probably a good deal—you just need to make sure that you can actually get access to all those Warner shows sometime in the next few years.
If you are Paramount, you need to try and stop this. A combined Netflix + Warner is not an opponent you want to take on.
If you are a content producer, this is a double-edged sword—harder to break into, but much more reach and resources once you do.
If you are a consumer, one less service to subscribe to.
So a win for you.
2. The Return of Jimmy Kimmel
So Jimmy Kimmel returned to ABC and 6.2 million people tuned in live to watch. An impressive number given that the show did not run in a number of Red States and a 4X increase over his usual ratings.
Nexstar and Sinclair each having their own reasons not to run the show.
President Trump weighed in, making it clear that Disney had in fact told him they were pulling Kimmel off the air.
Well that was his interpretation anyway.
Kimmel was contrite and angry all at once and clips of the evening will no doubt get tens of millions more views on YouTube and other platforms, many of them internationally.
Because politics aside (and it is a lot to put aside), the thing about late night TV is that it seems to have outlived its usefulness.
As in, if anything was made to be disintermediated by YouTube and other social platforms, it’s late night TV.
Why It Matters
Let’s start with the obvious thing about late night TV, which is that it’s on way too late.
Seriously, who is staying up til 12:30 am to watch this?
Thirty years ago, in the heyday of the genre, people happily stayed up till 1:30 am to watch The Late Late Show. Which came on after they’d stayed up till 12:30 am to watch Letterman.
Sleep was less important in those days, I guess, but mostly it was the only way to see those edgy late night programs.
Binge watching and the internet having not yet been invented. Or, at the very least, popularized.
Today we can see all the edge comedy we want at more health-conscious hours. As often as we want.
All via clips on YouTube.
We are not limited to a handful of network-picked stars either—there are literally thousands of comedians covering the topics of the day who have content on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
So no more need to stay up to the wee hours of the morning just to see them.
And that was the thing about Kimmel and all the other late night hosts—they are more valuable in clip form than in live form.
Which is why 6.2 million people is a huge number.
But also a one-time event number that is unlikely to be replicated any time soon.
Which is why focusing on 6.2 million people feels like such a throwback.
The monoculture is dead. We are all in our own little bubbles and while events like the Super Bowl or the Return of Jimmy Kimmel can bring us back together again, these moments are few and far between.
We’re in a state of hyper personalization, where no two people see the same algorithmically-driven feed and where we wall ourselves off into small bubbles of intense fandom—Feudal Media— and no longer have shared cultural references.
It makes it hard for anything to break through, from brands to music acts to TV show and movies.
Not the way they used to.
I’ve written a lot about this, it’s the subject of my current World Tour keynote (How To Survive The Dark Ages of Media) and it’s a reality we all have to deal with.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that this is not the rebirth of late night, but a one-time blip that mostly benefits Jimmy Kimmel by making him one of the year’s few shared cultural touchpoints.
And mostly hurts Disney because both the Blue Team and the Red Team are unhappy with how they handled this.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are a brand or a content creator, you need to figure out how to survive in a world where audiences are divided into thousands of self-contained bubbles. Being bland and vanilla is not your answer. Figuring out how to really win over as many bubbles as possible is, but you’ve got to make them love you.
Not merely like you.
If you’re Jimmy Kimmel, you need to capitalize on this moment, keep your name in the news as much as possible and then figure out how to turn that into your own thing, because at some point Disney is not going to want you anymore.
And you can make more money going it alone.
If you’re Disney… well damage control, damage control, damage control. And hope that your next big movie makes everyone forget this moment.
In other words, a great big dose of that Disney Magic.
Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at the consulting firm TV[R]EV. He is the author of the best-selling industry primer, Over The Top: How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk frequently speaks about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.
Week in Review is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.