Last night, while you may have been watching the weekly streaming-only exercise of the National Football League, Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football” matchup between the Cowboys and Lions, an even bigger game was playing out--well off any football field.

UPDATE: As of this Friday morning, that game was over—at least in the first playing of it. We’ll insert the new details as we go along in this updated edition of our early morning dispatch.

Just two days after this past Tuesday’s deadline for the big money bids to buy Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) came the evening dispatch from Oliver Darcy in his excellent “Status” newsletter. He detailed the bad blood that has developed between “the two Davids,” those being David Zaslav, the CEO of WBD, and his would-be acquirer, David Ellison, the head of ParamountSkydance (PSKY). According to Darcy’s reporting, the problems began when Ellison backed out of a handshake deal with Zaslav that would have kept Paramount’s “South Park” on WBD’s HBO Max streaming platform, after each new episode initially aired on PSKY’s “Comedy Central” network.

Ellison decided, in the days before his Skydance finally closed on acquiring Paramount, to pay South Park’s creators, the uber-talented Trey Parker and Matt Stone, a cool $1.5 billion over the next five years to both keep new episodes of South Park airing first on Comedy Central and bring the entire library of past South Park episodes from HBO Max over to Paramount+. There was more antagonism between the two media giants earlier this year. In that case, over negotiations to keep two of Warner Bros. television properties on Paramount’s “Nick at Nite” schedule, specifically “Friends” and “Two and a Half Men.” A last-minute deal averted that problem, but it didn’t serve to heal any wounds between “the Two Davids.”

There is no truth to the rumor (that we are starting here) that Zaslav quoted South Park’s Eric Cartman after these dealings with Paramount, saying, “Everything is a lie, we are all pawns.”

Zaslav would find himself in a position to return the favor to Ellison just a few months later when the latter decided he would launch a bid to acquire the whole of Warner Bros. Discovery. After Ellison’s unexpected move seemingly put WBD in play, Netflix and Comcast expressed interest in acquiring at least part of the WBD empire, including the movie studio and streaming assets. (For his part, David Zaslav had already announced plans to split his company into two parts, one part holding the studio and streaming outlets, the other holding the cable networks, including CNN, Discovery, etc.)

If this plan sounds familiar, it’s because it is pretty much what Comcast just did in cleaving off its cable networks to the newly formed Versant.

On Wednesday, December 3rd, Paramount’s lawyers sent a letter to Mr. Zaslav, accusing his company of “failing to conduct a fair auction” in considering any sale and that WBD “isn’t acting in its shareholders’ best interests.” The letter charged that WBD was favoring the competing bid to Paramount’s offer from Netflix. Needless to say, the combination of Netflix and HBO Max would be the 600-pound gorilla in the streaming video marketplace.

Then Thursday Night, December 4th, by the time the Lions had beaten the Cowboys by a score of 44 to 30, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw and Michelle F. David were reportingtheir exclusive that Warner Bros. Discovery had entered into “exclusive negotiations” to sell the studio and streaming half of itself to…Netflix.

By Friday morning, December 5th, it was done. Netflix will pay $72 billion to acquire the Warner Bros. movie studio and streaming assets, following the previously announced spin-off of the cable networks and digital properties as Discovery Global. The transaction is expected to be done by the 3rd quarter of 2026. Netflix’s offer was $23.25 in cash and $4.50 in NFLX stock for each share of WBD.

Looking ahead, this Netflix deal for Warner Bros. faces significant hurdles.

First of all, there is much speculation that Paramount’s Ellison will appeal directly to the company’s shareholders to accept his offer to buy the whole company rather than Netflix’s cherry-picking deal for the best assets. (At one point, it was believed that PSKY was also going to bid for the studio/streaming half of WBD, but that was probably before David Ellison began considering the union of the other assets that are in the WBD networks portfolio, and the possibility of a CBS-CNN marriage.)

Ellison is also positioning his company as the only one that can secure the necessary approvals from the current federal government to close a deal. The Bloomberg report notes that Ellison has been making the rounds with various officials to make his case. Not surprisingly, Utah Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, expressed his feelings on social media that a potential Netflix deal for WBD “would raise serious competition questions—perhaps more so than any transaction I’ve seen in about a decade.”

Of course, David Ellison’s financial backer is Larry Ellison, who also happens to be his father. The senior Ellison is also friends with (and a major political contributor to) the current President of the United States.

And now we know that Netflix has committed to a $5.8 billion “breakup” fee if the deal falls through.

What all of this leads us to wonder most about is the long-term financial health of all the cable networks that could potentially end up in the control of just two companies by the time the holidays roll around at the end of next year? Suppose Discovery Global is one, and Versant, mentioned above, is the other. Can those two newly constituted companies, each holding large portfolios of cable networks and associated digital properties, be successful? Even in a world where “cutting the cord” is happening way faster than folks are signing up to get those same networks via yet another streaming subscription?

It is worth noting that Comcast, which shares the title of the largest cable TV provider in the United States with Charter, decided it would be better to set its cable networks off on their own and spin them off to the new Versant. And as of January 2nd, 2026, when the tax-free pro rata distribution deal that creates Versant as a separate, publicly traded company is completed, Comcast will own no equity stake in it.

Talk about an odd vote of confidence in that new venture.

Once again, we’d remind readers that a deal for all or any part of Warner Bros. Discovery is a long way from being settled. But we can’t help but wonder if David Ellison now wishes he hadn’t stiffed David Zaslav on that deal to keep “South Park” streaming on HBO Max.

And what if “Zaz” channels his inner Eric Cartman at some point and says, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

And in that case, “home” could be Discovery Global, who would not only be the home of CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, ID, Animal Planet, Magnolia, Cooking Channel, Travel Channel, Science Channel, HLN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Boomerang, TCM, and Discovery. It would also be the very business Zaslav came from in 2022, when he orchestrated the merger between Warner Brothers (which was being spun off by AT&T) and Discovery Networks, where he was then CEO.

With apologies to Bon Jovi, who says you can’t go home? If he chose to, Zaslav could continue channelling Cartman and say “Respect My Authority” to anyone who might still be listening.

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