We’ve waited a bit before weighing in on the latest twist in the saga of who will eventually own Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). By now, you have likely heard that the guy who started this ball rolling, David Ellison, CEO of ParamountSkydance, launched a “hostile takeover bid” for all of the WBD empire. This came after David Zaslav and the Warner Bros. Discovery board did not select Paramount’s initial bid. They favored a bid from Netflix for just the movie studios and streaming assets. That offer allows WBD to continue its plan to spin off all its cable networks (CNN, HGTV, Discovery, etc.) back into a standalone Discovery Global. That move is much like what Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has just orchestrated for NBCUniversal, which spun off their cable networks to the newly christened Versant.

Hey, speaking of Comcast, does anyone really think they are going to sit out this big dance for Warner Bros.? If so, you may want to check in with Disney’s Bob Iger, who in 2018 had to pay a boatload more money for 20th Century Fox's movie studio and library when Roberts kept raising the Comcast bid in that contest. Roberts then turned around and sold Iger and Disney the remaining stake in Hulu that Comcast held, for just over $9 billion.

Paramount’s Ellison was on CNBC this morning, and he tossed out the standard talking points about how his company is a much better potential owner of Warner Bros. and Discovery. Plus, he has the ear of the White House, and his bid may be less onerous in terms of potential monopolies. (What that loosely translates to is that young Ellison’s father is a good friend of, and has the ear of, the President of the United States.)

The numbers break down like this: Netflix offered $27.75 a share for WBD (that is $23.25 in cash and $4.50 in Netflix stock). Paramount is offering $30.00 in cash for each share of WBD. Those offers break down to be $82.7 billion from Netflix and $108.4 billion from Paramount. So the Paramount bid is $25 billion more. But that's for all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including the cable assets such as CNN, which Mr. Ellison really wants, to combine with CBS News and give recently installed Editor-in-Chief, Bari Weiss, a global news operation so she can learn the television news business in real time.

Out of all the hot takes we’ve seen on the race to land Warner Bros. Discovery, we’d give the “must see” label to today’s episode of the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. They have a spirited back-and-forth about the whole situation and some interesting takes on who is really to blame for this new round of media consolidation deals. Definitely worth your time to listen to their informed and clear-eyed analysis.

You’ll note that we linked to their podcast on YouTube. And that was intentional because, in the aftermath of the bids for WBD, we haven't heard much about the fact that, for all the talk about streaming monopolies and potentially combining Warner’s HBO Max with either Netflix or Paramount+, neither will create the biggest streaming player. That crown still belongs to YouTube (the original, rather than the separate YouTubeTV offering.) It would still have a bigger share of eyeballs than would result from either proposed acquisition, at least based on current viewing numbers from Nielsen’s “The Gauge."

Of course, we get that comparing YouTube, which is free to watch if you are willing to sit through the ads before, during, and after each video, with the paid subscription offerings of Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, and others, is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. But viewers are viewers, no matter how they access your offerings. To that end, and we’ve said before, it is still the case that if we could only pay for one streaming subscription, it would be YouTube Premium, which lets you watch everything there without commercial interruptions.

We had the opportunity to speak yesterday before a couple of hundred students in a college class titled “Media In A Changing World.” We titled our lecture with what we thought was a clever and provocative title, “Television: Past Its Prime Time?” Early in the presentation, we asked the room for a show of hands on how many had watched anything on traditional “linear” television in the past week. Four hands went up. We then asked how many had watched anything via streaming in the past week.

Nearly every hand in the room was raised.

For the generation about to enter the coveted 25-54 demographic, the question really isn’t whether linear Television is past its prime(time)? The streaming audience has left the schedule behind—so that now, whenever (and wherever) they choose to watch is primetime.

And the fight over who will control just what those eyeballs can watch is far from being over.

In other words, the “hostilities” in the fights over media consolidation are far from being resolved. And it is unlikely they will end on friendly terms, whether in Hollywood or Washington.

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