Paul Stenhouse: Netflix buys Warner Bros, NYT sues Perplexity, and Samsung launches tri-fold phone

Netflix is buying the studios of Warner Bros Discovery  

Netflix will also get HBOMax (but I can't see that sticking around long). Shareholders of WBD will get $23 in cash and $4.50 in shares of Netflix common stock, valuing the deal at $83 billion ($144 billion NZD). 

The TV networks that were part of the old Discovery company, plus the Warner Brothers networks like CNN, TBS, TNT, etc, are all moving to their own publicly listed company known at the moment as "Global Networks".  

This is of course all subject to regulators, not just in the USA but internationally too – Netflix already operates in 190 countries.  

 

NYT is suing AI startup Perplexity  

The suit alleges Perplexity has illegally copied and distributed The Times’ copyrighted content, including stories, videos, and podcasts. It uses this content to formulate responses to user queries. The Times says the AI also generates outputs that are “identical or substantially similar to” The Times’ content.  

Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media, and now AI,” said Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s Head of Communication. “Fortunately, it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”   

  

Samsung launches the tri-fold phone  

Apple is a single screen phone, but there are rumours it's working on a foldable screen device to be announced next year. Samsung though says, 'hold my beer', and launches a tri-fold device with a 10 inch screen. That's in addition to the outer screen. Wild. If you want one, you'll need to buy it from Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, UAE, or the USA. The first-generation device won't be available in New Zealand.  

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at be So.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Netflix has announced it is going to be buying the
studios of Warner Brothers Discovery. It is a deal worth
a fantastic amount of money one hundred and forty four
billion New Zealand dollars. Our Textbert Paul Steinhouse is here
trying to deduce what it's going to mean for our
various streaming services.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Paul, good morning. Yeah. I think HBO Max might be toast, right,
So that is one of the is that is Warner
Brothers Discoveries big streaming service. It's global one. It houses HBO,
you know, with all of the fantastic shows that come
out of that studio, and it is one of the
premium streamers here in the States and globally. And I

(00:55):
think that that will probably just be folded into Netflix
if this deal goes ahead. They also have the Discovery app,
which I don't think is in New Zealand no, but
you know it has a bunch of you know, discovering.
It was kind of the old kind of you know,
SkyTV type networks and things you get like the animal
planets and the cartoon networks and all that kind of

(01:17):
stuff that's also as a separate service, but that's going
to stay. So it's a really interesting transaction because a
couple of years ago is when Warner Brothers and Discovery merged, right,
it was sort of the smaller Discovery ended up buying
Warner Brothers, which was just bizarre at the time. And now,
of course us splitting the company up to basically put

(01:39):
all of those quote unquote legacy TV assets into one
bucket and that's going to stay listed on the Sotock Exchange.
And then the flagship, if you will, the Warner Brothers studios,
including the Beautiful Lot in La and you know the
people that work at that studio, and then the streaming
service all will end up over with Netflix.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Right.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
And if you really look at it and you went, well,
why did they even bother kind of doing this merger,
They just shuffled a few things around. So CNN, for example,
was part of that Warner Brothers world that's now over
in this kind of remain Co Global Networks as they're
calling it. And it will be interesting to see how
it go, how those companies go on their own. I mean,

(02:21):
people have talked about potentially trying to buy CNN back
in the day and spinning it out as a sort
of standalone service. So hey, it's going to kind of
get it. It's time to shine at this at its
new company. But no, Netflix spent just a ton a
ton of cash check. And of course all of this
is subject to regulators, not just in the USA. There's

(02:43):
a lot of talk about the Trump administration and what
they will do, but also Netflix operates in one hundred
and ninety countries, so this will have to go through
a bunch of international regulators too, and the EU will
be I'm sure all across it. But can I tell
you one thing I found very amusing. Please, I've got
friends who work at both Netflix. I have friends who
work at Warner Brothers Discovery. Netflix. Let me just say

(03:05):
pays very well.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Like right, they actually have a whole philosophy.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
I could talk to you too much about it, but
they have a who philosophy that staff at their company
should be like an a sports team, right, Like you
only want the A players on the field, right, And
if they pay you like you're an A player and
the moment they don't think you should be in the
starting fifteen, The starting eleven, they ask you to leave, right,
so they pay top of the market. It is brutal.

(03:29):
And so the talk of the town, and well the
talk of my group chat was will the Warner Brothers
Discovery people now be being paid like the Netflix? Yeah,
so they're like, will we be getting a pay rise?

Speaker 2 (03:42):
I mean, there's if Netflix has gone any money left
after spending one hundred Well, well, hey, Samsung is launching
the first trifold phone. So we know about fold phones,
but now they're gonna they're gonna have two folds in them. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, so kind of like a brochure, you sort of
open it up. A screen on the other side of
it too, so it's sort of like four screens, but
three of them go into one ten inch screen. It's
sort of Samsung's put this out right. It's not going
to be available in New Zealand. It's going to be
in Korea first, then China, Taiwan, Singapore, the UAE, and

(04:15):
the USA, so some select markets. But it is kind
of funny because Apple, the analysts are thinking that Apple
will potentially put out their first single fold phone two
screen kind of thing next year, and Samsung's basically I
think in the i of some ambus kind of saying,
hold my beer, we're going to do one up. We're
going to do the trifold before you've even launched the

(04:38):
duel folds. It's pretty cool. I mean, if you really
do want something in your pocket that can be used
as a phone and then could be used on you know,
think of like job sites or things where you need,
you know, people out and about in company vehicles and things.
It could be an interesting solution for some of those things.
But based on the price of Samsung's jeweled screen folding phone,

(05:03):
it doesn't come cheap, so that would be a ludge.
Cons Yes, all.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Right, thanks Paul, great to chat. That's our tigspurt. Paul stinhouse.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live
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