\n<\/p>\n
The boss of Netflix has launched a fresh defence of its $82.7bn (\u00a361bn) takeover of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) assets, as he defended the streaming company\u2019s contribution to the UK film and TV industry.<\/p>\n
Ted Sarandos claimed Netflix buying WBD would bring \u201cgrowth\u201d to the entertainment industry, amid attempts by rival Paramount Skydance to launch a counter offer for the studio business which he said would do the opposite.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re buying a movie studio and a distribution entity that we don\u2019t currently have,\u201d he told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme. \u201cWe\u2019ll be adding to the market where Paramount has committed that they\u2019re going to cut $6bn out of the business right away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis industry would be much smaller under that ownership than it would be under Netflix ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarandos\u2019s comments followed an extraordinary intervention in the corporate battle by Donald Trump over the weekend.<\/p>\n
The president ordered Netflix to remove the Democratic foreign policy expert Susan Rice \u2013 a former member of Barack Obama\u2019s and Joe Biden\u2019s administrations \u2013 from its board or \u201cface the consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n
When asked about the comments, Sarandos said: \u201cThis is a business deal, it\u2019s not a political deal \u2026 He likes to do a lot of things on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paramount has been given until the end of Monday to table its best and final offer for WBD to compete with Netflix\u2019s existing offer.<\/p>\n
Paramount, which is controlled by the billionaire Ellison family, has tried to secure a $108.4bn takeover of WBD with a bid backstopped by a personal $40bn guarantee by Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle, the cloud computing firm.<\/p>\n
Netflix\u2019s bid is for WBD\u2019s studio and streaming platforms, with the rest of the company being spun off separately. Paramount\u2019s bid is for the entire corporation including its TV networks.<\/p>\n
Critics have condemned both proposals, saying they would excessively consolidate power with one owner.<\/p>\n
Sarandos said if Paramount took over WBD it would be among the \u201cclassic, horizontal media mergers that are always bad for consumers, always bad for creators, because basically what they\u2019re just taking is two studios and collapsing them into one\u201d.<\/p>\n
Separately, he defended Netflix\u2019s contribution to the entertainment industry in the UK after calls from MPs for a competition review of the proposed deal.<\/p>\n
In January, politicians wrote to regulators saying it could lead \u201cto a substantial lessening of competition with damaging consequences for consumers, the UK\u2019s world-leading creative industries and the UK cinema industry\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sarandos said: \u201cOur teams here are 100% British. The writers and directors and creators of this programming are all British. This isn\u2019t like an American coming in and trying to do, you know, something with a British accent.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now we have 59 productions happening here in the UK. Only about 17 or so are \u2026 non-British projects that are filming here. So I think our level of commitment both to the creative community in the UK is unchallenged.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to recent hits such as Baby Reindeer and Adolescence as examples of British stories that \u201cmay have fallen through the cracks\u201d otherwise.<\/p>\n
Those series \u201chave been able to find a very big audience which gives us the courage to take some big swings and do things that are slightly unconventional,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The boss of Netflix has launched a fresh defence of its $82.7bn (\u00a361bn) takeover of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) assets, as he defended the streaming company\u2019s contribution to the UK film and TV industry. Ted Sarandos claimed Netflix buying WBD would bring \u201cgrowth\u201d to the entertainment industry, amid attempts by rival Paramount Skydance to launch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[20212,561,1120,2036,1545,274,3670,2035],"class_list":{"0":"post-45091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-83bn","9":"tag-benefit","10":"tag-boss","11":"tag-bros","12":"tag-industry","13":"tag-netflix","14":"tag-takeover","15":"tag-warner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}