Sony, Apollo Offers To Buy Paramount For $26 Billion (variety.com) 22
Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management have made a bid to acquire Paramount for $26 billion and take it private. Variety reports: Sony and private-equity giant Apollo submitted a letter with the non-binding offer Wednesday to Paramount Global, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The bid, which would include the assumption of debt and could be negotiated, would be a premium over the company's current $22 billion enterprise value. Shares of Paramount Global jumped 13% on news of the offer from Apollo and Sony Entertainment, closing at $13.86 per share Thursday.
It's not clear how Paramount's board will proceed on the Sony-Apollo proposal, having rejected previous overtures from the private-equity firm. The company has an exclusive negotiating window with Skydance that ends Friday (May 3), but discussions among the parties could extend beyond that. If it happens, the combination of Sony Pictures with Paramount Pictures would likely result in mass layoffs -- and knock the number of major Hollywood studios from five to four, after Disney took over 20th Century. Sony Corp., which acquired Columbia Pictures in 1990 for $3.5 billion, is the largest studio operator in the industry that does not have a broad-scale direct-to-consumer streaming play.
Under the proposed bid with Apollo, Sony would be the majority owner of the combined company. Sony Corp. would merge Sony Pictures Entertainment into a joint venture with Paramount Global. Sony and Apollo would both contribute cash to finance the deal. What's unclear is what would happen to the 28 local TV stations CBS owns; FCC rules bar foreign entities (i.e. Tokyo-based Sony) from having majority ownership control of broadcast TV stations, so Sony would need to carve out a separate U.S. ownership structure for the station group.
In the Skydance scenario, Redstone would sell her stake in National Amusements, which holds 77% of the voting shares in Paramount Global, to Skydance, whereupon Skydance would merge with Paramount Global in an all-stock deal that would value Skydance at roughly $5 billion. Paramount Global would remain a publicly traded company. Redstone would receive up to $2 billion from the Skydance-NAI transaction; in addition, Skydance would pay a premium for Paramount Global shares and pay $3 billion to the company to help pay down debt. Ellison would serve as CEO of the merged Paramount-Skydance, while Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal CEO who is chairman of sports and media at RedBird and works under founder and managing partner Gerry Cardinale, would take on a key management role.
It's not clear how Paramount's board will proceed on the Sony-Apollo proposal, having rejected previous overtures from the private-equity firm. The company has an exclusive negotiating window with Skydance that ends Friday (May 3), but discussions among the parties could extend beyond that. If it happens, the combination of Sony Pictures with Paramount Pictures would likely result in mass layoffs -- and knock the number of major Hollywood studios from five to four, after Disney took over 20th Century. Sony Corp., which acquired Columbia Pictures in 1990 for $3.5 billion, is the largest studio operator in the industry that does not have a broad-scale direct-to-consumer streaming play.
Under the proposed bid with Apollo, Sony would be the majority owner of the combined company. Sony Corp. would merge Sony Pictures Entertainment into a joint venture with Paramount Global. Sony and Apollo would both contribute cash to finance the deal. What's unclear is what would happen to the 28 local TV stations CBS owns; FCC rules bar foreign entities (i.e. Tokyo-based Sony) from having majority ownership control of broadcast TV stations, so Sony would need to carve out a separate U.S. ownership structure for the station group.
In the Skydance scenario, Redstone would sell her stake in National Amusements, which holds 77% of the voting shares in Paramount Global, to Skydance, whereupon Skydance would merge with Paramount Global in an all-stock deal that would value Skydance at roughly $5 billion. Paramount Global would remain a publicly traded company. Redstone would receive up to $2 billion from the Skydance-NAI transaction; in addition, Skydance would pay a premium for Paramount Global shares and pay $3 billion to the company to help pay down debt. Ellison would serve as CEO of the merged Paramount-Skydance, while Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal CEO who is chairman of sports and media at RedBird and works under founder and managing partner Gerry Cardinale, would take on a key management role.
Just something else for Sony to fuck up. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If it puts Pluto at risk then I also hope it doesn't go through.
Pluto actually has streaming "channels" so you can just pick a channel and have it stream content in the background without having to pick something out. More streamers should adopt this.
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Pluto actually has streaming "channels" so you can just pick a channel and have it stream content in the background without having to pick something out. More streamers should adopt this.
In case you missed it, Tubi and Freevee and Plex and even Google themselves already do.
Take a Fire Stick or any Android TV device and load up these services alongside Pluto. The Live TV section of the streaming device's interface them will aggregate the channels from the services all together, and you'll have a couple hundred streaming channels to choose from. Many of them will be True Crime or C-grade Reality TV types, but you'll also gets some that stream classic sitcoms, Westerns, or Sci-fi. This weekend
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If you want Star Trek to keep going, I'd suggest putting that on in the background and just letting it play, episode after episode.
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Can't get worse.
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I think the sad reality is that all Star Trek is getting cancelled. Every show except for Strange New Worlds has been. I know, you they are the worst thing to ever happen to you, but some of us like them.
Trek is exactly what Sony wants on paper. A franchise. We just have to hope they are willing to invest, and to trust the show runners. Maybe get Bryan Fuller back, and make Prodigy a top tier show that integrates with the rest.
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I think it's fine as long as they have good ideas to keep it fresh. Prodigy was a really good example of that. The first show that wasn't even about a Starfleet crew.
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We just have to hope they are willing to invest, and to fire the current show runners
Fixed that for you. ;)
Also, on a more serious note, I know it runs counter to modern day TV, but I would argue the very last thing Trek needs to be is a franchise. TNG was novel because it was all that was on the air at the time. By the time they got to ENT the franchise was burned out and ratings reflected it. I have a lot of issues with NuTrek, but I do really enjoy SNW, can find redeeming things about DSC, but if they try to make it into the Trek version of the Marvel Universe or copy what Disney has done with Star Wars they're going to burn it the fuck out.
Star Trek has been franchised and Multi-Versed and Alternate-Timelined to death. It's all dreck now. Paramount needs reminding that the well can go dry.
Cancel everything and let the fields lay fallow for a few years.
Then start one new series. ONE. Set it on a new Enterprise (it always has to be the Enterprise), with a new crew. And don't fuck it up by choosing a crew based on The Current Thing. Shoot for a 5 year mission, and thus five seasons. End it after 5. No movies. Lather. Rinse. Repeat every decade o
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Worse than Discovery?
Bribe FTC to require them to tolerate fanfic. :D
Is this the end of JJ Trek (Score:1)
Or is it merely the start?
... result in mass layoffs? (Score:3)
If it happens, the combination of Sony Pictures with Paramount Pictures would likely result in mass layoffs
Maybe among the content creators and customer support, but think of all the new open positions for root kit developers! So many paying customers without a root kit installed, yet! [wikipedia.org]
Yikes. (Score:5, Funny)
Sony, Apollo, Paramount. What a marriage made in Hell that would be. All the public relations know-how of Sony, all the business sense of Apollo, all the movie-making prowess of Paramount? It's a trifecta of fail! How could they lose?
Oh Boy! bad news all around (Score:5, Interesting)
I was Hoping NetFlix would grab Paramount, as (other than Paramount +) there is no overlap between the two. Then again, Skydance was also a good choice (and better than sony, no doubt).
Sony Is the lesser evil compared with the alternatives (Like Warner/Dicovery) but is still bad...
1.) Sony was one of the few "neutral" content distributors, licensing content to pretty much all streamers in a somewhat equal footing (except some sweetheart deals with disney doe to the shared marvelverse interests). Expect that, as those agreements lapse, more of sony's content will be only available inside Paramount Plus (whatever it is called).
2.) We already lost fox as an independent studio, if this comes to pass, we will lose paramount too (will be under sony).
3.) one positive is that, since Sony has no TV networks in the USoA, there is not a situation like ABC (i.e. disney) + FoxTV. But a negative is that Sony's TV productions were available to all, now, they will be only on CBS. (Most likely, there will be some MBA-esque contortions so that Sony only oewns 49% of CBS)
4.) Another positive is that sony will not be involved in American amusements.
5.) Another positive is a lot more of Sony programming (due to lower cost as intra-company pricing) getting into PlutoTV, which is always nice.
I hope they go with Skydance ot NetFlix...
But if a Big Studio it was to be, Sony + Apollo is the lesser evil.
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Apple or Amazon would also be decent homes for Paramount, IMO, for the same reason as Netflix.
Sony, IMO, is already way too big in the content industry. Antitrust regulators should absolutely step in and block any consolidation like this.
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Apple or Amazon would also be decent homes for Paramount, IMO, for the same reason as Netflix.
Sony, IMO, is already way too big in the content industry. Antitrust regulators should absolutely step in and block any consolidation like this.
Amazon already has MGM
Antitrust regulators Did pretty much nothing when Disney Slwallowed Fox, and there was much more Overlap. They will probably do nothing here, except to make sure that sony's involvement on CBS is bellow 50%
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I'm old enough to remember when the SEC took massive megacorporage mergers seriously and made sure to block exactly this kind of monopoly building. The Disney borg should never have been allowed to happen.
Yes yes, I'll just see myself out the door marked #okboomer
The return of Lower Decks? (Score:2)
I can't see this happening... (Score:2)
There are too many countries who's anti-trust/competition regulators would need to approve this and who actually care about competition. (EU for one seems to care a lot about competition these days).
Sony and Apollo? Oh, my. My, my, my. (Score:2)
OPINION STATEMENT: Sony and Apollo Group? The Dynamic Duo of Destruction. Neither can touch anything and not absolutely ruin it.
Maybe buy Disney next? (Score:2)
Why not have a monopoly on shitty movies?