What the Disney–YouTube Battle Tells Us About the End of Cable

Channels with Peter Kafka

It’s not unusual for a big TV network and a big TV distributor to fight about money. But the Disney-YouTube fight is unusual -- at the bare minimum, because it has stretched out for so long. CNBC’s Alex Sherman lives and breathes this stuff, so I asked him to walk me through it, and make some prognostications about when it might get settled (spoiler alert: he thinks some football fans who pay for YouTube TV may be unhappy for a while longer.)

Then Sherman and I move on to the other Big Media deal: the battle for the company we currently call Warner Bros. Discovery, but is likely to be owned by someone else, in some form…. eventually.

Discussed here: why, really, did Larry and David Ellison put in multiple offers to buy another media company weeks after they bought Paramount? What would they do with WBD if they got it? And are any of the theoretical other buyers for all or parts of WBD real?

Bonus question for you: did I use the word “degradation” correctly in this one?

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