HBO Last Week Tonight host John Oliver is not a big a fan of the non-stop barrage of media mergers, but he and his team have no plans to change what they are doing, regardless of whether Netflix or Paramount ends up with the prize.
“I think mergers are generally bad. I think you’re always hoping for the least bad option,” Oliver told former Daily Show host Trevor Noah on his podcast Thursday (Noah will host the Grammy Awards for Paramount next month). “I think that the key thing for us is to act with enough aggression or confidence… I will act assuming nothing is going to happen. We’re not going to change, right?”
“We’ve been behaving the way we’ve been behaving for long enough that you can’t really reason with us,” he continued. “So there’s no point doing that.”
Oliver noted that HBO has been sold twice already since he started hosting his show, once in Time Warner’s sale to AT&T, and again in WarnerMedia’s spinout into Warner Bros. Discovery.
“You know, these things come with cuts,” Oliver said.
And he expressed skepticism about the state of media generally, questioning whether all of the deals are really warranted.
“There are going to be question marks on all of this, right? Because it’s very hard to justify this legally,” Oliver said. “Now, whether that makes it impossible for it to happen, that’s an open question.”
Netflix of course has a signed deal for Warner Bros., but Paramount is threatening a hostile bid. Both could face tough regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe, though Paramount has argued that it has an easier path.
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