What’s next for Netflix and Paramount in the Warner Bros. battle

December 22, 2025·44 min·4 clips

Lucas Shaw reveals Warner Brothers Discovery might use Paramount's bid to squeeze more money from Netflix in the ongoing auction.

Decoder is on holiday break. Eli points listeners to a Channels conversation about Paramount Skydance, Netflix, and the still-unsettled fight for Warner Brothers Discovery. The stakes are bigger than price. Kafka and Lucas Shaw talk through regulatory pressure, family money, and the damage each deal might leave behind. For some Hollywood workers, Netflix is the easy villain. Shaw says people seeing fewer jobs around town may blame Netflix, even if the math is messier than that. Oil money feels more distant. The Saudi influence question around CNN and Jamal Khashoggi is serious, but the transcript treats it as less immediate for most people than the jobs question. Self-interest shapes the politics. The comparison is blunt: voters tend to ask whether they can afford daily life before they weigh larger abstractions. Then the financing issue gets sharper. Warner Brothers Discovery has stayed off the record, while Paramount's filing seems to point toward concerns about funding sources. The worry is not one tidy thing. The guest says people close to the deal described changed paperwork, shifting money mechanics, and discomfort around Middle Eastern financing. Scrutiny is the point. Even if the concern was not ethical, the financing could bring regulatory review Warner did not want. There is also a colder possibility: that concern may have been a useful reason to take the Netflix deal if Warner already preferred it. The episode winds down casually, with Kafka thanking Lucas Shaw, crediting producer-editor Charlotte Silver, nodding to sponsors, and saying more bonus shows are coming before January.

As heard by us

A grounded media-business conversation about the Netflix-Paramount fight for Warner Brothers Discovery and the pressure points around it.

Decoder hands the mic to Channels for a timely, inside-baseball look at the fight over Warner Brothers Discovery. Peter Kafka and Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw frame the Netflix and Paramount Skydance bids as more than a price contest: the conversation keeps circling back to regulatory…

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