playnext.fm

It's Been a Minute · NPR

Meet the billionaires who control your media

March 20, 2026·21 min·1 clip
David Folkenflik recalls the worst corporate merger in history to warn this deal could make you pay more for less.
Some headlines beg to be skipped. The host starts there, with the honest split between people who track big media deals and people whose eyes glaze over. Then she gives the headline some teeth. David Ellison and Paramount's acquisition of Warner Brothers Studios is presented as more than another boardroom shuffle, because it could affect what people watch, hear, and trust. Succession becomes the obvious shorthand. The guests do not treat the Roy family comparison as a perfect map, but it gives listeners a quick way into dynastic media power. Larry Ellison is the patriarch. David Ellison comes through as the ambitious heir, a producer tied to Top Gun Maverick, Mission Impossible, Star Trek, Terminator, Baywatch, and even a short film about a billionaire's son. The joke is sitting right there, and the episode knows it. Still, the family-drama angle does not take over. The sharper question is control. The credits are not just trivia; they show how entertainment, news, and platforms can end up closer together than people may realize. CNN and CBS News matter here. TikTok does too, because the host treats the possible deal as bigger than studio gossip or another rich-family succession story. The pacing stays brisk without getting frantic. The guests sketch the players, and the host keeps pulling the thread back to the listener who saw the headline and wondered why it should matter. That is the engine of the episode. By the end, the worry is plain: will the public shrug while one family gets this much media power? Nobody claims to know how it ends. The unease comes from the waiting, and from the possibility that the genre matters less than who owns the room.

As heard by us

A sharp, accessible look at why one billionaire family's media reach should matter beyond the business pages.

It's Been a Minute makes a media merger feel less like trade news and more like a question about cultural power. Britney Luce frames David Ellison's rise through the shorthand of Succession, with Larry Ellison as the patriarch figure and David as the heir building a media empire…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the media merger explained like it could change what you watch and who gets to shape it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
Listen to the show on
Apple PodcastsSpotify
Play clips from this episodeMore from It's Been a Minute