Speaker 1: The GNC News Blitz with Radi wag starts.
Speaker 2: No, No, No.
Speaker 3: It is the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk
Speaker 3: Radio seven ninety KABC. This is your daily rundown of
Speaker 3: everything you need to know that's going on in the
Speaker 3: state of California, Southern California, the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego,
Speaker 3: and the Central Valley. I compile a list every single
Speaker 3: day of all the stories that I found that I
Speaker 3: find interesting that you may have missed at Randywangradio dot
Speaker 3: substack dot com. That's Randywangradio dot substack dot com. And
Speaker 3: of course check out the YouTube channel at Randywang Radio
Speaker 3: dot com or Johnny Don't Like dot com, where we
Speaker 3: have all the on demand content for this show, the
Speaker 3: live John Phillips Show from noon to three, and the
Speaker 3: Accountability Podcast. You can give us a call here at
Speaker 3: the radio station at eight hundred two two two five
Speaker 3: two two two, and you can send me an email
Speaker 3: at Randywang Radio at gmail dot com. We start with
Speaker 3: the war of words that is happening right now between
Speaker 3: Paramount Pictures and their CEO, David Ellison and Bob Banta,
Speaker 3: because Paramount has issued quite the ultimatum if Rob Bonta,
Speaker 3: the Attorney General of the State of California, and the
Speaker 3: other I believe twelve attorneys generals that also filed this
Speaker 3: antitrust suit to stop this merger from Paramount Pictures buying
Speaker 3: Warner Brothers Discovery. Then Paramount on October first, is going
Speaker 3: to leave the state of California. Now, when this lawsuit
Speaker 3: was originally announced, Paramount made a similar threat, but they
Speaker 3: did not put any kind of date on it. They
Speaker 3: just said we're going to look in to leaving the
Speaker 3: state of California. Now, there's probably a lot of mixed
Speaker 3: opinions on both sides of this story, and this just
Speaker 3: happens to be one of these stories where there's no hero,
Speaker 3: there's no villain. Everybody involved just kind of sucks because
Speaker 3: you look at what Bob Bonta is trying to do here,
Speaker 3: and it is very obviously political. Some would argue it
Speaker 3: could be for personal gain. There have been some that
Speaker 3: have argued that this is a backdoor favor to Netflix because,
Speaker 3: as many including Spencer Prade, have pointed out, when originally
Speaker 3: this deal to buy Warner Brothers was Netflix, Bob Bonta
Speaker 3: didn't have any problem with it, so that's definitely all true.
Speaker 3: At the same time, I'm not a big fan of
Speaker 3: all the mergers that have been happening in the entertainment business.
Speaker 1: I should know.
Speaker 3: I work in radio, where it's pretty much down to
Speaker 3: three companies, and that hasn't worked out well for anybody.
Speaker 3: I don't like the fact that there was this massive
Speaker 3: merger for Skuydance to merge with Paramount, and then almost
Speaker 3: immediately it's let's leverage that merger after we did a
Speaker 3: bunch of layoffs to buy another studio.
Speaker 1: I'm just not a fan of the way this operates.
Speaker 3: That being said, there are some legitimate concerns on both
Speaker 3: sides here. I'm not totally decided who's in the right
Speaker 3: and who's in the wrong here, but I don't like
Speaker 3: either of these guys. For one, If the argument that
Speaker 3: Paramount is making that we need to do this merger
Speaker 3: with Warner Brothers Discovery because we're getting killed in the
Speaker 3: streaming market, they're right. You add up the number of
Speaker 3: subscribers that people have for HBO Max and Paramount Plus,
Speaker 3: and it's nothing compared to what Netflix has, or compared
Speaker 3: to the amount of viewership that is on YouTube. And
Speaker 3: we broadcast on YouTube. YouTube is the largest video streaming
Speaker 3: platform in the world. There are a lot of young
Speaker 3: people who don't watch a whole lot of broadcast television
Speaker 3: or even broadcast television shows streamed onto the apps, because well,
Speaker 3: you have to pay for a subscription or watch a
Speaker 3: lot of ads to see some of those apps, and
Speaker 3: some people prefer to just watch things for free, either
Speaker 3: with ads or with the premium subscription on YouTube. I
Speaker 3: watch a lot of stuff on you you think about
Speaker 3: all the content that I watch when I'm going to
Speaker 3: bed that I could be giving to the streaming services.
Speaker 3: And when my wife's in town, Yeah, we'll pop on
Speaker 3: the old Peacock, which is another streaming service that is
Speaker 3: not doing that well, and you we will watch repeats
Speaker 3: of The Office or Parks and rec or Thirty Rock
Speaker 3: or what have you. You know, all the shows from
Speaker 3: like a generation and a half ago that are really
Speaker 3: great bedtime material because it's comforting to watch something you've
Speaker 3: already seen. But you know, it's even more comforting than that.
Speaker 3: If I'm home alone, I turn on YouTube and I
Speaker 3: watch which if you go through my YouTube and it's like,
Speaker 3: what is the channel you watch the most, it's this guy,
Speaker 3: j Rose eleven. He has a very popular YouTube channel.
Speaker 3: I think he has four hundred thousand subscribers, and all
Speaker 3: he does is he posts videos of him doing solo
Speaker 3: runs of Pokemon Red and Blue, the original game boy
Speaker 3: games from nineteen ninety six, and he'll pick one out
Speaker 3: of the one hundred and fifty Pokemon and do the
Speaker 3: entire run with just that thing. It is monotonous. It
Speaker 3: is the same thing over and over and over again,
Speaker 3: and damn it, I've watched almost every single one that
Speaker 3: he's done. It is very addictive, it is very comforting.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's there's a lot of time that I'm
Speaker 3: given to YouTube that I'm not given to Netflix or
Speaker 3: Paramount or HBO Max. So when it comes to the
Speaker 3: streaming aspect of it, I do understand why this merger
Speaker 3: may make sense. That being said, I find it to
Speaker 3: be so funny. How right as COVID began, like right
Speaker 3: before COVID began, all the studios, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Disney,
Speaker 3: they were all so upset with how much attention Netflix
Speaker 3: was getting. And I will say I was one of
Speaker 3: the earliest adopters of Netflix for streaming. I mean, I
Speaker 3: had Netflix back when it was you just mail the DVDs.
Speaker 3: But they also when they launched their streaming and their
Speaker 3: streaming offerings in like two thousand and seven, I was
Speaker 3: immediately an adopter of this. Also, when Hulu launched in
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, I was all about this and
Speaker 3: knew that streaming was going to be the future because
Speaker 3: I cut my cable cord in two thousand end. I
Speaker 3: don't even know if I ever had it now. I
Speaker 3: must have had it for a little while when I
Speaker 3: lived in my studio apartment in Studio City, excuse me,
Speaker 3: Valley Village. I think I cut it in like two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine or twenty ten, and I watched everything
Speaker 3: on streaming, and everything just kind of grew, and there
Speaker 3: were shows that became popularized through whether it was streaming
Speaker 3: or which is so far. Remember how we used to
Speaker 3: buy shows on iTunes, And do you remember how the
Speaker 3: Writer's Strike of two thousand and eight was almost exclusively
Speaker 3: about the revenue share that the writers would get for
Speaker 3: when people buy episodes of the Office on iTunes for
Speaker 3: a dollar ninety nine. And then most immediately everything moved
Speaker 3: to streaming, and then well, so you go back to
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen twenty eighteen. Netflix is still losing a ton
Speaker 3: of money, but because they're paying all these studios to
Speaker 3: license all of their content. I mean, The Office had
Speaker 3: a whole second life because it was available on Netflix.
Speaker 1: It's so funny.
Speaker 3: The Office, which is a show that now everybody has
Speaker 3: seen a million times like on wasn't that way when
Speaker 3: it first came out. And one of the reasons The
Speaker 3: Office didn't get canceled in like its early seasons is
Speaker 3: because so many people were watching it on iTunes and
Speaker 3: buying the episodes that was like, there's something here. Well,
Speaker 3: The Office, after it goes off the air, becomes this
Speaker 3: show that everybody is watching on repeat in the background
Speaker 3: as their bedtime show.
Speaker 1: And it was for a thing a.
Speaker 3: Really long time, like the most successful thing on Netflix.
Speaker 3: On top of their original content, which you know, some
Speaker 3: of their original content is great, you know, ten years ago,
Speaker 3: some of their original content was terrible. Even those new
Speaker 3: seasons of Arrested Development there are much harder to rewatch
Speaker 3: than the first three seasons. So Disney's like, I got
Speaker 3: to get in on this. Sure, we own a piece
Speaker 3: of Hulu, and Hulu used to be like a joint
Speaker 3: venture between ABC and NBC and Fox because at this
Speaker 3: point Fox was a different company than Disney. Yeah, there
Speaker 3: was another merger that Bob Bonted didn't have any problems with,
Speaker 3: or Disney gobbling up Lucasfilm, or Disney gobbling up Marvel
Speaker 3: didn't have any problems with any of those. Those are
Speaker 3: all very legitimate concerns. But Disney's like, all right, we're
Speaker 3: gonna make our own streaming platform Disney Plus and Universes
Speaker 3: like we're gonna make our own streaming platform Peacock and
Speaker 3: Paramount says we're gonna come out with Paramount Plus. And HBO,
Speaker 3: which had HBO Go then it turned into HBO Now
Speaker 3: decided we're gonna launch HBO Max, and then a couple
Speaker 3: of years later they changed that to just Max, and
Speaker 3: then they changed it back to HBO Max. All within
Speaker 3: the span of two years, which were, by the way,
Speaker 3: the COVID years.
Speaker 1: All of these services launch.
Speaker 3: So you now go from having one to two subscriptions
Speaker 3: you're paying for because you're probably paying your everyone had Netflix,
Speaker 3: maybe you also had Hulu, and that pretty much covered it.
Speaker 3: You got all your content, all the channels went to
Speaker 3: either of those two platforms, and then if it was
Speaker 3: anything that wasn't on there, you could buy it your elf.
Speaker 3: You went from that too, having to have Netflix and
Speaker 3: Hulu and Disney Plus, which and now those two are
Speaker 3: merging because we've all realized it's too many, and you've
Speaker 3: got and if you like sports, oh boy, ESPN Plus
Speaker 3: and then Hbo and Paramount and Amazon, which has their
Speaker 3: own whole thing, and you realize, wow, now I'm paying
Speaker 3: as much as the cable bill.
Speaker 1: What the heck is going on?
Speaker 3: So there haven't been nearly as many adopters to all
Speaker 3: these other streaming services as there has been to Netflix,
Speaker 3: because there's only so much content you can watch in
Speaker 3: a day. So almost immediately, all these companies that bent
Speaker 3: big on streaming started losing tons and tons and tons
Speaker 3: of money. And that's kind of how the ball got
Speaker 3: rolling on these mega mergers, because these companies acquired so
Speaker 3: much debt. So it's just funny to think about how
Speaker 3: in order for them to all try to kill Netflix.
Speaker 3: Netflix still is the top contender, and now a lot
Speaker 3: of these studios they're making money by doing what they
Speaker 3: were doing before they launched their own streaming services and
Speaker 3: licensing their content to Netflix. Like some of their older content.
Speaker 3: So it's just an interesting thing to think about. But
Speaker 3: when it comes to the merits on Bob Bonta's side,
Speaker 3: Bob Bonta in this op ed claims this has nothing
Speaker 3: to do with streaming, and I think, just on a
Speaker 3: straight argument, you cannot argue that paramount plus merging with
Speaker 3: HBO Max creates a monopoly because it is a small
Speaker 3: percentage of the market that's out there for streaming. But
Speaker 3: when you talk about the aspect that Bob Bonta says
Speaker 3: is the crux of his case, which is it's that
Speaker 3: you're merging the movie studios and now there are fewer
Speaker 3: movie studios and there's less competition as to what's getting
Speaker 3: made and what's getting released. Maybe there is something there.
Speaker 3: As we have seen with all these kinds of mega mergers,
Speaker 3: they do lead to job losses. Of course, they get
Speaker 3: rid of different kinds of redundancies. We've seen it over
Speaker 3: and over and over again. And it's so funny how
Speaker 3: some of these mega mergers are now like going out
Speaker 3: on the other end where Comcast is trying to sell
Speaker 3: off NBC and Universal after you know, they made that
Speaker 3: massive mega merger and bought it from GM. It's it's
Speaker 3: been an interesting time to just observe the entertainment business.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there may be some legitimate concerns, but what
Speaker 3: do you do here with this ultimatum where because of
Speaker 3: and I don't need to go into like the intricacies
Speaker 3: of this deal, but here's what you need to know
Speaker 3: based on how this deal was struck. For Paramount to
Speaker 3: buy Warner Brothers, they have to finish the transaction by
Speaker 3: October first, or they start paying fees like seven million
Speaker 3: dollars a month, which can definitely destroy the deal entirely.
Speaker 3: If that starts lowering the share price of both companies,
Speaker 3: what have you. I'm not a business and tech person,
Speaker 3: but this is what I have seen and read and
Speaker 3: heard from every other people talking about this. And so
Speaker 3: that is why the new ultimatum that David Ellison has
Speaker 3: put down on specifically Bonta, but it's not just Bonta.
Speaker 3: There are eleven or twelve state attorneys general also filing
Speaker 3: this lawsuit is if you don't settle with us and
Speaker 3: drop the suit and let this mega merger go forward,
Speaker 3: we're going to, as so many other companies have in
Speaker 3: the state of California, leave one of the oldest and
Speaker 3: large studios in Hollywood is threatening to leave, and billionaires
Speaker 3: love spite, they might just do it, even though it
Speaker 3: will cost a ton of money, just based on spite.
Speaker 3: And of course this is all happening upon the backdrop
Speaker 3: of California, specifically Los Angeles losing so much film business. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean, you want to talk about how we now
Speaker 3: celebrate this tax credit program that should have been re
Speaker 3: upped in the state of California many years ago, that hey,
Speaker 3: we're getting nine new projects that are coming to California
Speaker 3: with this tax credit. Nine seems kind of low. Also,
Speaker 3: it was really funny if you watch the rap that
Speaker 3: I have on the Newsplitz for this piece, It's like,
Speaker 3: here are the projects coming to California. A TV reboot
Speaker 3: of Clueless and a reboot of The Rockford Files, And
Speaker 3: it's like, wow, there really are no original ideas left
Speaker 3: in the studios in Hollywood, the big ones. There's plenty
Speaker 3: of original ideas with the young people, and you look
Speaker 3: at obsession and back rooms, and there is a bright
Speaker 3: future for the small independent producer. But things are changing
Speaker 3: very rapidly in this industry, and this fight going on
Speaker 3: certainly doesn't help because there are a lot of issues
Speaker 3: that the California government that Los Angeles, California, Sacramento are
Speaker 3: just straight up not addressing.
Speaker 1: And tax credits one of them.
Speaker 3: We need to be as competitive as the other states,
Speaker 3: but there are so many other things. The permitting, the
Speaker 3: mandatory permits for street closures and police you have to hire,
Speaker 3: what have you. LA is not super friendly to film
Speaker 3: production and nearly as much as they should be. But
Speaker 3: dare I say this isn't even just an LA or
Speaker 3: a California problem anymore. The alarm should have been sounded
Speaker 3: by all the studios, by all the unions, by all
Speaker 3: the players involved. When Marvel moved Pinewood Studios to the UK.
Speaker 3: I just went to go see that Spider Man movie,
Speaker 3: just like everybody else. And you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: the streets of New York City weren't shot in New
Speaker 3: York City. They were shot in Glasgow. So I guess
Speaker 3: Spider Man was at Fringefest. They were shot there. And
Speaker 3: you're wondering why I thought Atlanta was like this haven
Speaker 3: they've shot all the movies there. Well, this is the
Speaker 3: part of the story that nobody really wants to talk
Speaker 3: about because the electeds certainly won't talk about it because
Speaker 3: when the electeds come out, whether it's Karen Bass or
Speaker 3: Rick Chaves bur or Gavin Newsom with this is what's
Speaker 3: going to save the film in the television industry, they
Speaker 3: do it in consultation with the film and television unions.
Speaker 3: And I am saying this as a union member, a
Speaker 3: dues paying member of SAG after the unions are part
Speaker 3: of the problem, and that is why so much production
Speaker 3: is going to the UK and going to Canada. It's
Speaker 3: not so much for the tax shelter, it's to avoid
Speaker 3: the union rules and getting projects flip union what have you,
Speaker 3: because the costs have gotten so unbelievably expensive and not
Speaker 3: having any wiggle room to deal with the realities of
Speaker 3: budgets right now is only going to cause more projects
Speaker 3: to flee, not only Los Angeles, not only California, but
Speaker 3: these United States. I'd love to open up the phones
Speaker 3: right now. I'm sure a lot of people have a
Speaker 3: lot of thoughts about this. Eight hundred two two two
Speaker 3: five two two two one eight hundred two two two
Speaker 3: five two two two. Paramount has an ultimatum, Bob Bonta,
Speaker 3: drop your lawsuit or we're leaving the state of California.
Speaker 1: What say you?
Speaker 3: Are you on Bonta's side, Are you on Paramount side?
Speaker 3: What do you think about this mega merger and the
Speaker 3: lawsuit blocking it? Give us a call eight hundred two
Speaker 3: two two five two two two one, eight hundred two
Speaker 3: two two five two two two.
Speaker 1: You can also.
Speaker 3: Email us at Randy Wang Radio at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC.
Speaker 1: It's the News.
Speaker 3: Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk radio seven ninety KABC.
Speaker 3: You can email us at Randy Wang Radio at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com, and you can give us a call at
Speaker 3: eight hundred two two two five two two two one.
Speaker 3: Eight hundred two two two five two two two. Carry
Speaker 3: rights in at Randy Wang Radio at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: Paramount Seriously, Yeah, as if Tom klue Cruise is willing
Speaker 3: to relocate, Yeah, probably not. In case you're not gonna
Speaker 3: go to deadline and read Bob Bonta's op ed, well,
Speaker 3: we could go ahead and read it for you. Let's
Speaker 3: hear what Bob Bonta has to say in his own
Speaker 3: words as to why he's not backing down despite Paramount
Speaker 3: pictures threatening to move out of the state. Of California
Speaker 3: by October if they don't get this mega.
Speaker 1: Merger to buy Warner Brothers.
Speaker 3: Despite the spin you may have heard in recent weeks,
Speaker 3: the lawsuit my colleagues and I have filed challenging the
Speaker 3: paramount sky Dance and Warner Brothers Discovery merger isn't about
Speaker 3: trusting the intentions of one company or one man. It
Speaker 3: isn't about trusting that CBS News and CNN will remain
Speaker 3: independent and credible under one umbrella. I never understood what
Speaker 3: was so like is so scary about, Oh no, CNN
Speaker 3: and CBS might merge. Do you know how many news
Speaker 3: outlets there are out there? This also isn't about the
Speaker 3: future of string Also, NBC News and MSNBC were both
Speaker 3: under the same operation and they didn't you know, they
Speaker 3: had multiple channels and multiple news people. But whatever, This
Speaker 3: isn't about the future of streaming. This lawsuit is about
Speaker 3: anti trust law. It is a straight up anti trust
Speaker 3: enforcement case, one that is very cut and dry, one
Speaker 3: that seeks to prevent the long term structural impact from
Speaker 3: loss of competition. I just realized I'm starting to do
Speaker 3: a Rob Bonta impression, and I shouldn't do that. But
Speaker 3: it's definitely something that I could do. Because I've heard
Speaker 3: a lot of this guy for quite a while. He's
Speaker 3: full of cliche. Every type of leadership is about meeting
Speaker 3: the moment and rising to the occasion, and this is
Speaker 3: what's required, and so we're stepping up and getting it done.
Speaker 3: This case is one that seeks to prevent the long
Speaker 3: term structural impact from the loss of competition, an impact
Speaker 3: that can't be remedied with a few, one off, piecemeal promises.
Speaker 3: So while others may try to flip the script cliche
Speaker 3: and distract from the facts, I will lay out the
Speaker 3: truth of this case. The proposed merger, the largest in
Speaker 3: Hollywood history, would combine two Hollywood Titans and create an
Speaker 3: illegal level of concentration in three markets, film distribution for
Speaker 3: wide release films, anticipated blockbuster film distribution, and cable TV. Well,
Speaker 3: cable TV's going away, kiddos. Cable TV is a house
Speaker 3: of cards, and unfortunately, the more cord cutting that happens
Speaker 3: and the more a la carte that people get, and
Speaker 3: it is a very generational thing. There are people that
Speaker 3: will not give up their cable no matter what. And
Speaker 3: then you get to my generation, and there are people
Speaker 3: that will never ever ever get cable. But you ever
Speaker 3: wonder what goes into your cable bill? You know why
Speaker 3: you have to pay for channel Why you can't just
Speaker 3: pick the channels that you would watch, Why you have
Speaker 3: to buy packages, because that's how those other channels exist.
Speaker 1: There are not enough.
Speaker 3: People who would watch the golf channel to pay for
Speaker 3: the infrastructure of the golf channel. Same can be said
Speaker 3: for the tennis channel as well. You get to pay
Speaker 3: your one hundred plus dollars a month to subsidize all
Speaker 3: the channels that you're not watching, just to get the
Speaker 3: channels that you are watching. Just something to think about, Okay,
Speaker 3: so let's keep going. This is Bob Bonta's op ed
Speaker 3: in Deadline, trying to explain his position as to why
Speaker 3: he is still looking to block this merger from Paramount
Speaker 3: Skydance buying HBO Max, the resulting TV behemoth with control
Speaker 3: one third of theatrical motion picture distribution and nearly one
Speaker 3: third of basic cable channels, including fifty of the most
Speaker 3: popular cable channels. Cable channels are going away. I mean,
Speaker 3: here's how you know cable is such a thing of
Speaker 3: the past. I like a lot of people in my
Speaker 3: generation spent many years watching The Daily Show with John Stewart,
Speaker 3: who is now back on the air one day a
Speaker 3: week and the other days a week. It's entertaining, but
Speaker 3: you know, the John Stewart one is the big money piece.
Speaker 3: And the Daily Show airs at eleven o'clock Eastern, and
Speaker 3: it also airs at eleven o'clock Pacific. What do they
Speaker 3: have on at eight o'clock Pacific? That would be eleven
Speaker 3: o'clock Eastern in you know, on Comedy Central, probably repeats
Speaker 3: of the Office or something else. Sometimes the Daily Show
Speaker 3: puts out John Stewart's monologue, which is like he go
Speaker 3: on for twenty minutes. They no longer are bound by
Speaker 3: like they definitely are like we're doing a podcast, but
Speaker 3: it's on TV. Because his monologue will go twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five minutes, when typically it's like, you go ten minutes,
Speaker 3: commercial break, what have you, and then his interview will
Speaker 3: go on for a half hour. I don't know what
Speaker 3: actually makes it to the air because I had not
Speaker 3: watched a single episode of the Daily Show on television
Speaker 3: in many, many years. I, like many people that watch
Speaker 3: the Daily Show, watch it on YouTube, and it comes
Speaker 3: out on YouTube before it comes out on Paramount Plus,
Speaker 3: and it comes out on YouTube before it even airs
Speaker 3: on cable television, So owning fifty of the most popular
Speaker 3: cable channels not really, in my opinion, that big of
Speaker 3: a deal. Let's continue with Bob Bunte's open letter. It
Speaker 3: would be particularly harmful to the market for anticipated top
Speaker 3: grossing films also known as anticipated blockbusters, such as The
Speaker 3: Last Mission Impossible movie which I could not finish, I
Speaker 3: got super confused and I couldn't remember what happened in
Speaker 3: the Last One, and a Minecraft movie. The merger would
Speaker 3: give just four distributors control of more than ninety percent
Speaker 3: of these films. Although let's all remember two of the
Speaker 3: biggest films of this year were little independent productions with
Speaker 3: small budgets, so the film industry is going to be
Speaker 3: okay regardless how many mega studios there are. That is
Speaker 3: a big deal because blockbusters have a massive production budgets
Speaker 3: and account for eighty eight percent a box office revenue
Speaker 3: for films released over the past four years. These films
Speaker 3: get more people out of their homes into the movie theater,
Speaker 3: unless you're he man reminding them of why they love
Speaker 3: going to the movies in the first place. Oh, stop
Speaker 3: getting all poetic, bonta. Let's talk about why all this matters.
Speaker 3: Concentration in these markets would mean less competition. Less competition
Speaker 3: will ultimately result in higher prices. The movie theater price
Speaker 3: is going to get any more expensive, lower content quality
Speaker 3: and fewer Well, already a lot of the studios are
Speaker 3: realizing we need more quality over quantity. Marvel realized they
Speaker 3: put out way too much stuff, way too many TV shows,
Speaker 3: way too many movies, and less is more. Movie theaters,
Speaker 3: cable TV distributors, and audiences on every sofa and every
Speaker 3: movie seat in the US would feel the impact of this.
Speaker 1: On lawful merger.
Speaker 3: Possibly, But again, you're also competing with this whole other world.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was a pioneer in this world when
Speaker 3: there was no money in it. But do you know
Speaker 3: how much all of these studios are now paying for podcasts,
Speaker 3: which I've never thought about. Like, that's why, you know,
Speaker 3: we're starting to branch out of the YouTube world. We're
Speaker 3: just realizing that that's where the audiences are, and that's
Speaker 3: where everything is moving towards. You know, there's no reason
Speaker 3: to just be doing something.
Speaker 1: Over the radio.
Speaker 3: We need to be everywhere, all at once. But you
Speaker 3: know that things are getting kind of insane when these
Speaker 3: big mega studios are offering mega contracts to.
Speaker 1: Niche podcasts.
Speaker 3: So what was just announced that Disney and Hulu just
Speaker 3: entered a mega deal with iHeart, the other radio company.
Speaker 3: You want to talk about mega mergers, You want to
Speaker 3: talk about market consolidation. While there's only three radio companies.
Speaker 3: Really there's iHeart, there's Cumulus my company, and there's Odyssey.
Speaker 3: And it hasn't worked out great for a whole lot
Speaker 3: of people. So I do understand that aspect of it.
Speaker 3: But Disney just made a mega deal to put pod
Speaker 3: Meets World, the boy meets World recap podcast on Disney Plus.
Speaker 3: It is a fascinating world that we're in right now.
Speaker 3: Netflix made this huge deal to put so many shows
Speaker 3: on video podcasts on their streaming platform, including a show
Speaker 3: BUTP with Brian Williams, a show hosted by Pete Davidson,
Speaker 3: and The Breakfast Club is now on Netflix, which it
Speaker 3: means I guess they're not on YouTube anymore. And they're
Speaker 3: doing that because the movie studios aren't just competing with
Speaker 3: television and streamers, they're also competing with the YouTube world,
Speaker 3: and they're competing with podcasts and video podcasts and video
Speaker 3: podcasts have a much lower production cost than a lot
Speaker 3: of the other stuff that's out there, and it's capturing
Speaker 3: a lot of eyeballs. I'm taping a video podcast right
Speaker 3: now as they do this show on the radio, because
Speaker 3: I think that this has a little more life if
Speaker 3: I put it out on the YouTube's and it does,
Speaker 3: it has a different kind of reach. So I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna put this out there into the ether. Paramount, Fox, HBO, Disney,
Speaker 3: you want to buy my stuff. We're starting to grow
Speaker 3: a little bit of an audience. We're starting to get
Speaker 3: a little fire. Okay, it might be about five years
Speaker 3: too early. We're not in that category of pod meats world,
Speaker 3: but maybe someday we will be.
Speaker 1: Maybe some day we will be.
Speaker 3: Take for example, we're going back to Bob Bont's Letter
Speaker 3: Warner Brothers Minecraft and Paramount Skuiddance's Latest Mission Impossible, which
Speaker 3: both were released in April and May last year. If
Speaker 3: the two companies had already merged, they would have released
Speaker 3: these mega hits back to back.
Speaker 1: No, they wouldn't.
Speaker 3: The attentions or spans a week short Spider Man does
Speaker 3: number one two weeks in a row. But for the
Speaker 3: most part, like every month, you got to have a
Speaker 3: new studio release out there.
Speaker 1: So I don't know about that one, or would they
Speaker 1: been pushed out?
Speaker 3: Would they both receive massive marketing budgets or one take
Speaker 3: a back seat? Oh yes, the marketing budgets which effectively
Speaker 3: double the cost of a movie with the production budgets
Speaker 3: for each have stayed the same or what had been
Speaker 3: cut down? We can't know the answers. But these are
Speaker 3: the kinds of concerning questions with industry wide impacts that
Speaker 3: our lawsuit intends to prevent. All Right, the more I
Speaker 3: hear Bob Bont's arguments, the more I think he doesn't
Speaker 3: have much of a case.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and.
Speaker 3: Distribution maybe, and again I do understand, and I'm really, really,
Speaker 3: really not cool with how many jobs get lost in
Speaker 3: these mega mergers. But this is to use a term
Speaker 3: that the I don't even think the kids use it anymore,
Speaker 3: weak sauce. Competition is core to a thriving economy. It
Speaker 3: incentivizes companies to produce their best work, to offer fair prices,
Speaker 3: and to ensure that companies succeed based on what they offer,
Speaker 3: not what backdoor deals they can land connections they can
Speaker 3: lean on, or because they're unlawfully manipulating the market and
Speaker 3: trampled over competitors, leaving consumers with just one and satisfying option. Well,
Speaker 3: Bob Bonta, you're the Attorney General of the state of California.
Speaker 3: If you don't like monopolies and you don't like monopolistic practices,
Speaker 3: I don't see you going after Pacific Guests and Electric
Speaker 3: I don't see you going after so Cal Edison and
Speaker 3: all the manipulation of the market that they're doing.
Speaker 1: Just something to think about.
Speaker 3: When company scheme to cut competition, costs go up, choices
Speaker 3: go down, our economy suffers, and everyday Americans are paying
Speaker 3: more for less. That's why we have anti trust laws,
Speaker 3: laws that propose that this proposed merger violates. Right now,
Speaker 3: Paramounta and Warner Brothers are spearheading a public relations campaign
Speaker 3: to spin a narrative that is simply false. They would
Speaker 3: have you believe that this is purely politics.
Speaker 1: It kind of is. It's not. And by the way,
Speaker 1: you know how it is.
Speaker 3: Because Bob Bontas started doing a media tour, including going
Speaker 3: on with Kara Swisher to talk about this lawsuit and
Speaker 3: even she's like, I don't know about this. Instead, the
Speaker 3: judge reviewed our case, saw the merits of our arguments,
Speaker 3: and offered a temporary restraining order to block the merger.
Speaker 3: If this was about politics, Paramount and Warner Brothers would
Speaker 3: have not agreed to pause the merger until a judge
Speaker 3: makes a final decision until next June, rather than go
Speaker 3: through the preliminary injunction hearings that were likely to go
Speaker 3: the same way as the temporar restraining order in our favor.
Speaker 3: Paramount and Warner Brothers see the writing on the wall
Speaker 3: that they will lose in a court of law, so
Speaker 3: they are resorting to the court of public opinion. They
Speaker 3: want to talk about anything but the facts of this case,
Speaker 3: to twist the narrative, to try to confuse, conflate, and
Speaker 3: convince you that this is about politics, the news, or
Speaker 3: the future of streaming, when they know perfectly well it
Speaker 3: is not. When our lawsuit makes crystal clear that it's
Speaker 3: not as disingenuous as it may be, they are welcome
Speaker 3: to do so. In the meantime, we'll be telling the
Speaker 3: truth in fighting our case, fighting for American audiences, filmmakers, writers, creatives,
Speaker 3: production crews, and small businesses in actual court and we
Speaker 3: intend to win.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, there you go.
Speaker 3: It was Bob Banta's op ed in Deadline defending his
Speaker 3: stance on continuing with this lawsuit to block the merger
Speaker 3: of Paramount Skydance buying Warner Brothers. The news that David
Speaker 3: Ellison made to was threatening that if Bob Bonta and
Speaker 3: the other Attorneys general don't drop this lawsuit by October first,
Speaker 3: Paramount Studios is going to leave the state of California.
Speaker 3: Will they actually go through with it? Will Bonta back down?
Speaker 1: Sure? Sounds like a cliffhanger to me.
Speaker 3: It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio
Speaker 3: seven ninety KABC. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang
Speaker 3: on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. Seven ninety KABC welcomes
Speaker 3: Boy Georgian Culture Club with special guests Betty Who at
Speaker 3: the Pacific Amphitheater on September sixth. Tickets are on sale
Speaker 3: now at pacamp dot com, but right now calling number
Speaker 3: nine at one eight at eight seven ninety five two
Speaker 3: Tube two gets a pair of tickets to the show.
Speaker 3: This is a postfair concert. Tickets furnished by the Pacific amphitheater.
Speaker 3: Good luck dialing.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the phones and go to David in Whittier.
Speaker 2: David, Hello, Brandy good Man. Okay, So Rob Bonta couldn't
Speaker 2: be trusted with my grandma family. God bless her. She's
Speaker 2: in heaven. And here's the deal. He is the biggest shist.
Speaker 2: I want to use our con artist Liar Liar, Liar
Speaker 2: pants on fire knows this red as a jurist on fire.
Speaker 2: We need to find one of those slogans like where's
Speaker 2: the beef that was so effective during the Mondale Reagan
Speaker 2: campaign to go at him, sanctuary shitter guy, he's anti
Speaker 2: law enforcement, can't be trusted worth of Tenny.
Speaker 3: Well, you're totally right about that, and that's part of
Speaker 3: the problem here is Rob Bonta is completely untrustworthy.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call.
Speaker 3: Rob Bonta has the association with the Dong family and
Speaker 3: spending five hundred thousand dollars of campaign money in a
Speaker 3: deposition to make sure that he had nothing to do
Speaker 3: with the Shane Tau corruption case with his biggest benefactor,
Speaker 3: the Dong family. You have all the money that Bob
Speaker 3: Bonte has taken for the tribal casinos to uniratally go
Speaker 3: after cardhouses. There are all kinds of strange things that
Speaker 3: Bob Banta has done at the Attorney General's office. They
Speaker 3: call into question any thing that he does, Which why
Speaker 3: the rumor that's out there that he's doing all of
Speaker 3: this to help out Netflix.
Speaker 1: It's not impossible.
Speaker 3: Now that being said, there are eleven other attorney generals
Speaker 3: that are also joining in on this lawsuit.
Speaker 1: So is that just all for a partisan politics.
Speaker 3: It might be law fair works on both sides, I guess,
Speaker 3: But I don't think we're getting a resolution to this
Speaker 3: anytime soon. It doesn't seem that either side is going
Speaker 3: to be backing down off of the Bantas and them
Speaker 3: saying that we're suing to stop this merger. And does
Speaker 3: Paramount really go through with it? Does Paramount really go
Speaker 3: ahead and move out of Los Angeles and move out
Speaker 3: of California. If that's the case, where do they go Well,
Speaker 3: considering how much of Paramount Skydance is owned by the Saudis,
Speaker 3: maybe the news movie studio will.
Speaker 1: Be in the Middle East. Just something to think about.
Speaker 3: Hey, I got tons of content for you on the
Speaker 3: YouTube channel, so you need something to watch, you need
Speaker 3: something to listen to. Go to Johnny don't Like dot
Speaker 3: com or Randywang Radio dot com for the John Phillips Show,
Speaker 3: video segments of this show, and the Accountability Podcast. Check
Speaker 3: it all out. Johnny don't Like dot com or Randy
Speaker 3: Wang Radio dot com. We'll see you tomorrow for another
Speaker 3: news blitz.
Speaker 1: See you