As I write this blog, Paramount Skydance is currently in the process of trying to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which means we could soon be living in a world where Paramount owns WB. Just to be clear about my perspective on this, if that happens it would be bad! Actually most corporate mergers are gross because they almost never have good outcomes for employees and customers and the only people who really want them to happen are CEOs. But this one feels more gross than usual.

At least Disney buying 21st Century Fox was something that actually made a bit of sense because A) Rupert Murdoch was the one who initiated that sale, so if Disney didn’t buy it, some other corporation was going to, and B) the Touchstone label was retired and Disney’s adult-oriented film division was in shambles by that point anyway. But Paramount and WB? Those are two very large and very similar powerhouse legacy studios with a lot of hands in the entertainment industry. Under a merger like that, one company would own both HBO and Showtime, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, Looney Tunes and Nicktoons, Rick and Morty and Beavis and Butt-Head. Even putting aside my feelings of “that seems like too many things for one company to own,” situations like this are also just a threat to film and TV creators and the artistic community at large because the more valuable IPs a company owns, the less risks they are willing to take on original ideas and the less circulation for new content in general.

Unfortunately mergers like this are kind of inevitable. The obsession that corporations have with merging with each other and acquiring one another really went into overdrive after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was a federal law in the United States that did accomplish some good things, but it was grossly oversold for its supposed benefit to smaller companies and their ability to compete more fairly in the media market. In fact that turned out to be the complete opposite of what actually happened. Yes, increased telecommunications interconnectivity and more wholesale access for newer companies were sincere efforts to increase competition in the business field, but even back then a number of smaller companies predicted and warned that facing fewer barriers to entry would neither curb market consolidation nor make their ability to compete financially with others any less difficult. That point is sharply illustrated when you look at how the amount of major media companies has shrunken from around fifty in the 1980s to ten in 1996 and half that amount a decade later.

So basically, the law was sold as being good for competition but in reality decreased competition severely. And my inner cynic thinks that these corporations were probably well aware that they were deceiving people when they enthusiastically supported Bill Clinton’s signing of the bill. Usually when CEOs become excited about something, it’s not because they made the world a better place.

Of course, American companies have been merging with each other every single decade since the 1870s, so it’s not like this is a new phenomenon. The only difference was that in those days they were usually oil, steel, gas and motor companies. It took a while for the entertainment industry to catch up, and once the monopolistic grip of the old Hollywood studio system was slipping in the sixties and seventies, it became a lot more common, because that was when companies with no connection to the film industry came to the realization that they could capitalize on the medium’s popularity by purchasing Hollywood studios (which led to things like The Coca Cola Company buying Columbia Pictures in 1982).

Just how common is this practice? Here’s a timeline of some of the big ones.

1962 – MCA acquires Universal

1966 – Gulf+Western acquires Paramount

1981 – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquires United Artists

1985 – Universal acquires the Walter Lantz cartoon library, including the rights to Woody Woodpecker and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (the Walt Disney Company would later purchase the rights to Oswald from NBCUniversal in 2006)

1985 – News Corporation acquires 20th Century Fox (later spins off their film and television library into a separate company called 21st Century Fox in 2013)

1986 – Viacom acquires MTV Networks, thereby gaining MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon

1987 – National Amusements acquires Viacom

1989 – Warner Communications acquires Time, Inc., thereby gaining HBO, Cinemax and DC Comics and forming Time Warner

1989 – Sony acquires Columbia Pictures, thereby gaining TriStar Pictures

1991 – The Comedy Channel and Ha! merge to form Comedy Central in a joint venture between HBO and Viacom

1991 – Turner acquires Hanna-Barbera

1993 – Turner acquires Castle Rock Entertainment

1994 – Turner acquires New Line Cinema

1994 – Viacom acquires Paramount

1996 – Time Warner acquires Turner, thereby gaining Hanna-Barbera, Castle Rock, New Line Cinema and the television networks CNN, TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network

1996 – The Walt Disney Company acquires Capital Cities/ABC Inc., thereby gaining the American Broadcasting Company and ESPN

1997 – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquires Orion Pictures

1997 – News Corporation and Haim Saban acquire the Family Channel and change its name to Fox Family

1998 – Sony acquires Screen Gems

1999 – Viacom and CBS Corporation merge for the first time (they later split up in 2005)

2001 – The Walt Disney Company acquires Fox Family and changes its name to ABC Family (later renamed Freeform in 2016)

2003 – Viacom gains full control of Comedy Central after purchasing HBO’s stake in the network

2004 – The Jim Henson Company sells the rights to the Muppets to the Walt Disney Company

2004 – NBCUniversal is formed after Vivendi sells 80% stake in Universal Pictures to NBC owner General Electric

2006 – UPN and The WB merge to form The CW in a joint venture between Viacom and Warner Bros.

2006 – The Walt Disney Company acquires Pixar Animation Studios

2009 – The Walt Disney Company acquires Marvel Entertainment

2009 – Viacom acquires the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2011 – Comcast acquires NBCUniversal

2012 – The Walt Disney Company acquires Lucasfilm, thereby gaining the rights to Star Wars and Indiana Jones

2012 – Lionsgate acquires Summit Entertainment

2016 – Lionsgate acquires Starz Inc.

2016 – NBCUniversal acquires DreamWorks Animation, thereby gaining the rights to Felix the Cat, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Mr. Magoo and VeggieTales as well as the Rankin/Bass and Filmation libraries

2017 – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gains full control of Epix after purchasing both Lionsgate and Paramount’s stakes in the service

2018 – The Walt Disney Company acquires 21st Century Fox, thereby gaining National Geographic, FX and a majority stake in Hulu

2018 – AT&T acquires Time Warner and renames it WarnerMedia

2019 – Viacom and CBS Corporation merge for the second time to form ViacomCBS (renamed Paramount Global in 2022)

2022 – WarnerMedia and Discovery, Inc. merge to form Warner Bros. Discovery

2022 – Amazon acquires Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, thereby gaining United Artists and Orion and changing the name of Amazon Studios to Amazon MGM Studios and the name of Epix to MGM+

2025 – Skydance acquires National Amusements and merges with Paramount Global to form Paramount Skydance

Corporations are like monsters. They often feed on smaller weaker companies and sometimes they feed on each other, but their goal is always the same: increase value as much as possible. Because all mergers and acquisitions are essentially investments and ultimately gambles that are meant to increase bottom lines. My only hope is that all the artists, writers, filmmakers, show runners and creators out there (you know, the people who are the most responsible for all the value these corporations have) continue to find ways to bring their visions to the screen despite all the nonsense and meddling they have to put up with from the greedy overlords on high. Fortunately, history has shown that the creative spirit has persevered through much more trying times than these, so I’m not worried about a lack of creativity or great art in the entertainment industry. I just think it’s important to remember that the less companies there are controlling our media, the less variety there is in terms of art and expression, the more susceptible the country’s population is to propaganda and the more we ought to actively seek out a wider variety of art and entertainment across all distribution platforms, and not just the ones owned and operated by big corporations.