The Business: The Shift Coming With the DC/WB Selloff

I've posted this on its own on my social media, but this merits some commentary of my own.

AT&T selling off to Discovery is a big deal. Discovery itself is a massive corporate enterprise. It owns the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, OWN, Science, Velocity, American Heroes Channel, Destination America, Discovery Family, and more. Adding all of the Warner Media territory turns this media network into one that melds a strong documentary-based programming with more popular (including genre fiction) entertainment media into a whole whose synergy is not yet known.

For us, it's mostly on the technical end--streaming services will be merged and social presence will be blended--and a likely shift in the Warner end of things. That doesn't mean it will be an improvement, other than wholesale shutdown and dissolution of underperforming elements like DC and Rooster Teeth, and the pozzing won't end. It will shift, as cliques wage office warfare to control the house organs, but I don't expect it to end with this merger.

That doesn't mean it's all bad news. As with the mergers in OldPub, this is another example of a corpse bloating before collapsing. In this case, the corpse is OldMedia. Despite the desperate attempt to jump ship to streaming, more agile competitors will continue to outmanuever these decaying giant corpses as well as rivals with superior support from the witches that conjured them from nothing, the ones that dominate the banking system and government agencies.

It's not going to happen overnight, but that collapse will happen. Each merger is a defensive move by that segment of the Establishment to maintain hegemony without making any effective changes required to address the issues that cause their hegemony to be threatened in the first place. The real threat, therefore, is not that these people will somehow beat the insurgent upstarts, but rather that those upstarts--actually their rivals within the Establishment--turn out to be no better. New Boss, Old Boss, you get the idea.

You just don't want to be around when the giant corpses finally collapse; if you work in, or rely upon, this mess of a media business then get clear now before it crushes you. The consequences may not be flashy and dramatic, but they will be felt and echo for some time after the fact as the full effect reverberates like ripples in a pond- or aftershocks of an earthquake.

So, specific things I want to identify that matter to me and others in my niche:

• DC Comics is open to having its comics publishing shut down, issuing only reprints of proven past successes for the sole purpose of maintaining IP control. The real purpose is to farm that IP for film, television, and videogame adaptations. Past adaptations that are successful and popular will remain available. Future ones will be measured against them, and as such will be prime examples of soulless corporate hash most of the time. Why? Most people do not read, and have never read, the comics. This will be a cost-cutting measure, especially if they forgo regular print runs for Print On Demand and digital-primary distribution.
• Warner Brothers will have its underperforming productions cancelled. This is because the incoming ownership is more aligned with Mammon than Molech, so the SJW shitfests are likely to get the axe to satisfy the shareholders and investors, and pressure will be put on the production companies to clean up their act- as will DC Comics (since most of the affected productions are DC adaptations). No, I don't think Synder will get called back; sorry Synderverse fans. Instead, there will be an attempt to actually make money by being not-offensive to people with money, which are not the SJWs.
• Streaming services will be merged. Count on this being the first big move. All of the properties that Discovery will own will be put into one place, and made exclusive to its platform; no more will they rely on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, etc. as middlemen.
• Discovery will have fierce internal battles with Death Cultists for control. Watch the media trades for dueling hitpieces, as the media is often used as cutouts and proxies for factional fighting in the public square, as we see with Disney/Marvel/Lucasfilm. Part of the move here? To set up SJWs for failure, letting them think they won with all sorts of TV and film productions, then sabotaging them so they fail and pointing that out to investors and shareholders as justification for cutting them loose and blackballing them. That's right, Mammon Mobsters' greed will be why the Molekites get the axe. This is very much a Let Them Fight scenario, so get clear and get ready to pounce on whomever survives. to ensure that both sides go down.

Do not think that I find this development one where a heroic band of corporate warriors can revive a flagging enterprise. As I said above, this is a decaying corpse. The collapse is inevitable, but what it collapses upon is not. What I am suggesting is that it is possible to influence when, where, and upon what it collapses and that--to whatever extent we can--we attempt to get it away from us and ours and make it crush our enemies. Then we torch the corpse to ash and salt the remains.

What we build in its wake will be shaped--like it or not--by the nature of its collapse. Shaping the battlefield to come now is in our interests. Let's do so.