NETFLIX BUYING WARNER WILL CREATE STREAMING COLOSSUS, BEAT TRUMP PLAN TO CONTROL CNN

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Bernama-Sputnik/RIA Novosti) -- Netflix's purchase of Warner Bros. could create a streaming giant unlike anything the world has seen and keep the Warner-owned liberal news network CNN from falling into the hands of an ally of US President Donald Trump, analysts told Sputnuk/RIA Novosti.

Already the world's largest paid streaming service with more than 300 million subscribers, Netflix announced Friday it will pay almost US$83 billion in cash-and-stock to acquire Warner, one of US's most storied film studios which also owns the HBO Max streaming service.

"This is a watershed moment that dramatically changes the balance of power in media and streaming, creating a global content and distribution giant with a library and scale that will be extremely hard to replicate," Adam Sarhan, founder of markets advisory Sarhan Capital, told Sputnik/RIA Novosti.

While the enormous financial rewards and other incentives for the stakeholders cannot be understated, the gargantuan deal, at the same time, could be a nightmare for regulators and competitors, Sarhan added.

"This buyout raises regulatory and political scrutiny and will accelerate across the industry consolidation as it puts enormous pressure on smaller and legacy players that now have to compete with a vertically integrated platform owning both the pipeline and a deep catalogue of premium intellectual property," he said.

The deal will go through once a separate division is set up to run the CNN, TNT, and Discovery channels, which are currently part of Warner Bros. Discovery, officials from Netflix and Warner said.

This suggests that Netflix itself will not be owning or running CNN, Ramesh Mohan, an economics professor at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, who has been studying the deal, said. But it also means the liberal news network will stay independent and out of reach of Trump allies, such as conservative billionaire Larry Ellison, Mohan added.

"For months, there was a palpable quiet in the liberal media industry on whether CNN, the standard bearer for the industry, will be forced to capitulate to Ellison," Mohan told Sputnuk/RIA Novosti.

It now appears that this will not be the case, and if there is a political angle to the Netflix-Warner deal, this is it, the professor added.

Ellison, co-founder of US database giant Oracle, provided much of the US$8 billion required by Skydance, the company belonging to his son David, to buy Paramount earlier this year. Like Warner, Paramount was a major name in Hollywood and, before merging with Skydance, directly owned CBS, another left-leaning news network similar to CNN.

Under the merged Paramount Skydance holding company, where David Ellison became chairman and CEO, significant changes were made to the editorial leadership and news direction of CBS. It made the network much friendlier in its reporting of the Trump administration.

Following the Paramount and CBS takeover, Warner Bros. Discovery and CNN had been the Ellisions' next target until the surprise deal was announced by Netflix on Friday.

--BERNAMA-SPUTNIK/RIA NOVOSTI