Jason Hall

We didn't really hit on something important about that AT&T deal for Time Warner in 2018.

It paid $85 billion.

The quarter before WBD was spun out as a standalone company, AT&T took a $25 billion goodwill impairment.

It definitely feels like a cursed asset.

But I think the difference, really, is that both of those two prior deals we talked about, these were disparate businesses and assets.

that were really just empire building.

These weren't integrating things that worked well together, like we're talking about with Netflix, where this is obviously part of their core business, and it's additive to that, instead of empire building.

Let's be honest, empire building, royalty are the only ones that enjoy the riches.

In businesses, that's the executives and the grand viziers, which are the M&A bankers.

I also want to push back just a little bit on the Disney-Fox situation.

Frankly, I don't think that's gone great.

There's definitely been benefits getting the 21st Century Fox.

There's value there.

Hulu, that's been probably the greatest value there.

But the Fox side of that business, they're making about half as many movies as they were since before the acquisition.

Then think about the linear TV challenges, they've eroded a lot of that value.

I think this for Netflix is more like what we saw with Activision Blizzard during its most successful period as a standalone company.

It included a ton of M&A, acquiring game studios and integrating them into the business.

This is a big deal.

I think one of the reasons Netflix has decided to do it now versus doing this in the past, Ted Sarandos talked about, we've been a builder, not a buyer.