OLD AND BUSTED:

Cable television today already reaches into 14.5 million American homes and is likely to spread with hurricane force in the early 1980’s. Industry experts expect 20 to 26 million cable subscribers by the end of 1981, with cabling available to fully 50 percent of U.S. households. Things will move even faster once the shift is made from copper wires to cheap fiber optic systems that send light pulsing through hair-thin fibers. And like short-run printing presses or Xerox copiers, cable de-massifies the audience, carving it into multiple mini-publics. Moreover, cable systems can be designed for two-way communication so that subscribers may not merely watch programs but actively call various services.

* * * * * * * *

All these different developments have one thing in common: they slice the mass television public into segments, and each slice not only increases our cultural diversity, it cuts deeply into the power of the networks that have until now so completely dominated our imagery. John O’Connor, the perceptive critic of The New York Times, sums it up simply. “One thing is certain,” he writes. “Commercial television will no longer be able to dictate either what is watched or when it is watched.”

What appears on the surface to be a set of unrelated events turns out to be a wave of closely interrelated changes sweeping across the media horizon from newspapers and radio at one end to magazines and television at the other. The mass media are under attack. New, de-massified media are proliferating, challenging—and sometimes even replacing—the mass media that were so dominant in all Second Wave societies.

The Third Wave thus begins a truly new era—the age of the de-massified media.

—Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave: The Classic Study of Tomorrow, 1980.

The new hotness? Scoop: Warner Bros. Discovery in talks to merge with Paramount Global.

Why it matters: The combination would create a news and entertainment behemoth that would likely trigger further industry consolidation.

• Zaslav also has spoken to Shari Redstone, who owns Paramount’s parent company, about a deal.
• WBD’s market value was around $29 billion as of Wednesday, while Paramount’s was just over $10 billion, so any merger would not be of equals.

Details: The meeting between Zaslav and Bakish, which sources say lasted several hours, took place at Paramount’s headquarters in Times Square.

• The duo discussed ways their companies could complement one another. For example, each company’s main streaming service — Paramount+ and Max — could merge to better rival Netflix and Disney+.
• It’s unclear whether WBD would buy Paramount Global or its parent company, National Amusements Inc. (NAI), but a source familiar with the situation says that both options are on the table.
• WBD is said to have hired bankers to explore the deal.

Between the lines: The deal could drive substantial synergies.

That’s in addition to all of the media companies that Disney owns:

Disney owns and operates various business units, including major television broadcasting and cable television networks and entertainment networks. This includes:

• American Broadcasting Company (ABC)
• Freeform
• National Geographic Channel
• ESPN (Disney owns 80% stake)
• A&E (50% equity holding with Hearst Corporation)
• The History Channel (50% equity holding with Hearst Corporation)
• Lifetime (50% equity holding with Hearst Corporation)
• Fusion TV
• NBC Universal
• Disney Junior
• Disney Radio
• Disney Channel
• ABC Family

Streaming Services Owned by Disney

Streaming TV is the latest way of watching content across many devices. There are four top streaming services and Disney owns 3 out of the top 4 streaming services that are commonly used by consumers. Its recent takeover of 21st Century Fox has given the company a significant share in several streaming services.

Disney offers direct-to-consumer streaming services through the following media:

• Disney+
• Starz+
• ESPN+
• Hulu
• Hotstar
• ABC+ and more

As old media looks for a return to the limited and monolithic days of old, it’s a reminder that on the Internet, abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives. Somebody should write a book about the reasons why.