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Will Zaz’s Prayers Be Answered?

Media C.E.O.s are hoping against hope that Trump 2.0 will usher in a new M&A permission structure allowing them to, among other things, finally offload those linear TV assets they should have bailed on 10 years ago, like Rupert did. But, as LightShed Partners’ Rich Greenfield argues, nothing is easy and everything takes forever.

David Zaslav
Legacy media executives have been stuck in the unfortunate position of managing linear TV’s decline while competing against much larger streaming companies, and Zaslav isn’t alone in believing that the best way to compete in this new world is to get bigger. Photo: Michael Buckner/Variety/Getty Images
John Ourand
November 12, 2024

David Zaslav seemed to be speaking for an entire sports media aristocracy when he predicted, during last week’s earnings call, that the incoming Trump administration could “offer a pace of change and an opportunity for consolidation that may be quite different.” But was the Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. just doing some manifesting, or will Trump 2.0 actually pave the way for more consolidation?