Two months after Skydance Media acquired Paramount in an $8 billion deal, the combined company has now set its sights on acquiring Warner Bros Discovery. David Ellison, the son of the co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who is among the richest people in the world, believes he can combine the companies and integrate them on a single technology stack. Old media companies are consolidating in a rush to achieve scale online and compete with the relative newcomer Netflix.

Paramount and Warner Bros, both storied studios founded in the age of silent movies, extended their respective empires into television with the growth of cable but despite their massive libraries of intellectual property have failed to match the rise of Netflix in the online era.

Adding Warner Bros Discovery to Paramount Skydance would potentially include television assets like CNN, TBS, and TNT. It could pre-empt a planned spinoff of cable channels and use them to bolster the Paramount+ online proposition.

A merger of Paramount+, HBO Max, and Discovery+ would create a consolidated offering with more firepower to compete with Netflix.

Netflix currently has a market capitalisation of over $500 billion, which is significantly more than the Walt Disney Company, which is valued at around $210 billion. In comparison, the creation of Paramount Skydance was valued at $28 billion. Warner Bros Discovery has a market capitalisation of around $47 billion.

No formal offer has been announced so far, and it would require regulatory approval, so the deal may not go ahead, or it could attract other bidders.

www.paramount.com
www.wbd.com

The online video platform Vimeo will be acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.38 billion in cash. Bending Spoons recently acquired Brightcove, another online video company, for $233 million and then shed around a third of its 600 or so staff. It previously acquired WeTransfer and Evernote, laying off large numbers of their staff. The Vimeo web site currently says it has over 1,200 staff, for now.

Vimeo shareholders will receive $7.85 per share in cash, a premium of over 90% over the average share price over the previous two months. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025.

“After a disciplined review of strategic alternatives, the board unanimously determined that this all-cash transaction delivers compelling, certain value to Vimeo shareholders and positions the company to accelerate its strategic roadmap as part of Bending Spoons,” said Glenn Schiffman, the chairman of Vimeo.

Bending Spoons is an Italian technology company founded in 2013 in Copenhagen but now based in Milan. They have a history of acquiring existing online platforms that have proven product-market fit, slashing headcount, aiming to improve efficiency.

“We’re looking forward to welcoming Vimeo into the Bending Spoons portfolio,” said Luca Ferrari, the co-founder and chief executive of Bending Spoons. “Vimeo is a pioneering brand in the video space, serving a passionate, global community of creators and businesses. At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together.”

Philip Moyer, the chief executive of Vimeo, said: “Luca and his team are committed to expanding our product across all segments: Self-Serve, OTT/Vimeo Streaming, and Vimeo Enterprise.”

Vimeo was founded in 2004 by Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein as a video sharing site for creators. The name Vimeo, an anagram of movie, was chosen by Lodwick as a combination of video+me.

In 2006, InterActiveCorp acquired a 51% stake in the parent company. By 2020, Vimeo was preparing to spin off from IAC and raised $150 million at a valuation of about $2.75 billion. Then in January 2021 Vimeo raised $300 million, Vimeo became a public company via a spinoff from IAC in May 2021, trading at US$47.15 per share, rising to a high of about US$58.

The share price subsequently declined. The $1.38 billion valuation implied by the acquisition represents a significantly lower value than at its peak.

Vimeo and Brightcove serve different sectors of the online video platform market but could offer potential synergies under common ownership. Vimeo focuses on creators and smaller businesses. Brightcove started out with a similar offering but has tended to serve enterprise customers.

There may be opportunities for combining or consolidating the two operations in some way, or sharing infrastructure. In any case, they have clearly both lost ground to the irrepressible rise of YouTube.

www.vimeo.com
bendingspoons.com

For the second time in a month, Netflix topped the weekly television ratings in the United Kingdom. It shows that Netflix is no longer simply an alternative to the mainstream channels, it is providing programming that directly competes with them.

The Thursday Murder Club premiered in some cinemas and a week later on Netflix. It is based on the bestseller by Richard Osman, the television producer, turned presenter, turned novelist. Featuring a cast of British stars, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie, it is the kind of cosy crime drama that would not be out of place on a public service television channel.

According to Barb data, it was watched by 6.58 million during the last week of August. That made it the most viewed programme of the week, albeit at a time of the year when audiences tend to be smaller. It may make it the first feature-length film to top the ratings in the United Kingdom this century.

It was the second week that month that Netflix topped the ratings. The first episode of season two of Wednesday achieved the same distinction, with an audience of 4.51 million.

The first episode of the Netflix show Adolescence in March became the first online programme to top the weekly ratings in the United Kingdom, with an audience of 6.45 million viewers.

An audience of 6.5 million viewers would once have been mediocre for a television programme in the United Kingdom, but in an age of fragmented viewing it is now something to celebrate.

Nevertheless, it is notable that Netflix is turning out the sort of shows that were once the preserve of broadcasters like the BBC.

www.netflix.com