Netflix may have announced a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, but Paramount isn’t giving up without a fight as it launches a hostile takeover bid.

J. Christopher Hamilton, assistant professor in the Newhouse School of Public Communications, says that underneath the competing valuations and political maneuvering there are deeper structural forces that have been reshaping the entertainment industry for decades.

Hamilton offers the following analysis of the balance of narrative power in today’s media landscape.

Reframing the Debate

“In the flurry of commentary around Netflix’s proposed $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, most observers have fallen back on familiar talking points: more consolidation, shrinking theatrical windows, reduced consumer choice, the slow death of legacy institutions. These concerns aren’t new. They surface every time the media landscape rearranges itself, Disney/Fox, Comcast/NBCU, Paramount/Skydance, Warner Bros/Discovery, AT&T/Warner, and while not inaccurate, they distract from the deeper structural forces shaping both the business and the culture of entertainment today.

“The truth is this: The sky didn’t start falling last week, or with the last handful of mega-mergers. It fell more than two decades ago. Deregulation, consolidation and the rise of vertically integrated conglomerates have already reshaped the media ecosystem beyond recognition. The “collapse” of theatrical or the decline of linear television was baked into the system long before Netflix and Warner Bros. began negotiating term sheets. Theatrical, as we once knew it, is a dead man walking, no different from the ad-supported cable model that preceded it. But saying that aloud violates the industry’s unwritten code, so we continue to pretend the media landscape hasn’t already been redesigned into something far more precarious and far less pluralistic.

“So instead of reacting to this merger as a sudden disruption, we should see it as an aftershock of a much older seismic shift. If we’re honest, there haven’t been many recent victories for those fighting to preserve a media ecosystem rooted in public interest, authenticity, or originality. Evaluating this deal requires setting aside talking-head clichés about EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization], antitrust theories or ownership caps and asking a more fundamental question: What preserves balance?

“Because at its core, this merger isn’t just about combining libraries, streamers or overhead. It’s about the delicate equilibrium of narrative power, the tension between the superpowers that shape what we watch and the everyday people who absorb those stories. Even in a chaotic, hyper-fragmented media environment, shaped by ideology, algorithms and corporate agendas, we still benefit from having multiple strong centers of influence whose competing incentives keep one another in check. Imperfect as it is, that tension prevents any single worldview or editorial stance from dominating the cultural narrative.

“History and literature offer the metaphor. The Hatfields and McCoys locked themselves in a destructive feud, but the rivalry itself created a kind of equilibrium, neither side could completely overwhelm the other.

“This dynamic mirrors today’s media moment. If Warner Bros. were absorbed by a conglomerate whose news and entertainment divisions have increasingly aligned around a singular editorial vantage point, the balance of influence in American media would tilt sharply in one direction. That possibility has been openly discussed and even signaled by some potential acquirers. Netflix, by contrast, is not ideologically neutral, but its global footprint, diverse subscriber base and commercial incentives force it to program across a wider range of perspectives. It is inherently constrained by the breadth of the audience it must serve, not the uniformity of one.

“So while the Netflix–Warner deal raises legitimate concerns about scale and cultural power, it may also prevent a more lopsided and monolithic media reality, one where a single ideological orientation becomes disproportionately strong. Netflix acquiring Warner does not eliminate the risks of consolidation, but it avoids a scenario in which one faction becomes so dominant that the cultural conversation tilts irreversibly toward a single worldview.”