If a newly merged CBS/Viacom is sold to a third party, who should be Star Trek's new owners?

Word is that once CBS and Viacom are merged, they'll likely be sold to another company (see below).

Who should be the new owners of Star Trek? Apple? Amazon? Netflix?



WaPo

Vanity Fair

 

Disney. I know, they're evil and all that, but just monopolize everything already so I don't have to pay for 19 different streaming services.

 

*sound of Alex Peters frantically fundraising*

 

Monopolies do not lead to less costs, they lead to more. Once a monopoly has been established the company has free reign to squeeze their consumers dry while providing minimal service, since there's no competition left to switch to. I'd rather have half a dozen streaming services (especially if they stay easy to subscribe/unsubscribe from on a monthly basis) I can rotate between then the one service that charges me an arm and a leg and keeps its customer service minimal to pad its bottom line even further.

 

Would Disney buying CBS/Viacom create antitrust issues after all of Disney's other acquisitions?

 

Disney would have to offload ABC. Cable, streaming, film, no problem. The more the merrier. But the Feds don't allow ownership of more than one broadcast network.

 

Daniel Ives says Apple needs to buy content providers to compete with the likes of Netflix.

http://fortune.com/2019/01/14/apple-content-acquisition/

Imagine the product tie-ins if it owned the Star Trek brand.

 

Yeah, I would think a tech company like Apple is more likely to scoop up Viacom/CBS then Disney, who just spent 71 billion dollars buying Fox.

 

Oh, angels and saints preserve us!

 

Ives said Apple buying CBS/Viacom is a "medium probability."

 

May or not be Apple, some other tech company could do it instead, Amazon for example. I do think once CBS and Viacom are merged, they will be sold to a bigger player, they are one of the weaker players in the media landscape, but still have enough content to be valuable, I can see the Redstone family wanting to sell and get out of the game. I do not think it will be Disney, they do not want to run against antitrust laws and just spent a ton of money acquiring another company.

 

This is the accepted wisdom, but we've privatised things and opened them up to competition that have become fragmented, inefficient, expensive and ultimately worse.

 

The Star Trek brand is valuable. CBS/Viacom can tout how much it grew the All Access streaming service. Parrot Analytics' measurements would also show how in-demand new Trek content is globally.

 

Privatization is a different beast. It usually involves basic utilities and services, that might not be profitable if run/overseen by the government, since that usually involves the idea of equal access/coverage for all. The example I can think of is the mail service. There's a duty of the mail to deliver to everyone, even if it is in a more remote area and at the same rate. So privatization might mean that whatever companies buy it up might restructure it to be actually profitable. So for example remote areas might become more expensive to send mail to or from, because it would hurt the bottom line too much to keep the infrastructure open to regularly service these areas.

 

And you all thought the Enterprise looked too much like an Apple store already

 

Exactly the point I was going to make before I saw this comment. It's why the sale of a majority of Fox assets to Disney didn't include the actual Fox broadcasting network - the FCC frowns upon that sort of thing.

 

Merchant & Ivory.

Kor

 

Comcast, though it would essentially kill their Battlestar Galactica reboot plans.

 

They own NBC, so same issue as Disney.

 

I like Netflix & Amazon for this but also HBO owning Trek would be really interesting. HBO has some great shows that stretch boundaries, it would be fascinating to see what they could do with Trek.