AYNE 831 - Citizen AYNE: Nick Bourne

Yeah, I mean, we now see the birth of Warnemount, as it's been named.

Having got the deal with the, I think it was the 12 states or eight states, I can't remember.

It seems a threat to move out of California did actually concentrate minds.

And...

And they've effectively sealed the deal without many concessions, actually.

There's the 30 films a year, but there's not a specific budget.

So, you know, what's a film? It has to have a cinematic release concession.

And there are a few other minor concessions.

But in the end, I think they won that one.

So now attention...

It focuses on stripping out costs, synergies, and how they're going to operate as this new super studio with two global streamers which are sub-weight and how they're going to effectively muscle their way into the great aggregation battle ahead with Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube.

Well, tell me a little bit your thoughts about this aggregation battle because the more and more I think of it, the more i get not confused i get perplexed about how this is going to play out five or six moves down the table you know the more i see it mark there's people that are now setting themselves out basically as aggregators they're thinking oh if i invest in the pipes if i invest in delivery well maybe i don't even need to bid for ip because i'm going to get it anyway but We all know, you and I know, and our guest knows as well, we'll introduce in a minute, that we've been here before.

If certain bidders are allowed to think they're going to get the IP one way or another, they just don't bid aggressive.

What do you think that Paramount and Warner's merging means for all of that in the next two or three years?

Well, there are many theories about where the aggregation bottleneck actually occurs.

So the tech, we think it occurs in their business.

So for a long time, the telecom companies, obviously, and the cablecos, thought that connectivity is where the bottleneck occurs.

And so they have the power and don't need to bid for rights because everybody needs to get access to their customers.

But the IP world kind of breaks that down because it's not a physical gateway.

It's a digital gateway.

It's about how people choose where their first screen is on their TV set or other device and how the choice architecture works its way through.

So I think people recognize the aggregation bottleneck isn't necessarily connectivity.

And of course, the competition authorities are quite hot on connectivity bottlenecks.

And they're getting hotter on tech platform bottlenecks, although, of course, their power to act on that is circumscribed by the attitude of the current US administration.

But it's really about whether the bottleneck is some kind of content aggregator like YouTube is that basically operates across all systems and people want.