After announcing an almost-$83 billion deal to buy most of Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday, Netflix’s top brass projected calm on Monday as Paramount Skydance lobbed a hostile bid to purchase all of WBD, and investors seemed to recoil at the sheer size of Netflix’s own offer.
“Today’s move was entirely expected,” Co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors at a UBS conference, brushing off Paramount’s bid just hours earlier. “We have a deal done, and we are incredibly happy with the deal. We think it’s great for our shareholders. It’s great for consumers. We think it’s a great way to create and protect jobs in the entertainment industry.” From Netflix’s perspective, Sarandos added, “We have a deal done, and we’re incredibly happy with the deal.”
Sarandos’s co-CEO, Greg Peters, then walked the audience through Netflix’s three-phase plan to wring value from Warner Bros. and HBO. If the deal goes through, he said, Netflix would turbocharge licensing opportunities, “double down” on the HBO brand, and unlock upsides from Warner Bros’ vast library of IP, which many analysts consider a “crown jewel” in the industry.
The executives’ comments came after investors sent Netflix stock tumbling down 6% in the two trading sessions since its Warner deal was announced, with some analysts blasting the $82.7 billion deal as “exorbitant” and “very risky.” Netflix stock is down more than 20% over the last six months.
Peters acknowledged that Netflix is known as a builder, not a buyer—generally developing its own intellectual property, rather than purchasing other companies’: “We haven’t done this before,” he said. But the company that started out lending DVDs by mail has pivoted several times to become the more than $400-billion behemoth now challenging Hollywood’s order.
And it’s worth noting that Netflix began streaming other companies’ content before it began producing its own programming. Its licensing operations are still vaunted in the industry, with the famous example of the legal drama Suits becoming a smash hit several years after it stopped airing on cable TV. As Peter put it: “Essentially, we are constantly in the business of evaluating various different licensing opportunities for titles and then trying to figure out, how do we maximize the value of that asset on our platform?” The Warner deal will just make official what Netflix already does, day in and day out.”
Sarandos, the executive behind the model that made “Netflix and chill” a byword for the millennial dating practice of and binging shows and movies at home, has largely refused to release movies in theaters, except to qualify for awards. At an event earlier this year, Sarandos dismissed going to the movies as “an outmoded idea for most people” and said Netflix was “saving Hollywood” with its stream-at-home model.
But on Monday he extended an olive branch to theater owners, saying of theatrical releases “We didn’t buy this company to destroy that value.” “What we are going to do with this is we’re deeply committed to releasing those movies exactly the way they’ve released those movies today,” he said at the UBS conference. “When this deal closes, we are in that business, and we’re going to do it.”
Sarandos also discussed his conversations with President Donald Trump—which Bloomberg reported over the weekend began in November.
President Trump “cares deeply about American industry, and he loves the entertainment industry,” Sarandos said. Jobs were the president’s main concern, according to Sarandos, who reeled off statistics showing that Netflix original productions employed 140,000 people between 2020 and 2024, contributing $125 billion to the U.S. economy. “We are producing in all 50 states,” he said. “We’ve used 500 independent production companies to make content for us, about roughly 1,000 original projects.”
Sarandos and Peters pointed out that Paramount’s offer might entail more job cuts, because Paramount and Warner have more overlap in their operations than Netflix and Warner. “In the offer that Paramount was talking about today, they also were talking about $6 billion of synergies,” said Sarandos. “Where do you think synergies come from? Cutting jobs. Yeah, so we’re not cutting jobs, we’re making jobs.”
Sarandos also discussed HBO, the premium cable channel turned streamer—Netflix’s former rival and inspiration. Sarandos has famously said of Netflix that “the goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us,” comments he later modified to add he wants “CBS and BBC” too. Now that his company is set to become HBO’s parent, he said it can realize its true destiny as the leading light of prestige TV.
“They’ve been doing gymnastics to make themselves into a general entertainment brand,” Sarandos said of HBO in the HBO Max era overseen by WBD CEO David Zaslav. “Under this transaction, they don’t have to do that anymore.”
Both Netflix co-CEOs also hammered a message clearly aimed at regulators who might take anti-trust action to halt the deal: The combined company would hardly dominate TV. The Netflix deal spins off CNN, TNT, Discovery, HGTV, the Food Network and the company’s other cable channels, while the Paramount offer keeps the cable assets attached. Using Nielsen viewership data that appeared to include linear TV as well as streaming, Peters said Netflix commands just 8% of U.S. TV hours; adding HBO would raise that to 9%.
“We’d still be behind YouTube,” he noted. “And we’d still be behind a combined Paramount–WBD at 14%.”
BofA Research’s Media & Entertainment team used a different metric—total TV streaming—from Nielsen data to calculate that Warner and Netflix combined would be about 21% of the market, whereas Paramount and Netflix would be 8%. Both would still come in behind YouTube at 28%, however.
Trump weighed in on Sunday about his relationship with Sarandos and the pending antitrust question. Saying the Netflix co-CEO is a “fantastic person,” Trump added that the Warner-Netflix market share “could be a problem.” At any rate, Trump added, uncharacteristically for a sitting president, he would be involved in what happens next.
Sarandos finished the UBS panel by reiterating to everyone listening and watching, many of whom have been long-term holders of Netflix stock, that he was “excited” about the deal. (The question of whether Netflix would sweeten its bid for WBD wasn’t raised.)
“We think this deal with Warner Brothers is good for shareholders,” he said. “We think it’s good for consumers. We think it’s good for creators. We think it’s great for the entertainment industry as a whole.”
[Editor’s note: one of the authors worked at Netflix from June 2024 through July 2025.]
As if dragging a three-wheeled carry-on across the mileage of an international airport isn’t enough, the government wants you panting before your flight. This week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a pull-up competition in the middle of Reagan National Airport’s Terminal 2 (not a metaphor) to announce the $1 billion in grants the administration plans to allocate toward healthy airport upgrades.
Officials were vague about what these upgrades could include, but mentioned projects like dedicated play areas for kids, more lactation pods, and mini-gyms for travelers.
The funding will come from former President Biden’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and is part of the current administration’s “Make Travel Family Friendly Again” initiative.
But…over 30 major US airport hubs already have children’s play areas, and most airports have been required to provide private lactation areas since FY2021. And 68% of passengers said their top priority for air travel changes is lower prices, according to a 2025 Ipsos poll for Airlines for America.
Big picture: The administration has been pushing initiatives to make flying more pleasant. Last month, Duffy encouraged travelers to dress up for flights and act right, which some travelers responded to by…wearing pajamas to the airport to troll the secretary.—MM
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Mike Lindell, the fervent supporter of President Donald Trump known to TV viewers as the “MyPillow Guy,” officially entered the race for Minnesota governor Thursday in hopes of winning the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
“I’ll leave no town unturned in Minnesota,” Lindell told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of a news conference set for Thursday.
He said he has a record of solving problems and personal experiences that will help businesses and fight addiction and homelessness as well as fraud in government programs. The fraud issue has particularly dogged Walz, who announced in September that he’s seeking a third term in the 2026 election.
A TV pitchman and election denier
Lindell, 64, founded his pillow company in Minnesota in 2009 and became its public face through infomercials that became ubiquitous on late-night television. But he and his company faced a string of legal and financial setbacks after he became a leading amplifier of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. He said he has overcome them.
“Not only have I built businesses, you look at problem solution,” Lindell said in his trademark rapid-fire style. “I was able to make it through the biggest attack on a company, and a person, probably other than Donald Trump, in the history of our media … lawfare and everything.”
While no Republican has won statewide office in Minnesota since 2006, the state’s voters have a history of making unconventional choices. They shocked the world by electing former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura as governor in 1998. And they picked a veteran TV pitchman in 1978 when they elected home improvement company owner Rudy Boschwitz as a U.S. senator.
Lindell has frequently talked about how he overcame a crack cocaine addiction with a religious conversion in 2009 as MyPillow was getting going. His life took another turn in 2016 when he met the future president during Trump’s first campaign. He served as a warm-up speaker at dozens of Trump rallies and co-chaired Trump’s campaign in Minnesota.
Trump’s endorsement could be the key to which of several candidates wins the GOP nomination to challenge Walz. But Lindell said he doesn’t know what Trump will do, even though they’re friends, and said his campaign isn’t contingent on the president’s support.
Lindell’s outspoken support for Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen triggered a backlash as major retailers discontinued MyPillow products. By his own admission, revenue slumped and lines of credit dried up, costing him millions. Several vendors sued MyPillow over billing disputes. Fox News stopped running his commercials. Lawyers quit on him.
Lindell has been sued twice for defamation over his claims that voting machines were manipulated to deprive Trump of a victory.
A federal judge in Minnesota ruled in September that Lindell defamed Smartmatic with 51 false statements. But the judge deferred the question of whether Lindell acted with the “actual malice” that Smartmatic must prove to collect. Smartmatic says it’s seeking “nine-figure damages.”
But Lindell won a victory in July when a federal appeals court overturned a judge’s decision that affirmed a $5 million arbitration award to a software engineer who disputed data that Lindell claimed proved Chinese interference in the 2020 election. The engineer had accepted Lindell’s “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” which he launched as part of his 2021 “Cyber Symposium” in South Dakota, where he promised to expose election fraud.
The campaign ahead
Lindell said his crusade against electronic voting machines will just be part of his platform. While Minnesota uses paper ballots, it also uses electronic tabulators to count them. Lindell wants them hand-counted, even though many election officials say machine counting is more accurate.
“These guys haven’t lived what I live,” Lindell said.
Lindell wouldn’t commit to abiding by the Minnesota GOP endorsement and forgoing the primary if he loses it, expressing confidence that he’ll win. He also said he’ll rely on his supporters to finance his campaign because his own finances are drained. “I don’t have the money,” he acknowledged.
But he added that ever since word got out last week that he had filed the paperwork to run, “I’ve had thousands upon thousands of people text and call, saying from all around the country … ‘Hey, I’ll donate.’”
Forty-five years after Apple’s IPO, the company is now worth $4.1 trillion—but its rise was anything but smooth. Steve Jobs weathered near-bankruptcy and was even ousted from the company he had built, before returning and setting the stage for Apple’s resurgence. But what kept him going, he once told students, was a simple career lesson: Doing the work you love.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do,” Jobs said during his 2005 Stanford Commencement speech.
“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking—and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
Many Gen Zers are apprehensive about what career to choose. Some are taking whatever gig they can get in today’s labor market, as roles are quickly being disrupted by AI, and once-lucrative jobs have fallen out of favor. But Jobs’ story is a reminder to young professionals that chasing a long, passionate career in what they love is the recipe for sustainable success. After all, they have a nearly 50-year career ahead of them.
The many jobs that Steve Jobs had and loved
Jobs’ has a diverse lineup of successful ventures under his belt—including Pixar Animation Studios, and software company NeXT—but Apple was his ultimate brainchild. Leading the company through its many iterations, Jobs helmed the creation of generation-defining products for decades. Baby boomers waited in line to snag the Apple II computer back in 1977; by 2001, millennials were flooding their music collections onto the iPod classic; and all throughout the 2010s, Gen Zers were gifted their first iPhones.
Apple may seem like an unmovable force today, sitting at number four on the Fortune 500 and having sold more than three billion iPhones. But its come-up was anything but sunshines and rainbows; despite cofounding the titan of industry, Jobs was forced out by then-CEO John Sculley in 1985, throwing his career into flux.
The entrepreneur recalled making the most of the bad situation, entering one of the “most creative periods” of his life by launching NeXT and revamping Pixar Studios. But even he couldn’t resist the gravitational pull back to the “best thing that ever happened to [him],” Apple. He returned to the fledgling company as CEO in 1997, and remained in the role until just two months before his passing in October 2011.
“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith,” Jobs said. “I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.”
Jobs’ love for his work turned him into a billionaire
Despite leaving behind a fortune estimated to be worth $10.2 billion at the time of his passing, Jobs made it clear that his ambitions weren’t tied to his bank account. A part of why Apple became a trillion-dollar innovator may be thanks to his devotion for the products—a life-long love for technology he first discovered as an eager tween, hungry for opportunity.
“I was worth about over $1 million when I was 23, and over $10 million when I was 24, and over $100 million when I was 25,” Jobs told PBS in 1996. “And it wasn’t that important, because I never did it for the money.”
The iPhones sitting in millions of back pockets and MacBooks scattered across swaths of desks may not even exist if it weren’t for Jobs’ devotion to the craft. At just 12 years old, he took a leap of faith to put his passion into action; Jobs hunted down the phone number of the founder of Hewlett Packard (HP) cofounder Bill Hewlett’s in the yellow pages, and called him up for a favor. The tween needed spare parts needed to build a frequency counter, but he got far more than some nuts and bolts.
Hewlett offered Jobs a gig at the iconic tech company—a launchpad for his future successes dominating the same industry. Jobs set himself on the path for greatness, all because he mustered the courage to try.
“I never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. I always call them up,” Jobs said in a 1994 interview, archived by the Silicon Valley Historical Association. “I’ve never found anyone who says ‘no,’ or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked.”
“Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask…You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”
Politics8 years ago