BrianKrebsMar 3

Oh yes, the merger of HBO Max and Paramount+ will engender soooo much competition. What a load of hooey. If this doesn't turn out to be the most textbook example of enshittification, I'll eat my hat. From WaPo:

"Paramount Skydance will combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into one streaming service, David Ellison, the company’s CEO, said on a Monday call with investors.

“As we said, we do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers,” Ellison said. “We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/03/02/hbo-max-paramount-streaming-service/

HBO Max and Paramount+ to merge into one streaming service

The combined streaming service will put “Yellowstone,” “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” and “The Sopranos” on the same platform. 

The Washington Post
Show threadAston Crown

@briankrebs The US media landscape is being Orbanified in plain sight.

It's just extra insult to injury that failsons like Ellison and Murdoch jr. are being deployed for this purpose. It's like "yup, we can not only explicitly tilt the media to be more plutocrat-friendly (because the public aren't both losing out AND saying "please sir, I'd like another", apparently), we can specifically put our dynastic hellspawn at the helm while we do it."

Mar 3 at 10:21pmWeb