- David Zaslav wanted a new president that was open to M&A.
- Now he has one. But regulation wasn't the only thing holding up Big Media deals.
- And we still don't know if Trump will have problems with specific deals — like he did when AT&T wanted to buy Time Warner.
David Zaslav wanted a new president who would make it easier for his company to buy other companies — or sell itself.
Now he has his wish.
The second version of the Trump administration may be a boon for media companies facing "generational disruption," the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO said on his company's earnings call Thursday morning.
"We have an upcoming new administration, and it's too early to tell. But it may offer a pace of change, and an opportunity for consolidation that may be quite different, that would provide a real positive and accelerated impact on this industry that's needed," he said.
Which happens to be what Zaslav said he was rooting for in July when he told reporters that "we just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better."
As I noted at the time, consolidation has been a key watchword for Zaslav — and for billionaire investor John Malone, who sits on the WBD board — for years. The initial argument was that everyone who isn't Netflix needs to combine their streamers; now, there's also a notion that big media companies might do well to combine their struggling TV networks.
But the consensus in the media industry — as well as other industries, like tech — was that Joe Biden's antitrust policies and personnel made that a non-starter.
Now Biden is on his way out. And key appointments like Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, and Jonathan Kanter, who runs the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, are also likely on the way out. So Zaslav, like many other executives and observers, thinks M&A is back on.
But even if the new Trump administration is more receptive to big deals, that doesn't make them a foregone conclusion.
For instance: Earlier this year, when Zaslav was talking to Paramount about a tie-up, Paramount owner Shari Redstone's advisors worried that a Paramount/WBD deal would "would pose heightened regulatory risk," per a recent Paramount investor filing. But that discussion became a non-issue since Zaslav never made a bid, in part because he didn't want to pay cash for Paramount.
There's also the knotty — and for now, unknowable — issue that's specific to Trump: What kind of companies and deals does he like, and what doesn't he like?
In his first administration, for instance, Trump's Department of Justice sued to stop AT&T from buying the company that was then called Time Warner. Many industry observers, including lots of AT&T and Time Warner executives, thought the suit was meant to punish Time Warner's CNN, which Trump often fumed about. (Trump's top antitrust lawyer insisted that was not the case.)
That deal eventually went through, and then AT&T eventually decided it didn't want to own a media company after all and ended up selling it to Zaslav. So, would CNN's presence create an obstacle if he wanted to do a deal now?
It's worth noting that in his first term, Trump was an enthusiastic backer of ally Rupert Murdoch's deal to sell much of his business to Disney, which Trump's spokesperson said "could be a great thing for jobs." (The transaction, like many mergers, was followed by extensive layoffs.)
And now CNN is owned by a company backed by Malone, another conservative media owner, and an on-again, off-again, Trump supporter. Would that change Trump's calculus? We may find out.