Good evening, I'm Dylan Byers.

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Dylan

Zaz Moves, a Kotick Question, and BriWi Speculation

Three questions, predictions, and some insider gossip about potential media moves and acquisitions in the new year.

Christmastime is here, happiness and cheer. The lights, the music, the cold weather—even Hollywood will dip into the high 30s next week—and, of course, the wish lists. Recently, someone asked me if there was any big-ticket item I wanted from Santa. As I was mulling it over, considering maybe a top-shelf Scotch or a ski vacation in the Wasatch, news came across the wire that Rupert and Jerry Murdoch had purchased Charles Koch‘s 340,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana, just outside of Yellowstone National Park, to the tune of $200 million. That, I thought to myself. I’ll take that.

And that got me thinking: what might the other titans of the media industry want for themselves? Herewith, three questions (and predictions) for media moves and acquisitions in the new year.

Does Brian Roberts Want Activision?

Brian Roberts likes to say that Comcast doesn’t need mergers and acquisitions to achieve scale. I’ve always found that hard to believe, at least when it comes to the future of NBCUniversal. Comcast, after all, has a legacy of acquisitiveness, from its failed plays for Disney and Fox to its successful roll-ups of NBCUniversal, Sky, and DreamWorks. For a time, conventional wisdom held that Roberts would move next on AT&T’s WarnerMedia, creating an NBCU-Warner tie-up to compete with the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Disney. That option disappeared, of course, when David Zaslav slid into John Stankey‘s DMs and ran off with the company via Reverse Morris Trust. The very day that deal was announced, all eyes turned to Roberts: What would the inveterate dealmaker do now that WarnerMedia was off the table?

Initially, the most obvious target seemed to be ViacomCBS, simply because it seemed like the last thing on the shelf. A more thorough examination of the two companies reveals all sorts of structural issues that may preclude such a deal from happening. Perhaps most importantly, ViacomCBS (market cap: $20 billion) doesn’t really give Comcast (market cap: $221 billion) that much more scale, particularly once you take into account the assets that Comcast would have to divest in order to pass the regulatory hurdles. At a recent investor conference, Comcast C.F.O. Mike Cavanagh said “the bar is really high for us to pursue outright acquisitions of any material size.” The next best option? Perhaps stick it out for a few years until they can merge NBCUniversal with the combined WarnerMedia-Discovery, soon to be known as Warner Bros. Discovery. Such a deal remains very plausible, albeit several years down the line. (Remember when I said that MSNBC and CNN were obvious bedfellows?)

But what if Roberts doesn’t want to wait? In recent weeks, a few media executives have put a bug in my ear: Would Roberts feel out a move on Activision Blizzard...?

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT