00:00 Speaker A
Netflix quickly faced opposition after announcing its $72 billion bid for Warner Brothers, but a hostile bid from Paramount Skydance threw a new wrench in the streaming giant’s planned deal. Joining us now to discuss it all is John Klein, CEO of Hang Media, which is a Gen Z fan engagement platform. And of course, John also served as the president of CNN US. Thanks so much for being here.
00:22 John Klein
You bet. Thanks for having me.
00:24 Speaker A
Look at look at you with all your awards behind you, John. That’s how we know we’re talking to the right guy.
00:29 John Klein
It’s all the work of others, but I happen to be in the right place at the right time.
00:33 Speaker A
I love it. So it’s good to have your perspective on this. And what I’m curious to ask you is who are the winners and losers in this whole situation because there has been a lot of talk out of Hollywood. They’re not super happy about the Netflix bid. So I’m curious from your perspective how you’re thinking about the winners and losers question.
00:55 John Klein
Well, YouTube is a big winner because the the biggest competition that Netflix and everyone else in the media industry faces is from YouTube, which has about twice the viewing time spent than Netflix does in any given month. And and this deal, whoever ends up with this prize, so to speak, it is not in any stronger position vis-a-vis YouTube, whose whose popularity is powered by content creators, not classic studio produced traditional content. And this whole deal begs that question. And you could argue that for a lot less money, Netflix could be addressing the YouTube challenge instead of making this deal.
01:46 Speaker A
So, you’re suggesting that Netflix could kind of have its a homegrown version of YouTube, for example?
01:55 John Klein
Homegrown, they could acquire one of the content studios, the creator content studios that are now springing up, Darman Studios, there are others who are, you know, pushing out a ton of hugely popular content and developing the kind of insights into marketing to that Gen Z audience that’s devouring all that YouTube creator content.
02:20 John Klein
And by the way, AI is going to feed the content creation economy even more. So, it’s already an explosion. It’s going to become nuclear pretty soon. And and and so buying Game of Thrones, buying Friends, which is what this deal, you know, is is driven by in large part. Uh in order to increase your share of the streaming market versus Amazon Prime or or or Disney Plus, that’s not taking on YouTube in any meaningful way.
02:45 John Klein
Right. And in the meantime, also, think about where advertiser dollars are going to go. Now, advertising is not a huge needle driver for Netflix yet. They have launched a new ad supported tier and it’s it represents about 6% of their current earnings, but if you’re a a CMO trying to figure out where to put your ad dollars in next year, you know, in 26 and in 27, all of this confusion surrounding what becomes of Netflix, what becomes of Paramount Plus, where, you know, HBO Max, you might just start pushing even more money than you already are to YouTube, Amazon, meta, in other words, the guys who are sitting this fight out could just sit there and welcome increased advertising dollars coming their way as well.
