Part 13: Who TF Am I Working For?? | The Cable Nobody Wanted

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Part 13: Who TF Am I Working For?? | The Cable Nobody Wanted

Oct 23, 2025

I moved around a lot growing up. Tennessee, Mississippi, Seattle, Virginia… and somehow landed in LA. All different states, different schools, and vastly different communities. My family was pretty moderate politically, and with all that moving, there were not many anchors in my day to day life, outside of what my family watched on TV.

It was always coffee and HGTV in the morning. Food Network in the evenings. Discovery Channel kids on weekends. It wasn’t a choice we made, really. It was just what played in the background of our lives.

I didn’t think much about it then. But now, watching Larry Ellison (the second richest person in the world) make repeated bids for Warner Brothers Discovery, watching the stock price jump with each public rejection, watching a very specific timeline unfold between a CEO who said he was waiting for a merger-friendly president and the arrival of exactly that president, I’m thinking about it a lot.

What if the Ellisons, now owners of Paramount Pictures and CBS, aren’t really after CNN? Because the most powerful political media in America isn’t always cable news. Sometimes it’s the show teaching you to renovate your kitchen, the cooking show playing in the background, the nature documentary your kids watch — the stuff that doesn’t feel political at all.

And I think Larry Ellison understands that better than almost anyone. I think we’re watching regulatory capture masquerading as market forces. And I think the assets everyone assumes are worthless might be the most valuable tools for shaping public opinion in America today.

What Zaslav Said When He Thought We Weren’t Paying Attention

In November 2023, at an investor conference, Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav said he wanted a new president who would be more favorable to media mergers and consolidation. He was frustrated with the Biden administration’s tougher antitrust stance under Lina Khan’s FTC. He told investors he was waiting for a political change to execute plans that required a different regulatory environment.

Then Trump wins in November 2024. By February 2025, WBD starts systematically removing potential political friction points from its corporate structure. By June, they announce they’re splitting into two companies: “Growth Co” (HBO, streaming, studios) and “Cash Co” (CNN and Discovery Networks). By October, Ellison is making bids.

The timeline is striking. Whether this represents coordinated strategy or fortunate timing depends on information I don’t have access to. But the sequence is hard to ignore.

The Regulatory Environment That Enabled This

When people worry about whether regulators will scrutinize this deal, they’re missing that the regulatory landscape already shifted. Brendan Carr is now FCC Chairman, appointed by Trump. And we don’t have to guess how this administration handles these deals — we already watched it happen with Paramount.

The Ellison family used a combination of legal pressure, strategic timing, and political leverage to acquire Paramount in a $20 billion deal that came with conditions: a conservative ombudsman, certain arrangements regarding CBS News editorial direction. The FCC approved it without significant resistance.

Stock price as of article publication date

So when Zaslav publicly rejects Ellison three times and the stock price conveniently climbs with each rejection; jumping from around $7-8 per share to the $11-13 range, a 60-80% increase… it raises questions about what’s actually happening here.

Follow the Money

Here’s what that stock price increase means in practice: At $7 per share, the incentives don’t align. Zaslav wouldn’t hit compensation bonuses tied to stock performance. The board would look incompetent. Shareholders would be unhappy.

But at $12+ per share; well that’s when Zaslav’s bonuses kick in, leading to potentially tens of millions of dollars in personal compensation unlocked by that increase. In addition, the board looks like they created value, and institutional investors see returns. Everyone who needs to approve a sale suddenly has strong financial motivation to say yes.

Whether this was intentional design or opportunistic adaptation, the effect is the same: the financial incentives shifted to favor a deal.

It’s worth asking: who positioned themselves to benefit from this sequence? Who increased their WBD holdings after Zaslav’s 2023 comments but before the election? Because if you were paying attention to what Zaslav said and understood the regulatory implications of a Trump victory, there was money to be made.

What Wall Street Might Be Getting Wrong

Here’s what seems likely: Larry Ellison doesn’t want all of Warner Brothers Discovery. He already owns Paramount. He has streaming and prestige TV covered. Why would he need HBO Max when he has Paramount+?

What he doesn’t have is what everyone else has dismissed: the Discovery Networks. Wall Street calls these “declining assets” and “legacy cable.” But that analysis might be confusing market value with political value.

When you watch CNN, you know you’re watching news. Your critical faculties are engaged. You’re ready to evaluate, disagree, fact-check. That’s hard power: direct, confrontational, and it creates massive resistance. Half the country doesn’t trust CNN, the other half doesn’t trust Fox News.

But think about how different it feels when you’re watching Duck Dynasty. You’re not there for political content. You’re watching a family run a duck call business, eating dinner together, dealing with everyday problems. And while you’re entertained, you’re absorbing a very particular worldview about family structure, religious values, gender roles, what “real America” looks like. It doesn’t feel political because it’s not framed as politics. It’s just a show about people living their lives.

Or think about “19 Kids and Counting” (before the scandals tanked it). Millions of people tuned in to watch the Duggar family, and in the process, they normalized a very specific set of beliefs about gender, education, family planning, and religious authority. The show wasn’t arguing for these positions. It was just showing them as one family’s normal.

HGTV does this differently but just as effectively. Chip and Joanna Gaines built an empire by making a particular aesthetic and lifestyle aspirational. Farmhouse chic, traditional family structures, a specific vision of American domesticity. Week after week, millions of viewers absorbed what a “dream home” and “dream life” should look like. The shows normalize certain income levels as “middle class” when they’re actually upper middle class or wealthy. They make particular family structures and demographics seem like the default. The shows aren’t political, but the worldview they present absolutely is.

That’s soft power. You’re not in a defensive posture. The messenger becomes familiar, trusted, part of your routine. And that might be far more effective than any news coverage precisely because it doesn’t announce itself as political.

Their guard is completely down. And that’s when messaging is most effective.

The Discovery Channel Effect

Discovery Channel spent years teaching audiences to question expert consensus through shows like “Ancient Aliens.” The format: present established scientific understanding alongside wild speculation, treat both as equally valid, let the “controversy” drive engagement. It erodes trust in expertise without feeling like propaganda.

It’s not hard to imagine that same format applied to climate science. Or vaccine policy. Or public health guidance. Not presented as Fox News-style political combat, but wrapped in documentary aesthetics and lifestyle content. It wouldn’t feel like propaganda because it wouldn’t look like propaganda.

And there are already hints of where this could go. In April 2025, Trump administration allies reached out to WBD executives requesting that Donald Trump Jr. get a hunting show on Discovery Channel. Think about the strategy there: you don’t put Don Jr. on CNN to argue politics. You put him on Discovery Channel where people aren’t there for politics. They’re there for entertainment. While they watch, they absorb a worldview. The show normalizes him, humanizes him, builds parasocial relationships with audiences who might otherwise be skeptical.

Now imagine RFK Jr. with a cooking show on Food Network. Not arguing about vaccines or autism databases. Just teaching people to cook “real food” and talking about how “processed ingredients” and “industrial agriculture” are poisoning families. Framing biotech innovations and food additives as corporate conspiracies. Making the MAHA agenda feel like common sense health advice from someone who cares about your family. The anti-science messaging would land precisely because it wouldn’t be framed as politics or even as controversial. It would just be a guy teaching you to cook better.

The Timeline:

November 2023: Zaslav publicly states he wants a more merger-friendly president.

November 2024: Trump wins.

February 2025: WBD removes “diversity” and “equity” from all corporate language.

March 2025: WBD sells off a significant stake in an Israeli satellite TV provider, Yes DBS. The timing is interesting. The company had been a major asset, but WBD divested right as they were preparing for this restructuring. Whether this was about simplifying the corporate structure or removing potential complications for a politically sensitive buyer is unclear, but it’s worth noting that they cleaned this off the books before announcing the split.

April 2025: Trump allies request Don Jr. hunting show.

June 2025: Zaslav announces the split.

October 2025: WBD sides with Paramount in refusing to sign a pledge to boycott Israeli film productions. Another alignment with positions that would be favorable to both the incoming administration and Ellison, who has significant interests in Israel through Oracle’s operations there.

Each decision in isolation has a plausible business explanation. But together, they suggest a company systematically removing political friction points and aligning with positions that would make them more attractive to a specific type of buyer.

Whether this represents planning or adaptation, the pattern is there.

The Deal That Might Be Coming

Here’s what seems plausible to me: The split goes through. WBD becomes two companies, allowing Zaslav to claim he created shareholder value. Then Ellison makes an all-cash offer for Cash Co — just the cable assets. CNN and Discovery Networks. The stuff Wall Street thinks is worthless. At the elevated stock price, this becomes a deal that benefits everyone involved. Growth Co stays independent or gets acquired later.

Because if this happens, Ellison would control an unprecedented media infrastructure. CNN for direct political messaging. Discovery Networks for shaping worldview through entertainment that doesn’t announce itself as political. Paramount for theatrical and streaming distribution. TikTok for reaching younger audiences and understanding what actually influences them. And underlying all of it: Oracle, Larry Ellison’s core empire, providing the cloud infrastructure that stores and processes the data from every interaction.

TikTok’s algorithm is the most sophisticated attention-capture tool ever built. It knows what content makes you watch longer, what messaging you’re susceptible to, what emotional triggers work on you individually. Traditional cable doesn’t have that granular data. But if you owned TikTok, the cable networks, and the data infrastructure storing all the behavioral information through Oracle’s cloud systems, you’d have something genuinely new. You could A/B test messaging on TikTok, analyze the results through Oracle’s systems, then roll out successful frames through Discovery Networks to different demographics. The combination of algorithmic precision, broadcast reach, and centralized data infrastructure would be unprecedented.

I hope I’m wrong about where this is headed. I hope WBD stays independent or these assets get distributed among many different buyers. I hope media diversity somehow survives this moment of consolidation.

But twenty years from now, when people ask how it happened, the answer might be simpler than anyone wants to admit: it happened in kitchens, during breakfast, on a channel nobody was worried about.

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