The merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. may evade antitrust challenges because their combined share of total US TV viewing time would be less than what YouTube currently holds. This shifts the definition of the competitive landscape, making it harder to label the deal a monopoly.

When evaluating a media merger, regulators should narrowly define the market as "premium streaming platforms." Including user-generated content like YouTube or TikTok creates a misleadingly broad market definition that understates a company's true dominance, similar to a chicken producer claiming competition from pistachio farmers.

High-stakes bidding for legacy media assets like Warner Bros. is driven by status-seeking among the ultra-wealthy, not a sound bet on the future of media. They are acquiring prestigious "shiny objects" from the past, while the actual attention economy has shifted to platforms like TikTok and YouTube.

An antitrust case against a Netflix-Warner Bros. merger is weak if the market is defined as all consumer 'eyeballs,' not just paid streaming. Including massive platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, where most people spend their time, creates a landscape of intense competition, undermining monopoly claims.

In its failed merger attempt, Cisco argued its market competitors included Sam's Club, a claim regulators rejected. This illustrates that the core of an antitrust case is often not the raw market share number, but the highly debatable and often opaque definition of the market itself, which can be skewed by paid economists.

States filing an antitrust suit against the Paramount/Warner Bros. deal are unlikely to block it. Instead, they are using the threat of a costly delay to extract concessions like job commitments or the divestiture of assets like CNN.

The turmoil from legacy media consolidation, like the Paramount-WBD deal, weakens the entire creative ecosystem. This chaos benefits well-capitalized Big Tech firms (Amazon, Apple, Netflix), allowing them to acquire talent and assets cheaply and ultimately 'inherit the empire'.

Media M&A, like Netflix acquiring Warner Bros., faces a lower antitrust risk because the definition of the "video market" has expanded to include YouTube and TikTok. This vast competition dilutes the market share of any single legacy entity, making traditional monopoly claims harder to prove in court.

Despite appearing dominant in subscription streaming, Netflix can argue it's smaller than Disney or NBC when measuring total TV time spent. By defining the market broadly to include YouTube and linear broadcast, the acquisition appears less monopolistic, increasing its chances of regulatory approval.