Media M&A in 2025: Table Set for More Deal Activity This Year

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Streaming is up; TV is down. Those contrasting trends were behind the two biggest corporate deals in the media and entertainment space unveiled in 2024: Skydance Media’s coming takeover of Paramount Global and Comcast’s planned spinoff of most of its cable networks.

Warner Bros. Discovery signaled that it, too, would swing into the M&A dance in 2025. The company in December said it would reorganize into two divisions: one comprising its streaming business (plus HBO) and production studios and the other composed of the rest of its cable TV networks.

And the erosion of pay TV was behind an M&A event that didn’t happen — DirecTV’s offer to acquire Dish Network, to gain economies of scale as both try to adapt to new streaming realities.

DirecTV scrapped the pact in November after Dish bondholders refused to exchange their existing debt for a discounted rate under the DirecTV terms.