Karl Bode

If your product is even a third as innovative and useful as you claim it is, you shouldn’t have to go around trying a little too hard to convince people. The product’s usefulness should speak for itself. And you definitely shouldn’t be forcing people to use products they’ve repeatedly toldContinue Reading

I’ve written a lot about the AOL–>AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery mergers simply because I think they perfectly encapsulate the pointless, destructive incompetence at the heart of modern media consolidation, and the cannibalistic nature of Wall Street’s obsession with illusory quarterly growth propped up by smoke, mirrors, and complex accounting. Ever since the originalContinue Reading

Shortly after Netflix announced a $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers, the Ellison family, alongside Jared Kushner and the Saudis, unveiled their own hostile takeover bid to pre-empt the deal. As we’ve discussed, Larry Ellison is trying to gobble up what’s left of old media (CBS, Paramount, Warner Brothers, CNN) andContinue Reading

Back in 2008, Chattanooga, Tennessee decided to build its own city-owned fiber broadband network on the back of its existing electrical utility, EPB. In the years since, the network has become one of the most popular in the nation, offering affordable, 25 gigabits per second fiber access to local residents.Continue Reading

So Netflix has announced that it’s buying Warner Brothers Discovery (including HBO) for a whopping $82.7 billion. As we’ve well covered, it’s the latest in a long series of pointless Warner mergers stretching back to the 2001 AOL acquisition, which all resulted in oodles of chaos, price hikes, layoffs, andContinue Reading