• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

Which company is the “real” TV company -- Netflix or Paramount?

The question comes up because when you come right down to it, their battle for Warner Bros. Discovery represents a clash of new vs. old.

Netflix pioneered large-scale, global streaming and leads that industry. Its content is consumed on TV screens in the home, and the company sells ads too, but it possesses no other assets or characteristics that have traditionally been associated with TV companies.

Paramount operates a streamer too -- Paramount+. Paramount Pictures makes movies and TV shows.

But the vast majority of the company’s assets are legacy properties. These include CBS network, CBS TV stations in 18 of the biggest markets, cable brands such as MTV, Nickelodeon, BET and Showtime (each one of which has about a half-dozen offshoot channels), and my favorite of all legacy TV media -- a syndication unit that licenses “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” to broadcast stations.

Do these assets make Paramount more of a “real” TV company than Netflix? In the traditional sense, yes.

Warner Bros. Discovery owns no broadcast properties, but owns dozens of cable properties, both basic and pay, and a traditional syndication arm.

Netflix’s offer to buy Warner Bros. does not include the Discovery Networks side of WBD. Evidently, Netflix has no desire to be in the basic-cable business. 

It is possible that in the Netflix corporate mindset, the idea of owning and operating any TV asset characterized as “legacy” is repugnant.

But Paramount’s bid for WBD includes the Discovery networks. This means either that Paramount seeks to increase and scale up its basic-cable holdings, or the company felt that its offer would simply be more attractive to the WBD board and the company’s stockholders if it included the cable channels.

Trends being what they are in basic cable, if Paramount wins this battle for WBD, it would not be too surprising if the company spins off all of its basic-cable properties, both old and new, into a separate company. Everybody’s doing it.

As a TV company solely in streaming and production, Netflix stands alone among the majors. 

In fact, the asset profiles of each of the two other biggest TV companies -- Comcast and Disney -- line up pretty perfectly with Paramount. 

They are in streaming, broadcast station ownership, network TV, movie and TV production, basic cable and syndication.

Comcast has reportedly been a bidder for WBD, but the company seems to have fallen out of consideration as the world focuses on the battle between Netflix and Paramount.