• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 10 hours ago

What if Paramount Skydance doesn’t work its money magic in acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery?

These big but aging media companies need to find other growth opportunities -- in the short or long term.

Some analysts believe another possible combination for Paramount could be with NBCUniversal (or its controlled Versant Media spinoff) or possibly a Walt Disney connection might make sense.

Those companies note they would not be ready to give up major high-value businesses -- any streaming or meaningful movie and TV studio operations.

That is why Paramount is so intensely focused on WBD. It is able to buy the entire company, which includes the higher-valued Warner Bros. Studios as well as its growing and prestigious HBO Max streamer business. This comes with WBD cable TV networks, which is of much lesser value..

This all-inclusive deal gives Paramount a distinct advantage over Netflix -- which is in a better marketplace situation and doesn’t want anything to do with legacy cable TV networks.

With this combination, Paramount is taking the good with the bad. Remember the original reports back when Skydance Media -- then  housed on the Paramount lot -- was mulling its Paramount Global deal? Then, it was only really interested in buying the Paramount studio business.

But that wasn’t going to happen, as Paramount’s controlling owner at the time, National Amusements, wanted out of the whole shebang.

Now, moving on as Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. was the obvious choice for other reasons. WBD does not own TV stations, which makes a possible deal less of a regulatory concern in buying up the whole company.

Paramount had little choice but to pay a premium -- now possibly at $31 a share to WBD shareholders (bettering Netflix’s $27.75) for the whole company -- as well as offering WBD hefty $2.8 billion-dollar deal termination fee that Paramount would pay for to Netflix if the Netflix-WBD does not go through.

Paramount is also offering “ticking” fees if the deal is delayed in the regulatory process, which could amount to $650 million a quarter.

But the question remains: What to do with steadily declining -- but profitable -- cable TV networks?

Does anyone -- of any legacy TV-network-based media company -- have a real, honest plan?