Hey folks,
Oh my goodness, mergermas is coming early. I didn’t think we’d get the studio consolidation rumors until January. So I was excited to break down for you what’s going on with the scuttlebut that Paramount and Warner are talking about teaming up.
There’s also the sad end of the road for Beeper and Apple’s academic AI strategy. Free subscribers get all of those. Paid folks scroll on down for a few more interesting tidbits and interesting reads related to Samsung, the end of Microsoft’s mixed reality, bad news for the Apple Watch and more.
Tom
Big Story
"Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount in discussions for a max merger - The Verge"
"Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount in merger talks"
"Byron Allen Offers to Buy BET, VH1 for $3.5 Billion From Paramount"
Anybody who has been following my commentary here, on DTNS or at Cordkillers knows I've been saying for a couple years that as soon as Comcast and Disney settled their deal over ownership of Hulu that we'd start to see consolidation. The only other thing to consider is the expiration on some restrictions related to Discovery related to Discovery's acquisition of Warner from AT&T. Those expire in April.
I've been expecting the news to start in January but looks like folks are excited to get started because Axios's source say Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav has been talking to Paramount CEO Bob Banish about a possible merger. Zaslav also supposedly had a chat with Sheri Redstone who is the head of National Amusements, the company that owns Paramount.
Byron Allen has responded by renewing his attempt to buy BET Media Group from Paramount, which includes the BET cable channel, VH1, BET Studios and streaming service BET+. So there's something to the reports.
I still think it may be more likely that each of those companies gets acquired by someone larger, like Comcast, Amazon etc. And no, I do not think Netflix wants to acquire them. There's no evidence of that. I also don't think Apple wants to take on a whole studio. A Disney-Apple merger seems more likely to me than Apple buying Paramount or Warner, and even then I don't think it's likely, just possible.
So it's interesting to see two of the smaller fish cozy up and discuss becoming a larger player. It's a bit like T-Mobile buying Spring in the US carrier market. Two smaller competitors becoming a major player. I think for consumers a Warner-Paramount merger would be better than each of those studios merging into an existing giant.
But these are just talks. We won't hear anything substantial until after the first of the year. This makes it more possible we might see something happen in January but my sense still says it's more likely to take a few months. A few other properties to keep an eye on are Lionsgate, Fox, and AMC Networks.
But if it does happen? What are we going to call the inevitable combined Max and Parmount Plus? ParaMax? MaxMount? Prax Plus? CBS?
Other Stories
"Beeper is giving up on its iMessage dream - The Verge"
It doesn't look good for Beeper Mini. It started as an ingenious way to interoperate messaging with Apple Messages and maintaining end-to-end encryption. It then became a way to do the same but required an Apple ID. Then it required you to have access to an Apple laptop. Apple has blocked each of these methods. The latest workaround requires you to have access to a jailbroken iPhone as well as a Mac or Linux computer. The audience willing to jump through these hoops narrows with every step.
And it looks like Beeper is thrown in the towel. Beeper's X account posted "We do not have any current plans to respond if this solution is knocked offline. The iMessage connection software that powers Beeper Mini is now 100% open source. Anyone who wants can continue to develop it if they’d like." Beeper said on its blog that it will focus now on its “long-term goal of building the best chat app on earth.”
It was an admirable fight.
"Apple reportedly plans Vision Pro launch by February - The Verge"
"When Will Apple Vision Pro Be Available? Company Is Aiming for February - Bloomberg"
Speaking of Apple, a few stories to note related to the biggest company on the planet. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says it looks to him like the Apple Vision Pro will launch in February and we shouldn't expect a launch event before the launch. All signs point to a limited supply for the $3,499 device with retail stores having a significant role, probably in fitting it to your head and vision. Bearing out Gurman's analysis, Vision Pro developers got an email telling them to "get ready."
"Apple wants AI to run directly on its hardware instead of in the cloud | Ars Technica"
"Apple's latest AI research could completely transform your iPhone | VentureBeat"
Apple has been chatting a bit about its approach to AI lately. It says it doesn't call things AI, just focuses on the features AI tools enable. And it also wants to run models on your device, not in the cloud. Apple scientists published a white paper on Arxiv.org describing their methods for running a Large Language Model locally on an iPhone. Specifically, it describes how to get around memory bottlenecks to do "inferencing," that's when a trained model responds to a user's requests. It basically can reduce the amount of data transferred from flash memory and read larger chunks at once.
Earlier this month Apple also published a paper on generating animated 3D avatars from videos taken with a single camera. Basically shoot a short video of yourself and get a full 3D version of yourself for use in VR and mixed reality. This is some generative model stuff too but applicable to the Apple Vision Pro.
And keep in mind, both these papers have been published, meaning others in the development community can learn from and implement these ideas. It's Apple showing off its chops and it benefits the whole industry.
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