Power and politics in the Warner Bros. deal
Marketplace Morning Report
American Public Media
4.5 • 808 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's a major Hollywood drama: Despite striking a deal with Netflix, the high-stakes bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery shows no sign of cooling off. The company turned down a renewed offer from Paramount of $30 a share, signaling a continued preference for the Netflix deal. Thing is, the transaction will likely draw close regulatory scrutiny from the Trump administration. But first: messy economic data and a deal to buy TikTok's U.S. operations.
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| 0:31.4 | TikTok USA has moved a lot closer to getting a set of North American and Middle Eastern-based owners. |
| 0:38.8 | I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. TikTok has reached a deal that will allow it to keep |
| 0:43.2 | operating in the U.S., according to the Reuters News Agency, the very popular short video, |
| 0:48.3 | an advertising app, will form a joint venture with a group of investors based in the U.S. |
| 0:53.2 | and in Abu Dhabi, marketplace's |
| 0:55.2 | Nancy Marshall-Genzor has details. Under the deal, U.S. investors will buy most of TikTok's |
| 1:00.9 | American operations. The agreement is outlined in an internal TikTok memo seen by Reuters. |
| 1:06.3 | It says 80 percent of the new American version of TikTok will be owned by three investors, |
| 1:12.2 | the Cloud Services Company Oracle, the Silver Lake investment firm, and the MGX investment company based in Abu Dhabi. |
| 1:19.9 | The rest will be retained by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance. |
| 1:23.4 | The memo says the American branch of TikTok will operate independently, and it will have authority |
| 1:29.0 | over U.S. data protection, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurance. |
| 1:35.1 | The memo says the deal is expected to close on January 22nd. |
| 1:39.3 | Congress passed a law last year banning TikTok unless most of its U.S. operations were spun off. President Trump |
| 1:46.0 | delayed enforcement of the law. The deal will probably need to be approved by regulators in the U.S. |
| 1:51.8 | and China. I'm Nancy Marshall Genser for Marketplace. The bond market is down this morning, pushing |
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