What the Disney–YouTube Battle Tells Us About the End of Cable

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Tv & Film, Business News, News

4.4 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s not unusual for a big TV network and a big TV distributor to fight about money. But the Disney-YouTube fight is unusual -- at the bare minimum, because it has stretched out for so long. CNBC’s Alex Sherman lives and breathes this stuff, so I asked him to walk me through it, and make some prognostications about when it might get settled (spoiler alert: he thinks some football fans who pay for YouTube TV may be unhappy for a while longer.) Then Sherman and I move on to the other Big Media deal: the battle for the company we currently call Warner Bros. Discovery, but is likely to be owned by someone else, in some form…. eventually. Discussed here: why, really, did Larry and David Ellison put in multiple offers to buy another media company weeks after they bought Paramount? What would they do with WBD if they got it? And are any of the theoretical other buyers for all or parts of WBD real? Bonus question for you: did I use the word “degradation” correctly in this one? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:32.0	demo today. That's V-A-M-T-A.com slash Vox Media Podcast Network, this is channels with Peter Kafka.
1:50.1	That is me.
1:51.2	Thank you to everyone who reached out about last week's show with the bulwark, Sarah Longwell.
1:55.4	I agree with you.
1:56.7	That was great.
1:58.0	And today we've got another great show.
1:59.3	Tune to a different frequency.
2:01.0	This is a conversation with CNBC's Alex Sherman, who really is one of the media beats consistently
2:06.5	great reporters, especially on deal stuff.
2:09.5	So today we are talking about big media deals, deals that aren't happening at the moment,
	...

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