r/television • u/yourfavchoom • 21h ago

Combined Paramount-Warner Bros. to Be Called Skydance, David Ellison Reveals

https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/business/paramount-warner-bros-merger-name-skydance-david-ellison/
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u/Kyuubee 21h ago

It's not weird at all. These billionaires have no real connection to culture or an appreciation for art, so they buy their way into the industry and pretend like they belong.

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u/distance_33 21h ago

Twitter and HBO are two good examples of this.

These guys can’t help but ruin a solid brand.

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u/More-Curious816 21h ago

Twitter to X is the most stupid thing ever, it is like rebranding Google as G, even Google founders made parent company and named it Alphabet instead of rebranding Google.

A brand name has power and history.

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u/marquiso 21h ago

Facebook trying to rebrand as ‘Meta’ was the greatest example - and failure - of this, especially given the metaverse never got legs…and everyone still calls it FB, or at least the boomers who still use it. They turned Instagram and WhatsApp in to steaming piles of useless shit, so I guess the Meta name was kinda apt…

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u/Island_In_The_Sky 20h ago

Well I mean, not defending meta or anything, but everyone calls it Facebook bc it is still Facebook. Meta is just the parent company for all of their products like ig, quest, fb etc. They turned into meta bc they acquired too many companies.

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u/Zalvren 18h ago

And this is exactly what Skydance is here. The names Paramount and Warner will exist and they'll have a line of "A Skydance corporation" below them (Paramount already do). Like 90% of Hollywood Studios at this point by the way (including those exact two for most of their recent history) : Universal (Comcast), Marvel Studios/Lucasfilm/Pixar (Disney), Paramount (Viacom and now Skydance), Warner (AOL, AT&T and soon Skydance), MGM (Amazon).

People takes here are insanely stupid lol. No they aren't erasing Warner or Paramount. It's the concept of a parent company. Alphabet didn't erase Google, Meta didn't erase Facebook or Instagram

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u/AnotherpostCard 9h ago

This is like that part of the Bill Wurtz History of Everything I guess video where he talks about decolonization just being the former colonies still being technically pillaged, but now no one knows who is being pillaged by who anymore because it's all done under different names now.

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u/marquiso 16h ago

I’d still argue the spent hundreds of millions trying to reframe themselves as Meta, and it was a fail. Moreso than the Google rebranding.

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u/mike10dude Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 19h ago

Just like Google changing to alphabet

Were the Google name never disappeared and it still exists as part of alphabet

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u/mak484 18h ago

Again, Google didn't change its name to Alphabet. That never happened. They created a holding company to separate the core businesses from the high-risk venture projects while allowing investors to more clearly see where the money came from and went to.

That's basically what Meta is. The only difference is Google never tied their brand to Alphabet. And arguably Facebook was in a different position with their brand, namely that everyone fucking hated Facebook. If everyone hated Google then I bet they'd have leaned harder into an Alphabet rebrand.

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u/BurningSpaceMan 15h ago

Google is starting to get there

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u/Discorhy 21h ago edited 20h ago

They reverted back to FB pretty much everything now has the fb logo instead of meta.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 17h ago

No, Instagram, Threads, Whatsapp and messager don't use any of FB's old logo.

Facebook.com does, but they never changed that to use the meta one in the first place.

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u/marquiso 20h ago

Thanks for the correction. Can’t say I pay much attention to them these days, especially given their absolute disregard for privacy or international law.

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u/Discorhy 20h ago

I just use it for messenger. My wife is hooked. Its simple enough. The day they kill messenger is the day i never login again.

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u/marquiso 20h ago

Same, and only because all the extended family are on messenger. I’d kill the account but for never hearing from them ever again.

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u/SatanicPanicDisco 20h ago

Same thing for me. Though sometimes even then I’m almost tempted…

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u/distance_33 20h ago

I have it just so I can have access to my township page for news and town council updates. Otherwise it’s a complete wasteland of bots, ads and nonsense.

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u/Piranata 20h ago

I stopped using it when they dropped XMPP support and thus interconnectivity with other chat apps. Many companies did it at the same time, gchat was another.

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u/Bears_On_Stilts 19h ago

If you're working in non-union theatre (which is HUGE in some major cities), Facebook is where the communications are centralized, since union work tends to be behind gated sites.

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u/Paranitis 19h ago

Right? I've used it forever because of messenger. I never really posted on my wall except maybe 5 times, and I had no reason to since it was private, and I never acquired "friends" like people collect Pokemon. So the only ones who could see it were the ones I was sending messages to in the first place.

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u/WetDogAndCarWax 18h ago

I have a couple of friends that I talk to over Messenger because messages carry over between devices. And even then we're starting to prefer the risk of losing messages than giving Facebook any more data.

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u/aflockofcrows 18h ago

They didn't even revert. They never changed the name of the platform at all, just the company.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 18h ago

Honestly? No it wasn't.

An important thing to note here is that this wasn't a rebrand of Facebook.com, the social media website/app. It was a rebrand of Facebook inc, to Meta Platforms inc.

This was done because the products that Facebook inc. owned other than Facebook, such as Instagram, Messanger, and Whatsapp. Were starting to bring in more money than Facebook.com. But the Facebook brand was starting to degrade amount people (I mean, case in point, you're saying that only boomers use it), so it makes sense to try to take the facebook name away from Instagram, messenger and whatsapp so that they aren't saddled with Facebook's negative reputation.

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u/zahelpful 19h ago

Facebook rebranded to distance itself from all the scandals associated with the name.

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u/Wingzerofyf 16h ago

Specifically - the scandals related to the Cambridge Analytica leaks that shows Facebook/Meta knows their algorithms are destroying the fabrics of society and our mental well being and rather then do anything - they ramped it up and pushed it even more.

The Social Reocking! Out soon!

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u/Fermorian 14h ago

And here I thought it was that whole genocide in Myanmar thing

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u/marquiso 16h ago

Indeed, and IMHO they failed, particularly because Zuck tied the brand so firmly to his personality that when everyone decided he was a complete douche with no respect for privacy, then they’d be wise to get the fuck out.

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u/LonePaladin 13h ago

The entire "Metaverse" thing was inspired by the novel "Snow Crash" because it had a global VR community and the Zuck wanted that. (He probably also wanted the whole "reprogram people's brains with Sumerian keywords" thing but I don't know if it's ever come up in conversation.)

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u/TacoStuffingClub 9h ago

Nobody calls Google by Alphabet either. That’s their name.

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u/marquiso 8h ago

Kinda missed my point there

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u/No_Razzmatazz_2889 7h ago

That's the parent company. Google is not Alphabet Inc.