A few years back AT&T sold WB to Discovery, and part of the deal of selling it was that Discovery would take on a lot of its debt. Discovery hasn't pulled off a miracle, so it still has a huge amount of debt. It considered just selling its cable channels since they don't make much money any more, but are now looking to sell the whole thing. Also, you may have recently heard that Skydance bought Paramount. These sorts of mergers are very hard to pull off because the government, specifically the FCC and the FTC try to appear non partisan and don't want the media controlled by any one person or company. It just so happens Skydance is owned by Larry Ellison's son and they are both really friendly with the Trump administration and the AI boom has made Larry Ellison at times the richest man in the world. So this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity where they have the money and the politcal support to pull this off. So they put in their bid which the Trump administration doesn't say shit about blocking, now Netflix moves in with a better bid and if the Trump administration now were to say oh no you can't do this only our special friend Larry Ellison can they would look really bad. Essentially this merger wouldn't just mean there will be fewer movie studios and streaming services but Skydance already owns CBS and WB owns CNN so if Skydance was allowed to buy WB it would have control over a large chunk of the news on top of other tv, music, and movies. I did hear speculation that Netflix put in their bid knowing it probably wouldn't go through and that the Trump administration would just drag their feet and never end up approving it and I think that would be the best outcome if they all end up staying independent. Answer from OmniManDidNothngWrng on reddit.com