Amazon and Netflix Are Winning: Can Old-School Media Compete?

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Hey, listeners, it's Sunday, November 9th. This is What's News Sunday, and for this week's show, we've got an episode of WSJ's Take On the Week. It's our weekly show focused on the news that'll move markets in the week to come. We thought you'd like this episode on one of the biggest business stories right now, Paramount Skydance's bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. It also digs into other media mergers, streaming and tech, mega deals for sports broadcast rights, and plenty more. So give it a listen and if you like what you hear, subscribe to WSJ's Take On the Week wherever you're listening to us.

Telis Demos (1:11)

Welcome back to another episode of WSJ's Take On the Week. I'm Telis Demos.

Miriam Gottfried (1:16)

And I'm Miriam Gottfried.

Telis Demos (1:17)

Well, we've got a big episode this week. Our main conversation is about, well, our own business, the media. A lot going on.

Miriam Gottfried (1:24)

A lot going on. A lot of drama.

Telis Demos (1:26)

But first, we've got a few hot topics to cover. A lot happening in the news this week and a lot coming up. We've got Donald Trump versus the Supreme Court. We've got Mayor Mamdani. And we've got, as always, especially when you're here, Miriam, private credit.

Miriam Gottfried (1:40)

One of my favorite topics.

Telis Demos (1:41)

More to talk about there. All right, Supreme Court. Well, of course, the president, well, the president's lawyers were in court to defend the president's use of a certain tariff power, the IEEPA, or IEPA, which I'm sure all of you know.

Miriam Gottfried (1:54)

IEPA.

Telis Demos (1:55)

IEPA, which all of you know, of course, stands for the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is one of the ways that he used to create the reciprocal tariffs.

Miriam Gottfried (2:06)

Basically by declaring that we were in a state of emergency, and that was what gave him the power under this law to, you know, enact these tariffs, which would typically be the role of Congress.

Telis Demos (2:17)

And so now it's all the way to the Supreme Court. And it sounded like it didn't go great for the president this past week. The way that our Supreme Court reporters here at the Journal described it was that they seemed skeptical. That the president is able to use the powers to act as aggressively as he did with tariffs.

Miriam Gottfried (2:35)

Yeah, a number of even Trump-appointed justices seemed skeptical of this argument, of the government's argument. So that means it maybe isn't looking good for Trump in this case. And, you know, the question is, what does that mean?

Telis Demos (2:50)

You know, what our reporters have said is that typically when the government is found to have illegally taken money from somebody, the court orders to give it back. Normally, of course, we don't pay too much attention to the intricacies of trade law. But in this case, there's the fiscal question of whether or not the US government would actually have to be ordered to give back the billions and billions of dollars that it collected in tariffs. And then there's the question for the stock market of whether companies that had been impacted by tariffs will no longer be impacted.

Miriam Gottfried (3:15)

Which has been one of the main narratives this year in the stock market.

Telis Demos (3:18)

And the huge, really, really the big story in the stock market this year. But that said, even if President Trump does ultimately lose this case, there are other authorities that President Trump can use to impose tariffs. For example, there's Section 122 I won't get into the super details of it, but that basically will allow tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days to address trade imbalances, which one of our reporters, Gavin Bade, wrote that that would give time to for Trump to devise individualized tariffs for trading partners under a different provision, Section 301 So basically, tariffs wouldn't go away. They might just come back in some other form.

Miriam Gottfried (3:58)

But tell us, you know, what this all boils down to is more uncertainty for corporate America. I mean, if you're a company that's been subject to these tariffs, and now they may or may not be going away, and there may or may not be another set of tariffs that could be put in their place, you really don't know. And what does that mean for your stock price? And what does that mean for your ability to plan? I think uncertainty is the enemy here if you are a publicly traded company.