Squawk on the Street+ Liberty Media Chairman John Malone 11/21/25

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David Faber (0:45)

First of all, thanks for having me here again.

John Malone (0:48)

Welcome back.

David Faber (0:49)

I'm happy to be here for our annual interview, which I always enjoy. I want to start, I want to get to the book, obviously, and talk a good amount about it because it was a great read. Certainly for me, having lived through covering so many of the things, not the 70s, but certainly let's call it the 90s on.

But things continue to move, and I wanted to start sort of with the news and things you're involved with. Warner Brothers Discovery being first. You are Chairman Emeritus, you're not even on the board anymore.

John Malone (1:22)

Correct.

David Faber (1:23)

But there are a lot of people who seem to believe, given the phone calls I've gotten recently as well, that you have a lot of influence here. I'm curious as to whether you think that and or what your role is in terms of the process that is now ongoing with Warner Brothers Discovery.

John Malone (1:40)

Well, first of all, I was Chairman of the Governance Committee up until June when I stepped off the board. They made me Chairman Emeritus.

I know all the players, okay. I have a deep history with all the players. So it was convenient, I think, for the board to ask me to stay involved as an advisor. And I've continued to be involved as an advisor. I'm best friends with Dave Zazilov. He's one of my boys.

David Faber (2:12)

I know it.

John Malone (2:14)

And, you know, so is Brian. So were a lot of the players. So I have kind of a deep historical history here and a perspective on these businesses and how they would fit together. I also politically, I'm sort of somewhere out there in the ether.

David Faber (2:34)

What does that mean?

John Malone (2:35)

That means I'm not anti-Trump, right? I'm not carrying a curse.

And therefore, I think I have a pretty good perspective on the political realities of getting regulatory approval.

David Faber (2:52)

All right. Can I ask what those are? I mean, I guess I'll start, as you know, John, I'm covering this closely because I also happen to know so many of these people for so many years.

John Malone (3:02)

I was mentioning a minute ago that this is like an Aesop's fable, the blind man and the elephant. We have three or four aggressive bitters. They each are seeing a different elephant because of where they come from and why this asset would be important to them in their future and the future of their companies. So that really makes it very interesting. Larry Ellison sees this as a global technology platform play that could really use AI to dramatically change the whole ballgame in the social networking and streaming.

The Netflix guys just see it as a great way to have the best library and the best production studio in movies and television.

David Faber (3:58)

Although it would be a disruptive move for them in a way, but Reed Hastings, as you point out in the book, is willing to disrupt his own business.

John Malone (4:05)

Yeah, he automatically is disruptive. I think they would add rather than take away. So in many ways, a Netflix deal would be much less disruptive to Hollywood. You'd have essentially more activity than less.

You put it together with another studio. You're going to try and find synergies. You're going to have perhaps compression of activity. So politically, you could look at it a lot of different ways. And the question really is, is streaming even an antitrust category?

David Faber (4:40)

Well, the question is, would they have to get rid of HBO if they were to actually decide they wanted to do the deal? The belief seems to be that I've heard is yes, that you can't be more than 50%.

John Malone (4:51)

Yeah, I don't believe that.

David Faber (4:52)

Why not?

John Malone (4:53)

I believe that streaming is not a category. Television viewership is a category.