Warner Brothers Discovery, meanwhile, plans to split into two independent publicly traded companies. The media company separate its streaming and studio assets from its global television networks business. For more on how this reshapes the media investing landscape, let's get to City managing director Jason Baznet. Jason, always good to see you. So let's start with that headline, Jason. I'm curious your reaction and your response. What did you make of it?

Well, I think the buy side has been clamoring for some time for there to be consolidation among, um, I'll call them second tier streaming apps. And I think with this decision to sort of split the company in two, uh, lays the groundwork for that to occur. And in essence, the the linear cable business that Warner Brothers had was almost like a poison pill. No one wanted to acquire more of those assets, and so it prevented the app and studio consolidation from occurring. So by having sort of bad co and good co, uh, I think they've laid the groundwork for for more media consolidation.

Jason, when will the media industry learn? I mean, I mean, come on, we we have watched decades, right? Of like consolidation, then a breakup, then reconsolidation in a different form. What, I mean, has there been a successful media consolidation that has been consistently successful over time?

Well, no, but I wouldn't be quite so harsh on traditional media. Let me try and explain it this way. Um, if you if you looked at at at Netflix's cash burn as they built this phenomenal business they built, they burned cash for 10 years. And the street was more than willing to underwrite those cash losses. Um, as traditional media embarked in consolidation following 2019, they sort of had a two-year honeymoon period when interest rates were low, the street was willing to underwrite losses, allow them to sort of build a scaled streaming business. And then the tenure went up. And when the tenure went to 4%, Wall Street changed their tune, they wanted profits. And what that meant is all the traditional media companies had to not stop spending as much building their app business. And so now they're all sort of half pregnant, right? They don't have the requisite scale to compete. They can't invest more in content to repeat the success of Netflix because the street won't tolerate losses. So now what this means is in this environment where these executives can't generate, you know, 10 years of losses, uh, you need to consolidate to get more content under a single app.