Hollywood has long served as a mouthpiece for the Left, peddling progressive ideology through the entertainment and media we as Americans consume daily. It could get even worse thanks to a mega-merger announced this month, which threatens to monopolize the industry further and put more control in the hands of the liberal elite to dictate the content ordinary families see every day.
Warner Bros. Discovery recently accepted an offer from Netflix to acquire its streaming and studio businesses. The $82 billion deal — the largest in Netflix’s history — would solidify the streaming giant as an unrivaled monopoly. That is an alarming prospect for consumers of every ilk, but especially parents who are tired of the woke agenda being pushed on their children.
A recent analysis by Concerned Women for America found that a jaw-dropping 41% of Netflix’s children’s programming contains LGBT themes and messaging — including trans-identifying characters and sexual relationships and encounters between same-sex characters. About a quarter of programs intended for audiences as young as seven feature “explicit” messages.
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Streaming services have led the charge on foisting LGBT messages on families, with more gay and lesbian characters in their shows than all other major U.S. networks combined. But Netflix is at the front. In 2019, GLAAD reported that the streaming leader showcases more gay and transgender characters than any other platform, and it continues to lean into this progressive pole position. In 2023, over half its programs included LGBT characters as regulars.
It would be one thing if viewers were demanding this kind of liberal content. But they aren’t. About 40% of Americans (and a full three-quarters of conservatives) say that most of the film and television produced by Hollywood is too liberal for them. Likewise, over four in 10 Americans believe our country has gone too far in normalizing transgenderism, compared to only a third who say we haven’t accommodated these individuals enough.
Netflix’s purchase of Warner Bros. would make it even harder for families to escape the liberal agenda being pumped through their televisions. With over 300 million subscribers, it is already the world’s largest subscription video-on-demand provider. Adding Warner Bros.-owned HBO Max and its 128 million users would give it a more than 40% market share, about double the closest competitor and well above the standard antitrust intervention threshold.
This anti-consumer power grab is so egregious that it suggests Netflix may not be acting in good faith but rather trying to handcuff the competition while it quietly continues to amass more dominance over our country’s entertainment and distribution channels.
President Donald Trump — who, unlike Joe Biden, has made consumers the cornerstone of his antitrust policy — didn’t mince words when cautioning that Netflix’s resulting market share “could be a problem.” That Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), hardly a champion of free-market values, would agree underscores what a calamity this deal would be for Americans.
Netflix executives must know this deal is destined to be broken up. But by going through the motions, they know they can prevent Warner Bros. from considering other buyers who could contend with it, and possibly even unseat it from its throne atop the streaming wars, were they to acquire the company’s impressive content library, production capabilities, and delivery platform.
That the media giant hired antitrust lawyer Steve Sunshine, who has overseen numerous failed mergers, further indicates that it may be more interested in the merger getting axed than going through. While Netflix agreed to one of the largest-ever break-up fees, that may just be the price to pay to sideline the competition. In Q4 last year, Netflix added more than 19 million new subscribers, at which time it stopped even bothering to report that data.
As one expert put it, this is a “merger monopoly.” Netflix wins either by buying time to add even more users under less competition or by gaining an even greater monopoly over the entertainment industry.
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For years, Netflix has been at or near the top of the media landscape with little regulatory oversight. It’s lavished donations on Democrats, whose radical agenda aligns with its own. It’s continually hiked up its prices, which have doubled over the past 10 years. It has lied to investors and forced woke programming on reluctant audiences. That’s hardly the kind of company Americans should want in control of the news and entertainment they receive.
Trump is committed to putting Americans first, which is why I expect he and his advisers will stop Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. I hope the Trump administration will move quickly to thwart the media titan’s end run, if it is acting in bad faith. Competition is good for consumers, and whether Netflix is out to buy a larger monopoly or simply railroad opponents, its acquisition bid promises to hurt everyday families.
David Brat is a former U.S. congressman who represented Virginia’s 7th district from 2014 to 2019 and is a PhD economist.
