Now that the Paramount/WB deal is done, will it produce?

On April 23, Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved a $110 billion merger with Paramount, clearing the way for one of the largest media consolidations in a generation. The new company will combine HBO Max with Paramount+, CBS Sports with TNT Sports, and, eventually, CBS News with CNN. A week earlier, Netflix raised its Premium tier to $26.99 — the second price hike in twelve months — and Reed Hastings, the founder who defined the streaming era, quietly stepped down from the board. Meanwhile, YouTube, the unaccounted competitor, has quietly become the largest single platform on American televisions — serving all five audiences profiled below, for free.

The strategy behind both moves rests on a single assumption: that American households will keep paying more for entertainment indefinitely. The numbers say otherwise. The average American household now spends roughly $4,500 a year on entertainment, and only about 30% of that goes to streaming. The rest goes to live events, concerts, sports, hobbies, pets, and the cost of a movie ticket or a TopGolf bay.

All this while the labor market that supports that spending is fracturing in ways the aggregate numbers obscure: unemployment sits at 4.3%, and headline layoffs are near historic lows, yet tech employers have cut more than 100,000 white-collar jobs this year alone, and the long-term unemployed have grown by 322,000 over the past twelve months. The fully loaded entertainment household and the fully exposed white-collar worker are increasingly the same person.

Five distinct types of American entertainment consumers will shape the entertainment category from now through 2030, and Sooth data indicates the Paramount–WB deal is a miss with four of them.

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In The Frame

$4,500 Estimated entertainment spend per US household in 2026

5.2 Average streaming subscriptions per US household

47% of US streaming households planning to drop one or more services in 2026

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America's five main types of entertainment consumers

90% of US streaming TV households fall into one of these categories

THE CULTURE CLUB: 55%

• Top out-of-home entertainment spenders who visit movies, concerts, and live theater 7x more than average.
• Read Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, and People
• Bundle-friendly: likely to subscribe to 4+ streamers
• Loyal to trends and cultural participation, not any platform. They drop when content loses cultural heat or goes off-season
• The Paramount-WB merger consolidates their prestige content, but they pay for cultural relevance, not awards.

THE NEWSROOM: 21%

• Politically active and engaged; lean center to left
• Watch Meet the Press and Morning Joe; read The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, and The Atlantic
• Passive streamers who mostly watch cable news; they’re loyal to information access more than entertainment
• While the CBS News–CNN combination is aimed directly at them, they may seek alternative voices if the combined entity begins leaning harder to the right.

THE FRANCHISE: 9%

• Constantly connected to sports across screens, with skin in the game
• 10x more actively engaged with fantasy sports and betting, watching the game on TV, and their bets on their phones
• Watch live, archived, and speculative sports content over almost any other entertainment option
• More loyal to teams and scores than networks — they’ll go wherever the rights land for their favorite games

THE PATRONS: 8%

• Streaming keeps them connected to the arts and cultural authority, from Ken Burns to Maxine Waters
• 9x more likely to watch PBS, classical performances, and prestige documentaries
• Highly cause-oriented, supporting Tribeca Film Institute, EMILY’s List, and World Central Kitchen among others
• Least likely to find the Paramount/WB deal personally relevant; they prioritize what they consider quality programming

THE FANDOM: 7%

• Marvel, Star Wars, DC fans who follow studios and directors as a piece of their personal identity
• They’ll be at the movie theater for most blockbuster opening weekends, then rewatch with connected content at home
• More loyal to characters and continuity than to the platforms that host them
• Most personally and positively affected by the Paramount/WB deal, but only represent around 1 in 14 households

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How Will The Big Merger Impact Major Entertainment Players?

1. PARAMOUNT WILL HOLD THE CULTURE CLUB ONLY AS LONG AS THEY KEEP PRODUCING HOT TITLES.

The combined HBO Max and Paramount+ catalog is the deepest mainstream cultural offering in America, and on launch, it should hold the Culture Club through 2027. But they follow the conversation, not the brand. The merger has to keep producing the next White Lotus, the next Severance, the next Sundance breakout — and do it more reliably than Apple, Netflix, and Amazon are producing theirs. The library should hold them for now, but the release slate has to keep winning them every year after.

2. CNN UNDER PARAMOUNT WILL LOSE THE NEWSROOM TO YOUTUBE AND SUBSTACK.

The editorial repositioning of a combined CNN/CBS News will accelerate cord-cutting among the half of the Newsroom audience that views the merger as a hostile takeover of CNN's editorial voice. Watch for increased viewership at MS NOW, and independent creators on YouTube and Substack, among others.

3. FRANCHISE FANS WILL STAY LOYAL TO LEAGUES AND TEAMS, NOT NETWORKS AND PLATFORMS.

The CBS Sports-TNT Sports merger may be the most strategic, but the Franchise tribe prioritizes game rights and wagers. Amazon's Thursday Night Football and YouTube's Sunday Ticket have demonstrated Franchise moves with rights. Future NFL, NBA, and college football rights cycles will determine if the Franchise remains. By 2028, sports rights will be spread over 4-5 platforms, reducing the merger's sports advantage.

4. PATRONS WILL REMAIN LOYAL STREAMERS UNTIL BETTER OPTIONS EMERGE.

The Patrons see their streaming services as cultural infrastructure rather than just content platforms, willing to pay despite price hikes as long as prestige documentaries, classical performances, and Ken Burns-tier programming are available. While providing the most reliable revenue, they offer the smallest growth among the five tribes. The first company to create a true cultural-institution subscription wins its loyalty.

5. THE BIG MERGER WON’T WIN OVER THE FANDOM.

At just 7% of TV households, this group is small but mighty due to high spending on movies, merchandise, and streaming. Disney has kept them for nearly 20 years mainly because of the interconnected platform linking Marvel and Star Wars, not just the collections themselves. The Paramount-WB merger unites smaller and less integrated brands like DC, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Transformers. The merger will only strengthen Disney's hold on this group, and could be a windfall for independent fan content creators on YouTube and other platforms.

DATA SOURCES FOR THIS EDITION OF THE ELI REPORT

Insights are based on Sooth’s patent-pending methodology, which analyzes over 100 million intent signals from 220 million anonymized US adults to predict, with 91% accuracy, how their emotional, practical, and situational needs will influence their buying decisions and the subsequent impact on people, businesses, and the economy. In addition, the following sources were used for corroborating data and the qualification of predictive insights:

Paramount-WBD shareholder approval, $110B valuation: AP, CNN, Reuters, April 23, 2026 · CBS Sports + TNT Sports merger announcement: Paramount Skydance, April 2, 2026 · CBS News + CNN consolidation discussions: CNN Business, February 2026 · Netflix Q1 2026 earnings, $26.99 Premium tier: Netflix Investor Relations, April 16, 2026 · Reed Hastings board departure: Netflix, April 2026 · US household entertainment spending baseline ($3,635, 2023): US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, via GrowthScribe, December 2024 · 2026 entertainment spend estimate (~$4,500/household): ELI calculation applying CPI and category-specific inflation to BLS baseline · Streaming household average spend ($69/month, 5.2 services): Bango Subscription Signals 2026 · Streaming household composition (89% of US households): Parks Associates, February 2026 · Subscription cancellation intent (47%): Deloitte Digital Media Trends 2026 · March 2026 employment, 4.3% unemployment, 178K nonfarm payrolls: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 3, 2026 · Long-term unemployed +322K YoY: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 2026 · Tech sector layoffs, 100,443 workers in 2026 YTD: SkillSyncer Layoff Tracker, April 26, 2026

About Sooth & ELI

Sooth is the predictive intelligence company decoding the 93% of human decisions driven by emotional, practical, and situational needs. Powered by ELI — Sooth’s exclusive Emotional Logic Interface — Sooth uncovers hidden signals, turning audience behavior into predictive foresight. Sooth’s patent-pending methodology uses artificial intelligence to cross-reference more than 100 million intent signals with data on 300 million individuals worldwide to predict buyer tendencies with 91% predictive accuracy. For more information, visit soothbetold.com.

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