THB #350: If Succession Was Real

SUCCESSION, SEASON 3, EPISODE 3 SPOILERS!!!!!

Enter at your own risk. Please take off your hats and sunglasses.

And…

Ralph Roberts died.

Sumner Redstone died.

Rupert Murdoch just turned 92.

And now, the fictional Logan Roy dropped dead in his airplane, flying away from his first-born son’s wedding to try to improve the deal to sell his company, Waystar Royco.

It’s a funny thing about Succession. Writers write about how the show reflects the Murdoch clan… kinda. But for a show about the industry which I and other colleagues have covered for many years, the series is remarkably disinterested in show business.

Waystar Royco has cable nets, a variety of international television distribution companies, a movie/television studio, theme parks, a bunch of newspapers, and a still nascent streaming platform, a cruise line, amongst a variety of smaller media businesses.

So, not unfamiliar.

Estimates of the market cap of the company range from $40 billion to about $90 billion. So somewhere in between Paramount/Warner Bros Discovery and Disney/Netflix.

There is a lot of conversation about how Waystar Royco has become a marginalized company in the modern marketplace. But as we experience with all the negative “has to be sold… can’t compete” hum around Paramount Global and Warner Bros Discovery and Lionsgate (not endorsing these glib claims… mostly the opposite) - and even Disney, as silly claims that Apple might buy the company are floated like sports trades that will never happen - these companies still have a significant cultural footprint… whether it’s Yellowstone/Top Gun Maverick or Ted Lasso/You/The Batman or Ghosts/John Wick, it’s not like these companies are just sitting there, fallow.

But aside from some side banter and the specific take on Fox News - ATN - the business of show that the family is in does not preoccupy anyone, not even the late, great Logan Roy. It’s barely every discussed. No debating about theatrical or streaming competition or the ratings (again, aside from ATN). No real discussion - to the occasional complaint by the kids - about a forward-focused plan of attack. When his time ends, Logan is ready to rebuild, with fresh cash from the sale and his beloved ATN separated from the deal. (And of course, we remember that Disney bought most of the Fox assets that were not the broadcast net and cable news and sports nets or the already spun-off newspaper businesses.)

About halfway through the amazing Episode 3, I started thinking, as the executives of Waystar Royco did, about what they should be doing next. The stock chart that gets shown in the episode, which looks like the stock taking an 80% hit seems unrealistic. But 40%, for sure… mostly based on the assumption that the deal on the table would be reconsidered and that streaming master-of-the-universe Lukas Matsson would force a significant price break.

Regardless… if this show was real life, people like me would be covering it closely. I can’t really project how we would all be writing about it. The Gossip Boys would be telling you what Logie and Shiv and Ken Ken and Romanation were thinking after hearing about it 4th hand, telling it like they work out and shower together. The trades would be spinning the losses into wins and the wins into bigger wins. Brooke Barnes would be writing what (anonymous source, because the organization is not ready to speak publicly) Kendall Roy told him was the absolute truth. And Joe Flint would be pissed off that he wrote another big profile of a major figure just before he lost his job (aka died, in this case).