If M&A in the media sector were to be thought of in meteorological terms, perhaps early 2026 can be seen as the calm before the storm. The pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal has essentially sucked up all the oxygen in the room, which goes a long way toward explaining why everyone else is currently sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how that plays out before making any moves.
The decline in deal value among North American media and telecom firms is evident in the S&P Global Market Intelligence data for the first three months of the year, which fell below $11 billion. Six of the 12 months in 2025 managed to top the tally amassed for the entire Q1 2026.
But that drop may end up an aberration in the long run if Paramount gets regulatory approval for WBD. A combination of two scaled media companies will invariably accelerate consolidation as a competitive response, particularly when the two — HBO Max and Paramount+ — have assets in the streaming space.
All eyes will then be on Comcast, for instance, which for all its scale has to figure out what to do with Peacock, an also-ran entry in the SVOD world.
Then there are tech players Netflix, Amazon and Apple, which have more than enough dry powder to make deals that bulk up their own streaming products. Netflix, of course, itself nearly snapped up WBD, begging the question of what its M&A appetite is going forward.
Netflix always described WBD as a unique opportunity it pursued despite its long-professed interest in building rather than buying. But as the streaming market leader, Netflix doesn’t have as much incentive to do deals.
Assessing Big Media’s M&A prospects requires looking beyond just the lens of streaming, which isn’t as central to these companies’ fortunes as it used to be (though not negligible either). It’s entirely possible conglomerates such as Disney and Sony will look to gaming for their next big acquisition opportunities.
The next big media merger may not have anything to do with streaming if Nexstar figures out how to break the legal stalemate currently blocking its $6.2 billion bid for Tegna. We’ll determine the hottest source of M&A in media in the coming years if Nexstar CEO Perry Sook is correct in a prediction he offered publicly last month that the entire TV station business will be controlled by two or three consolidators.
Then there’s the massive looming shadow generative AI is casting over the entire sector, forcing everyone to reconsider the fundamental value of video content. If the most bearish assessments of the damage the technology can do come to pass soon enough, the M&A outlook will get considerably cloudier.
