To no one’s surprise it has come to this: Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) isn’t working out and something must be done. To no one’s further surprise, no one knows what to do for the best.

We have enjoyed reminiscing here before about the worst deal in history that was the takeover of Time Warner by AOL. It was also predicted here that no 2.0 version of that deal – even though not in the same league of awfulness – was going to turn out well. And so, it has come to pass.

Warner Bros, the remains of the pool TimeWarner AOL mess, was unsurprisingly a bit shabby after all it had been through. Discovery was a very particular – and successful – thing, and that success was in no small part down to David Zaslav. But it was really quite a small thing, in global media giant terms.

In an effort to add heft, Discovery had already picked up Eurosport, which it was carrying rather uncomfortably; it is a mixed bag to put it mildly. Then, in a tradition of the media industry, and many others, two laggards in the marketplace decided the way to get to the front was to tie themselves together. Isn’t it a strange coincidence that it never works? How do all those brilliant M&A bankers not spot that? Oh yeah, I just remembered, they’re blinded by their mind-boggling fees.

Why wouldn’t a mix of documentaries, reality shows made by the metric tonne, repeats channels, and a pick’n’mix of sports rights blend right in with a major studio, a premium streamer, a struggling news brand, and a load of stuff still stuck on a cable TV business model? It’s an obvious recipe for instant success!!

But don’t forget, these are the guys who had this complicated brand to fix: HBO Max. They (apparently) really needed to drop one word or acronym. One is the name of a storied content brand responsible for much of the TV that put the ‘golden’ into the golden age of TV. The other is the word Max. They dropped HBO. It was so crazy they had to bring it back. But who was going to take them seriously after that?

Of course, even in such a blancmange of a company, there are fruity bits anyone would be happy to pick out. The aforesaid HBO, for instance. The trouble is they spent $35 billion making this mess, and the buyer will have to pick that up. The alternative being they split back into the component parts they were before and then, doubtless, get sold separately. How attractive each part is will largely rely on who wins custody of least debt in the divorce.

The story has hit the headlines because Paramount has supposedly made a bid. Surely this is just a publicity stunt by the new management? It is only five minutes since the Skydance merger and there has been no evidence yet that that wasn’t just slightly larger laggards trying the same old trick. The new management has a lot, a biggly lot, to prove at Paramount without taking anything else on.

Disney and Comcast are the well-run blocs on the board, but both have enough on their plates and both would have anti-trust problems – even if they bend over to touch their toes for FCC Trump.

Is this the time the new guys – it’s all comparative – step in and buy a ‘trad’ media company? Amazon already has MGM but that’s just an appetiser, surely? Netflix seems determined to stick to its knitting, which has worked out well for them so far. Google are as gnomic as ever, but YouTube powers on without the need for trad structures, it might worry bringing one in would do more harm than good. Apple, too, are always keen to keep their culture pure. I guess there’s always Elon…..

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Tags: HBO, MAX, WBD