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Semafor might be a must-read for politics, but it’s media industry coverage can be less-than-stellar.

For instance, the outlet had a piece this morning entitled “Exclusive / Paramount seeks to calm California’s creatives — and a litigious attorney general,” and based on that headline, you might expect to read something noteworthy. And if that is your expectation, you are going to be disappointed.

Here is the entire “exclusive:”

I am not convinced that viewing a boilerplate letter can accurately be described as an “exclusive.” But even if I accept that framing, this paragraph let me know this was written by someone who really didn’t understand the parameters of the story:

I feel pretty confident in saying that no one in the industry is concerned with building a competitor to Hulu, which will likely cease to exist in a year or so. That paragraph also conflates the streaming and theatrical movie businesses in a way that doesn’t make much sense.

But the bigger problem with the story is that it accepts Paramount’s framing of the merger with WBD somehow being a net-positive idea because it brings increased “scale” for the combined company.

But scale is just a more consumer-friendly way to describe market consolidation. And in the media industry, scale itself isn't the answer. The entertainment business isn’t the same as making widgets. If you’re a widget baron, you want the control and inventory of product to be in the hands of fewer companies, who can then use their semi-monopoly to control pricing.

But scale doesn’t matter so much in an industry where the barriers to entry are low and there are multiple ways to distribute the product. The only thing scale does in the entertainment industry is allow companies to consolidate marketing, promotion and production costs.

A perfect example of this is what happened when the music industry consolidated in the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. The bigger labels bought out a bunch of smaller labels, who had previously served as essentially farm teams. A small label would get a record to the point where it was breaking nationally & then the big boys would swoop in, purchase the masters and sign the band.

The theory of consolidation was that by funneling the music industry down into a handful of labels, the survivors would be able to cut out the middleman and save money on marketing and promotion.

Instead, the labels discovered that they weren’t saving any money at all. In part, because the radio station business had gone through its own consolidation, leaving airplay decisions in the hands of a few people who served as expensive gatekeepers.

But also, those small labels spent a lot of money on developing and promoting new talent that the big labels now had to take on for themselves. Bigger companies also struggled to capture breaking music trends because they were too removed from the streets. As a result, it’s more expensive to break a new artist now than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

And that same dynamic is likely to play out in the streaming industry. Consolidating Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t going to increase the number of productions substantially. Because the fixed costs of a production remains the same no matter which studio is paying for it.

And there are limits to how much back office consolidation can take place before it impacts the success of original programming. Someone needs to do the essential work of promotion and marketing. AI is never going to solve that problem. And dumping new programming onto the market without proper promotion is in the end just a waste of money and talent.

Scale is not the answer in the streaming business. It’s more a cry for help.

Disney held its annual upfronts today, which also served as a glitzy introduction for new CEO Josh D’Amaro.

There were a lot of stars on-hand, ranging from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to a show-ending performance by Olivia Rodrigo. And tennis legend Billie Jean King was there to promote her upcoming documentary Give Me The Ball, while she hit a few autographed tennis balls into the crowd.

But there honestly weren't a lot of surprises in store the audience. The most unexpected announcement was Disney's decision to jump headlong into business with the Savannah Bananas.

The Banana Bowl will stream live on Disney+ and feature the top teams in the Banana Ball league facing off for the season championship. Although the phrase "top teams in the Banana League" is doing a lot of work here.

And here are the other parts of the deal:

I expect to hear soon that Paramount has cut a 360-degree deal with the Harlem Globetrotters.

Here are a few other random things that were announced today:

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In what has become a Disney upfront tradition, Jimmy Kimmel took the stage to close the event on Tuesday with a scathing attack on both his own network and nearly everyone else in the room.

Here are the six funniest bits from his monologue:

"I was on The Late Show last night with Stephen Colbert. As you know, CBS is turning 11:35 p.m. into a least time slot least likely to offend the President with a rerun of Comics Unleashed from 2007 featuring Paula Poundstone and Andy Dick. Poor Stephen. It’s bad enough to lose your job. Imagine getting replaced by the owner of the Weather Channel."

“Yes, the President tried to get me canceled over the last six months. That's one way to look at it. Another way, is you could also say I've 'generated unparalleled engagement across a variety of platforms.' Largely thanks to our partners in Washington, we are up 25 percent among viewers...it’s a big deal to have your numbers go up nowadays. With that said, if Johnny Carson woke up one day with my ratings, he'd have gone straight under the sink and chugged all the Drain-O."

"I cost our company a lot of money this year, billions. It is very possible that no employee in the history of any company has cost their employer more than hiring me 24 years ago. Just from a purely mathematical standpoint, it was the worst personnel decision that Disney Corporation has ever made. Not even the captain of the Exxon Valdez did more damage."

"You know, usually in order for ABC to pull you off the air, you have to throw a chair at your Mormon boyfriend."

"This will be the first Super Bowl on ABC in 20 years, and we are going to milk the bejesus out of it. We are going to spend the whole year promoting what's already the most popular thing on Earth. And as if the country isn't already divided enough, we put the game on Valentine's Day just to be dicks. And let me tell you what the halftime show this year is going to be: The whitest shit you've ever seen. Goodbye, Bad Bunny. Welcome back, O-Town."

"You know, in the past, I've come here to mock the other network shows. It was all very competitive, but now we're like a bunch of dirty, starving little chihuahuas under the table waiting for a chicken leg to drop. For the first time, I think ever, I am rooting for CBS. They've got a lot of great returning shows, and they’ve got some great new shows. NCIS: New York answers the question: What if LL Cool J partnered up with another white guy in a different city?

TUESDAY, MAY 5TH:
Daredevil: Born Again Season Two Finale (Disney+)
Designed To Last Series Premiere (Hulu)
Milky Way Series Premiere (The Network)
Soccer's American Dream (Vice)
The Ozu Diaries (TCM)
Will Trent Season Four Finale (ABC)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6TH:
Citadel Season Two Premiere (Prime Video)
Love Is Blind: Poland Series Premiere (Netflix)
The Other Bennet Sister Series Premiere (BritBox)
Worst Ex Ever Season Premiere (Netflix)