Can Amazon monopolize Hollywood by acquiring MGM with us $8.45 billion?

米高梅为亚马逊带来了大量内容，这有助于该公司在流媒体领域展开竞争。一是带来产能。亚马逊在原创电影和电视方面的局限性在于其有限的生产能力。因此，它向其他工作室支付了大量版税。与米高梅合作，它增加了一个小型电影制片厂，并带来了一个电视制片厂，将在2019年制作近1000集电视剧。

MGM has brought a lot of content to Amazon, which can help the company compete in streaming media. One is to bring capacity. Amazon's limitation in original movies and TV is its limited production capacity. As a result, it paid a lot of royalties to other studios. With MGM, it has added a small film studio and brought with it a TV studio that will produce nearly 1000 TV episodes in 2019.

第二，增加了詹姆斯·邦德和洛基等有价值的知识产权。媒体公司的现代剧本包括利用流行的知识产权建立特许经营权，并扩展到新的内容垂直领域。事实证明，迪士尼非常善于利用自己的知识产权，每年都能成功挖掘迪士尼经典人物的潜力。

Second, valuable intellectual property rights such as James Bond and rocky have been added. Media companies' modern playbooks include the use of popular intellectual property rights to build franchises and expand into new content verticals. It turns out that Disney is very good at making use of its intellectual property rights, and every year successfully tap the potential of classic Disney characters.

亚马逊仍在寻找一种超受欢迎的内容来吸引主要视频服务的回头客，而其主要竞争对手Netflix似乎每月都有一系列顶级节目在其服务中首次亮相。亚马逊将推出《指环王》系列，但基于米高梅的知识产权制作该系列要容易得多，也便宜得多。

Amazon is still looking for a super popular content to attract repeat viewers for the prime video service, while Netflix, its main competitor, seems to have a series of top shows making their debut in its service every month. Amazon will launch the Lord of the rings series, but it's much easier and cheaper to make the series based on MGM's intellectual property rights.

最后，亚马逊将获得米高梅的节目目录，其中包括4000部电影和17000集电视剧。米高梅目前将这些程序授权给各种流媒体服务，以及自己的Epix网络。

Finally, Amazon will get MGM's program catalog, which includes 4000 movies and 17000 TV episodes. MGM currently licenses these programs to a variety of streaming services, as well as its own Epix network.

随着现有协议的到期，亚马逊将能够选择独家保留更多的节目。米高梅的内容在未来可能有很大的价值，因为正在进行的媒体整合和越来越多的公司提供直接面向消费者的服务，很少有电影制作公司愿意为流媒体签订独家输出协议。

With the expiration of the existing deal, Amazon will be able to choose to keep more shows exclusively. MGM's content may be of great value in the future because of the ongoing media integration and more and more companies providing direct to consumer services, few film production companies are willing to make exclusive output agreements for streaming media.

该交易的总体结果可能是，随着亚马逊扩展原创作品，并从米高梅获得更多内容版权，亚马逊的年度内容支出将大幅增加。

The overall result of the deal is likely to be a substantial increase in Amazon's annual content spending as it expands original works and obtains more content rights from MGM.

反垄断调查

Antitrust investigation

各国政府已经在调查针对亚马逊的反垄断案件。亚马逊被指通过提高价格、削弱竞争和人为降低价格来惩罚第三方企业。美国法律学者、日益壮大的反垄断科技运动领军人物利娜·汗（Lina Khan）在2017年《耶鲁法学杂志》发表的一篇文章中对亚马逊案给出了最好的概述。

Governments are already investigating antitrust cases against Amazon. Amazon has been accused of punishing third-party businesses by raising prices, weakening competition and artificially lowering prices. Lina Khan, an American legal scholar and a leading figure in the growing anti-monopoly movement of science and technology, gave the best overview of the Amazon case in an article published in the Yale Law Journal in 2017.

但如果美国司法部试图以反垄断为由阻止亚马逊收购米高梅，那与米高梅关系不大，与亚马逊在其他任何地方的影响力无关。通过米高梅的电视节目和电影，亚马逊网站的点击率有望提高。但是亚马逊已经在制作电视剧和电影，而且它不是行业的领导者。在文化关联性方面，它最多接近Netflix，最差仅为市场第五；就收入而言，亚马逊规模较小。

But if the US Department of justice tries to prevent Amazon from buying MGM on the grounds of antitrust, it will have little to do with MGM and nothing to do with Amazon's influence anywhere else. Through MGM's TV programs and movies, Amazon's website's click through rate is expected to be improved. But Amazon is already making TV shows and movies, and it's not the industry leader. In terms of cultural relevance, it is at most close to Netflix, and the worst is only the fifth in the market; In terms of revenue, Amazon is smaller.

米高梅并没有改变多少权力平衡。米高梅只是一家小公司，与其他娱乐公司的电影制作公司相形见绌。在此背景下，亚马逊收购米高梅不会受到太多反垄断阻挠。

MGM has not changed the balance of power much. MGM is just a small company, dwarfed by the film production companies of other entertainment companies. In this context, Amazon's acquisition of MGM will not receive much antitrust obstruction.

消费者权益组织的关注

Concerns of consumer rights organizations

消费者权益倡导者将提出两个更广泛的观点：第一，亚马逊赠送电视节目和电影将使亚马逊成为更具吸引力的购物目的地；第二，强迫客户支付更多的服务费用将导致服务价格上涨。但在第二点上，具有讽刺意味的是，解决这个问题的办法是更多的整合。

Consumer rights advocates will put forward two broader views: first, Amazon's giving away TV programs and movies will make Amazon a more attractive destination for shoppers; Second, forcing customers to pay for more services will lead to the rise of service prices. But on the second point, ironically, the solution to this problem is more integration.

在最近的交易之前，看起来规模较小的公司现在看起来规模较小。其中包括维亚康姆CBS、狮门影业和AMC。它还可能包括NBC环球，尽管其领导层誓言对其目前的规模感到满意。人们不想为八种不同的服务付费，也不想花20分钟去弄清楚哪种服务是他们想要的。如果维亚康姆的CBS流媒体服务不是最大的参与者之一，那么像这样的公司没有理由每年在节目上花费超过100亿美元。

Before the recent deal, companies that looked small now look smaller. These include Viacom CBS, Lion Gate pictures and AMC. It may also include NBC Universal, although its leadership vows to be satisfied with its current size. People don't want to pay for eight different services, or spend 20 minutes figuring out which one offers what they want. If Viacom's CBS streaming service isn't one of the biggest players, there's no reason for companies like this to spend more than 10 billion dollars a year on programs.

随着时间的推移，整个行业将整合在几个主要的参与者之后，即流媒体时代的广播网络。这并不排除利基服务，即流媒体时代的有线网络。但这些利基服务比过去的有线网络要小得多，因此无法支持大型上市公司。这笔交易之后，其他小型流媒体公司的命运将如何？无论是parameter+、HBO Max还是peacock，它们都可能无法单独运营，将成为其他公司的收购目标（腾讯科技/无极）

As time goes on, the whole industry will be integrated behind several major players, namely the broadcast network in the streaming media era. This does not exclude niche services, that is, cable networks in the age of streaming media. But these niche services are much smaller than cable networks in the past, so they can't support large listed companies. After this deal, what will be the fate of other small streaming media companies? Whether it is parameter +, HBO Max or peacock, they may not be able to operate alone and will become the acquisition targets of other companies (Tencent technology / Wuji)

Link：https://new.qq.com/omn/20210601/20210601A03JDX00.html

update time：2021-06-01 10:29:48