Billionaires Want to Buy Media Companies Again After OpenAI TBPN Deal

It’s a story as old as time: Are you a corporate titan, dissatisfied with the way you or your company is represented in the realm of popular opinion? Good news: you can buy the media.

For an industry as bad as media, big business is obsessed with it. And there may even be signs that a new class of conceited media owners is in the works.

OpenAI acquired the hot tech talk show on Thursday TBPNwhich broadcasts live on YouTube, X and other platforms. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, made no secret of why his company broke the deal: “TBPN is my favorite tech show. We want them to continue this way and do what they do so well,” he posted on

Fidji Simo, CEO of OpenAI Applications, told company staff that TBPN founders Jordi Hays and John Coogan will advise OpenAI on communications and marketing. “With the mission of bringing AGI to the world comes the responsibility to help create space for real, constructive conversation about the changes AI creates – with builders and people using the technology at the center,” Simo wrote.

The media coverage of OpenAI is not constructive, so let’s buy some that is.

Once again, the most powerful people in the world want a piece of the media business. Oracle titan Larry Ellison backs his son David’s $111 billion buyout of CNN owner Warner Bros. Discovery, having previously backed its acquisition of CBS News owner Paramount last year. The younger Ellison, on a smaller scale, turned to Substack entrepreneur Bari Weiss and saw a nine-figure deal to launch into a libertarian store. The free press to propel CBS into a new era.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Axios this week, he wants to start a media company, citing poor coverage of critical areas as the source of many bad policies.

“I think the media is essential. The media teaches everyone. The media is the big influencer,” he said.

Industry titans join fellow travelers like Elon Musk, who frequently criticizes mainstream media, encouraging his followers to “share X-rated links” with friends and family; and of course President Trump, who has made the media an almost daily target of his anger, even if he maintains a reputation as someone extremely accessible to these same media.

Private sector giants have a long and complex interest in media. After all, Coca-Cola once owned Columbia Pictures; Paramount, owned by Gulf & Western; General Electric has been the steward of NBC and Universal for decades. Comcast now owns NCBUniversal, Sony Group owns Columbia, and MGM is owned by Amazon.

Tech billionaires have also taken an interest in media. Who can forget that Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for The Washington Post (how are things going these days?), Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s agreement for the Los Angeles Timesor the acquisition of Time? In the mid-1990s, Microsoft (then led by founder Bill Gates) partnered with NBC to launch MSNBC, in an early effort to create tech-friendly television.

Media is sexy, it’s fun, and as Dimon (whose daughter is a working journalist) pointed out, it has weight and influence. In reality, dealing with journalists and managing the logistics of a newsroom or media brand is something completely different. Bezos fired many journalists after ill-fated growth project, Soon-Shiong did the same. Benioff currently appears to be more interested in AI agents than the magazine business. And then there are cautionary tales like that of Facebook founder Chris Hughes, who took The New Republic with big projects, only to realize that working with journalists is not so easy.

Investor and While Podcast co-host Jason Calacanis posted last week: “Founders: Take my advice… don’t talk to the press, go direct and do long-form podcasts. Wired and the New York Times are as biased as Fox News and MSNOW these days. This is due to their need to side with one side to survive, whether through $3-a-month subscriptions or raging advertising stories.

It’s a view that has gained momentum in Silicon Valley: executives should ignore the press and go directly to the public. But in a fragmented media environment, traditional media remains among the last aggregators of consumer attention. Most consumers won’t spend their days listening to every podcast from every company CEO.

And as any CEO can tell you, building is much harder and takes much longer than buying. This is why Netflix and Paramount each sued Warner Bros. so aggressively. One hundred years of intellectual property does not materialize out of thin air, nor do institutional credibility and audiences.

But the rise of TBPN also shows that it is possible to gain influence quickly, with legacy traps no longer holding people back. But even then, OpenAI bought it, not built it.

But as the ruined landscape of media companies that were bought and sold by the powers that be at the time shows, business, no matter how bad, has a habit of making those buyers end up regretting it. Ultimately, it’s the audience that runs the show, as much as the owners would like to wag the dog.