$SSTK Shutterstock Tape Reports
Per Ticker.id: $SSTK Shutterstock Tape Reports — timestamped podcast mentions, volume, and share of voice. Latest 2026-07-14 21:00 UTC.
Yeah, it's just, it's just reminding, it's just reminding me of the, of the whole Getty Images Shutterstock deal, which is, was announced in January of last year. It was a $2 billion merger at the time. Now both companies are worth roughly like $300 million in the public market.
Speaker A — TBPN · IBM Nukes, Demis Govt Plan, Paramount WBD Deep Dive | Dylan Byers, Noah Schochet, Saam Motamedi, Ioannis Antonoglou, Jack Dent, Evan Burns & Jamie Seltzer, Tyler Page · 2026-07-14So this is on the basis that California is trying to block the Paramount, the Paramount acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery. Rohan says, I'm told that If the states do choose to sue, they would have to assume the damages stemming from that action. Chiefly, $600 million to $1.2 billion in ticking fees would potentially be paid out to state taxpayers. So if they leave, those fees would not be paid to the state. Paramount just issued this response to the state AG lawsuit. Brian Stelter is breaking it down, saying the complaint distorts settled antitrust law and is based on misrepresentation of competition in the, in the entertainment industry today. So Paramount is weighing whether to shift major operations out of California after Attorney General Rob Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general— I always get that wrong— filed today to block its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. This story was back and forth. Will Netflix get it? Paramount wound up with the highest bid. The most cash to offer. It got approved. Huge windfall for David Zaslav over at Warner Bros. Discovery, but a very controversial acquisition. All the shareholders. Yeah, everyone did very well, but people were very worried because they owned two, two historic studio lots in Los Angeles. Would they need both of those? Would they convert one to apartment buildings? This was sort of the nightmare case for fans of Hollywood filmmaking that it would become a more agile, lean, globally distributed studio, that would they be making less films, would they change their pattern? Because as they are two separate buyers of intellectual property and scripts that come to Hollywood, they can pay higher prices, there's less competition, potentially the price of the— that the industry becomes more monopolistic and there's less buying activity. So the proposed deal was the— and is the largest merger in Hollywood history. It would combine 2 of the 5 major film distributors and give the resulting company control of roughly 27% of US film distribution and basic cable channels. Of course, anyone who's in favor of this was arguing that, well, people are watching Instagram and YouTube all day long and listening to podcasts and livestreams. You can't look at Hollywood in isolation. It's okay if there's a little bit of consolidation in an industry that's facing incredible pressure from a new disruptive industry. Uh, we saw this play out with the Shutterstock Getty Images question where you have immense pressure in the stock image market from an entirely new outsider technology. Consolidation makes a lot of sense usually in those scenarios. Um, but if you're just looking at it, if you're just defining the industry as only Hollywood studios, then yes, this is— this does represent more consolidation. Friends and advisors to Paramount CEO David Ellison had reportedly been urging him to reconsider the company's California footprint in the event that California sued over the deal. Previously, Paramount had offered to keep both of its historic studio lots in California open and release 30 films annually, which was basically just adding the 15 and 15 that were made from both Studios, I believe, something like that. But executives have privately complained that Bonta refused to negotiate. Worth noting that the Justice Department has already cleared the merger while China and other international regulators have raised no comparable, comparable objections thus far. So from an antitrust perspective, it looks like the merger can go through, but the state of California is potentially trying to block it now. So Paramount says California's complaint distorts settled antitrust law and is based on misrepresentation of competition in the entertainment industry today. It'd be very interesting to see where they actually go if they do leave California. There's been so much, so much movement to Texas and Florida, but in terms of filmmaking, Toronto, London, Atlanta. Exactly. So maybe Georgia. I don't know. I'm sure every other state is gunning for this because bringing in, bringing an industry to town is almost always a good to move more jobs for your local economy, more tax dollars going around. There will probably be a competition, but we'll see where this develops. And we might have someone from the media analysis industry come on the show later this week to discuss.
John Coogan — TBPN · Apple Sues OpenAI, Experts Sign Another AI Warning Letter, Paramount Threatens CA Exit | Diet TBPN · 2026-07-13What's going on here, John? So this is on the basis that California is trying to block the Paramount, the Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Rohan says, I'm told that if the states do choose to sue, they would have to assume the damages stemming from that action, chiefly $600 million to $1 billion, $1.2 billion in ticking fees would potentially be paid out to state taxpayers. So if if they leave, those, those fees would not be paid to the state. Paramount just issued this response to the state AG lawsuit. Brian Stelter is breaking it down, saying the complaint distorts settled antitrust law and is based on misrepresentation of competition in the, in the entertainment industry today. So Paramount is weighing whether to shift major operations out of California after Attorney General Rob Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general filed— attorneys general, I always get that wrong— filed today to block its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. This story was back and forth. Will Netflix get it? Paramount wound up with the highest bid, the most cash to offer. It got approved. Huge windfall for David Zaslav over at Warner Bros. Discovery, but a very controversial acquisition. All the shareholders. Yeah, everyone did very well. But people were very worried because they owned two historic studio lots in Los Angeles. Would they need both of those? Would they convert one to apartment buildings? This was sort of the nightmare case for fans of Hollywood filmmaking, that it would become a more agile, lean, globally distributed studio. Would they be making less films? Would they change? Their, uh, their pattern because as they are two separate buyers of intellectual property and scripts that come to Hollywood, they can pay higher prices. There's less competition. Potentially the, the price of the, the, that the, uh, uh, the, the industry becomes more monopolistic and there's less buying activity. So the proposed deal was the, and is the largest merger in Hollywood history. Uh, it would combine two of the 5 major film distributors and give the resulting company control of roughly 27% of US film distribution and basic cable channels. Uh, of course, uh, anyone who's in favor of this was arguing that, well, people are watching Instagram and YouTube all day long and listening to podcasts and livestreams. Um, you can't look at Hollywood in isolation. It's okay if there's a little bit of consolidation in an industry that's facing incredible pressure from a new disruptive industry. We saw this play out with the Shutterstock Getty Images question where you have immense pressure in the stock image market from an entirely new outsider technology. Consolidation makes a lot of sense usually in those scenarios. But if you're just looking at it, if you're just defining the industry as only Hollywood studios, then yes, this is— this does represent more consolidation. Friends and advisers to Paramount CEO David Ellison had reportedly been urging him to reconsider the company's California footprint in the event that California sued over the deal. Previously, Paramount had offered to keep both of its historic studio lots in California open and release 30 films annually, which was basically just adding the 15 and 15 that were made from both studios, I believe, something like that. But executives have privately complained that Bonta refused to negotiate. Worth noting that the Justice Department has already cleared the merger, while China and other international regulators have raised no comparable, comparable objections thus far. So from an antitrust perspective, it looks like the merger can go through, but the state of California is potentially trying to block it now. So Paramount says California's complaint distorts settled antitrust law and is based on misrepresentation of competition in the entertainment industry today. It'd be very interesting to see where they actually go if they do leave California, because there's been so much, so much movement to Texas and Florida. But in terms of filmmaking, Toronto, London, Atlanta. Exactly. So maybe Georgia. I don't know. I'm sure every other state is gunning for this because bringing in, bringing an industry to town is almost always a good move. More jobs for your local economy. More tax dollars going around, there will probably be a competition. But we'll see where this develops. And we might have someone from the media analysis industry come on the show later this week to discuss.
John Coogan — TBPN · Apple vs OpenAI, Paramount Threatens to Leave CA, Mark Gurman Joins | Alexis Ohanian, Morgan Housel, Nico Christie & Michael Jarman · 2026-07-13Yeah. Here is a crazy story. I mean, it's such a minor story, but it certainly grinds my gears. I think we're going to dig into it and see what you think, what I think once we dig into it. But Getty Images, we know and love them from their trove of Silicon Valley titans photographed at Sun Valley, which is happening now. If you don't have a Getty Images subscription, sign up now because you're going to be first to know when the new Josh Kushner paparazzi photo drops. Getty Images was planning to merge with Shutterstock. These are two essentially stock photo sites. In theory, they should be absolutely decimated by AI image generation. Meta put out a new one, Muse Image. Nano Banana Pro has been fantastic. Images 2 from OpenAI has been really good. And like, they're honestly getting to the point where a lot of the example images are just like, okay, that's just a photo. I saw Adam Mosseri posted some on Instagram and I was like, is this AI or did you just take this photo? Like, it's just you. And then he did a couple with filters and hair and crazy hair and those were cool and that breeds creativity. So I think there's a lot of value in the technology. But in terms of just like, I'm trying to illustrate, I'm trying to make a point visually. I need a picture of a forest. AI image generation is very, very competitive with the stock image industry. And this should have— this should be a business that's sort of affected like the way—
Jordi Hays — TBPN · Blue Origin Raises Capital, Getty-Shutterstock Deal Dies, GPT-5.6 Launches Tomorrow | Diet TBPN · 2026-07-09Yeah, all sorts of things. So Certainly in the face of growing competition, consolidation of an industry is very normal. That makes a lot of sense. This doesn't, this doesn't seem like it should raise any regulatory flags, and yet it did in the United Kingdom. Getty Images has called off the Shutterstock deal after the UK created some barriers around it. So the $3.7 billion deal would have created a visual content company able to offer a more expansive library to users, says The Wall Street Journal. On Tuesday, Getty delivered a written notice to Shutterstock terminating their planned tie-up, which was first announced in January of 2025 and, and received clearance from the Justice Department in America in April. So pretty quick turnaround in the United States. The $3.7 billion deal would have created a visual content company able to deliver a more expansive library to users, helping meet booming demand for licensed images and videos as artificial intelligence disrupts the business of content creation. Getty stock slipped 1.7% in premarket trading. Shares of Shutterstock ticked up 1%. So maybe the Shutterstock shareholders are happy about remaining an independent company. The termination came after Getty last week said that its board voted to not proceed with the deal if it meant selling Shutterstock's editorial business, a condition required by the UK Competition and Markets authority. So the decision by Getty to abandon its merger with Shutterstock was ultimately a commercial choice, so the chair of independent inquiry group that led the CMA's investigation of the deal. The inquiry group found that a loss of competition between the two businesses would reduce choice for UK media outlets and could lead to higher prices. And I would assume that this would give them some sort of pricing power in the face of, you know, essentially unlimited free editorial images in the form of AI-generated images. If you want to go with the real thing, you have to pay a little bit more. But that sort of offsets all the pressure of the customers that are leaving and no longer paying because they don't need to pay because they're generating them with generative AI. So this felt like a very logical story. And I'm, I'm a little bit uncertain that this is a good decision for the UK to help these businesses. It feels like it's just going to wind up hurting both of them.
Jordi Hays — TBPN · Blue Origin Raises Capital, Getty-Shutterstock Deal Dies, GPT-5.6 Launches Tomorrow | Diet TBPN · 2026-07-09Shutterstock is sitting at $329 million market cap. Getty is at $340 million market cap.
John Coogan — TBPN · Blue Origin Raises Capital, Getty-Shutterstock Deal Dies, GPT-5.6 Launches Tomorrow | Diet TBPN · 2026-07-09On mergers and acquisitions, there's this news today about Getty Images calling off Shutterstock deal after UK regulators said that they would have to sell the editorial business for the merger to be approved. And it seemed very odd to me that a merger would be blocked by a regulator when that industry that is consolidating and is maybe becoming more monopolistic is under such insane attack from generative AI. I can't imagine a better defensive move than putting Getty Images and Shutterstock together.
John Coogan — TBPN · Ben Thompson Explains the XBOX Disaster · 2026-07-08Well, uh, here is a crazy story. I mean, it's such a minor story, but, uh, it certainly grinds my gears. I think we're going to dig into it and see what you think, what I think once we dig into it. But, uh, Getty Images, we know and love them from their trove of Silicon Valley titans photographed at Sun Valley, which happening now. If you don't have a Getty Images subscription, sign up now because you're going to be first to know when the new Josh Kushner, uh, paparazzi photo drops. Um, but Getty Images was planning to merge with Shutterstock. These are two essentially stock photo sites. In theory, they should be absolutely decimated by AI image generation. Meta put out a new one, Muse, Muse image. Nanobanana Pro has been fantastic. Images 2 from OpenAI has been really good. And like, they're honestly getting to the point where a lot of the example images are just like, okay, that's just a photo. I saw Adam Mosseri posted some on Instagram and I was like, is this AI or did you just take this photo? Like, it's just you. And then he did a couple with filters and hair and crazy hair and those were cool and that breeds creativity. So I think there's a lot of value in the technology. But in terms of just like I'm trying to illustrate, I'm trying to make a point visually, I need a picture of a forest. AI image generation is very, very competitive with the stock image industry. And this should have— this should be a business that's sort of affected like the way, you know.
John Coogan — TBPN · GPT-5.6 Sol Reactions, Coatue Bets Big on Blue Origin, Cheaper Vision Pro Delayed | Vincent Weisser, Ben Thompson, Rodrigo Liang, Alana Palmedo, Byron Boots, Will Mayer, Tucker Brown · 2026-07-08