One intriguing quirk of the media industry—from a narrative perspective, at least—is the way that small overtures can catalyze transformative deals. Bob Iger’s courtship of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox assets began over a glass of wine at the Moraga Estate; David Zaslav’s stealth takeover of WarnerMedia began with a coy and characteristically emoji-laden text to John Stankey; Don Graham met Jeff Bezos at the Sun Valley Lodge, named his price for The Washington Post, and sold him the paper less than a month later. These are the stories we tell ourselves, anyway, and then adapt for the HBO screenplay.

It’s too soon to tell yet whether Zaz’s recent, strategically leaked lunch with Bob Bakish is the opening scene in the story of his next megamerger, or a smoke signal to draw in a better dance partner like Brian Roberts, or merely evidence of both Zaz and Shari Redstone’s desperation for deal heat. In any event, it’s been fascinating to observe the juxtaposition of his rationale for this move and the conventional wisdom of Mr. Market. Zaz, of course, presumably sees greater scale, savings via synergy, more franchise I.P. and highly coveted NFL rights, and, let’s face it, staggering eliminated redundancies; many Wall Street analysts covering the sector envision a legacy franken-co, glutted with mostly irrelevant assets and even greater exposure to linear’s secular decline—a faux Netflix competitor weighed down by its cable networks, run by one of the original cable guys, in a decidedly post-cable era. Shares for both WBD and Paramount slid on the news.