It's interesting that you bring up Netflix. While their initial offering of having a good selection of movies in one subscription was very attractive, their expansion and eventual entry to public stock market caused it to be pretty much synonymous with "slop" in TV and movie circles, which I think makes a very good case that "big production studio" != "good quality productions".

Warner Bros specifically, while still a very large studio, has been relatively generous with funding more risky movies, and there is a lot of warranted caution that this consolidation is going to result in streamlining everything into taking as few risks as possible and aiming for broadest appeal and highest possible gross margins, which is a terrible thing for anything that could be considered art.

Netflix completely changed the game. They paid huge amounts to produce original content. Direct to TV used to be an insult now you have triple A content direct to steaming. You forget what the market looked like pre Netflix. Sure you don't like their content now, but that's not the point

Comedians for instance get 10 - 25m per special, they were getting a fraction of that before Netflix. They had to sign on shitty sitcoms to make any money

What are you talking about?