Ellison did not buy CBS to get ratings or making it a good network.

[JT45242]

4. Washington Post purchase by Bezos was incidental to his real aim -- although now important

When Bezos bought the Washington Post group, he was doing so to get his hands on Kaplan College, the for profit college that was owned by the WPG that was pulling in money hand over fist. They were engaging in many of the same predatory tactics that for-profit colleges were at the time prior to and into the beginning of the great recession.

To get that asset, he was willing to take on the Washington Post and Kaplan Test Prep.

They were trying to sell off the newspaper because it was the weakest part of the portfolio. They altered how Kaplan Test Prep operated, closing a lot of storefronts and trying to shift to online delivery with both synchronous and asycnhronous delivery.

I worked for Kaplan Test Prep as a side job when it happened. Was worried about what it would do to my supplemental income. We kept being told that they were gonf to sell off the paper, but no one would buy it for what Bezos was willing to let it go for.

Now it is part of his propaganda machine.

But that is only because other investors refused to put money into traditional newspapers. This is one of those butterfly effect moments for me -- greed to go from billionaire towards trillionaire by preying on people using for profit colleges. But ended up having a propaganda machine to push policies that help billionaires become trillionaires with what he thought was the scraps to sell off. The entrails ended up being the main dish of that acquisition.