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Decades of Hollywood empire-building ended with a quake in 2017 when Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch decided to sell much of his Fox entertainment holdings amid the rise of Netflix and other tech giants.

This week, another titan who has been instrumental in shaping American media and telecommunications began to unwind his Hollywood holdings.

Brian L. Roberts — who with his father built Comcast into a cable TV and internet colossus — announced his company would spin off its prestigious NBCUniversal unit into a separate publicly traded company sometime next year.

The move reverses Roberts’ purchase of NBCUniversal in 2011 — a bold bet that created a behemoth with popular programming and cable pipes to pump that content into consumer homes.

Comcast’s breakup marks the close of a Hollywood era, one dominated for 40 years by a class of maverick moguls: Murdoch, CNN founder Ted Turner, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, cable titan John Malone and the Philadelphia-based Roberts family.

Now, a new crop of leaders has emerged, reflecting Silicon Valley’s vast influence over the film and and TV business, which has been upended by streaming and, now, artificial intelligence.

“There was a time that Murdoch, Malone and Brian were really industry leaders who could affect change,” said Bank of America managing director Jessica Reif Ehrlich in an interview. “That’s not true any longer.”

Analysts widely believe Monday’s announcement is a prelude to eventual sales of both Comcast and NBCUniversal, a theory that Comcast rejects.

Roberts, 67, told analysts he will remain involved in both NBCUniversal and Comcast after the separation. Still, he plans to relinquish his chief executive role after 25 years and a half century at Comcast. Roberts has picked trusted associates to run each firm, and his family will continue to hold controlling shares of both companies.

But the shift underscores a dramatic loss of clout by Comcast and other traditional media enterprises. Netflix, Apple, Amazon and Google’s YouTube have diminished the industry’s financial pillars — box office receipts and cable programming fees — and given consumers control over when and how they watch programming.

Murdoch was the first to flee. In 2014, he was rebuffed in his $80-billion bid to beef up his 21st Century Fox by buying HBO, CNN and other Time Warner assets. Murdoch’s defeat led to the Fox asset sale to Walt Disney Co.

Last fall, Comcast made a run for the same properties with a plan to unite NBCUniversal with Warner Bros.

Instead, 43-year-old tech scion David Ellison — with help from his billionaire father, Oracle software co-founder Larry Ellison — scooped up the prize for a staggering $111 billion.

The pending blockbuster merger of Ellison’s Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to reshape the industry and leave NBCUniversal increasingly vulnerable to a takeover.

“It looks like Comcast’s NBCUniversal was left standing on the dance floor without a partner,” MoffettNathanson media analyst Robert Fishman wrote in a Tuesday note to investors.

Paramount’s play for Warner Bros. came a month after Ellison finalized his family’s purchase of cash-strapped Paramount from Shari Redstone. The one-two acquisition punch would propel the Ellison family to top-tier moguls with influence over CNN, CBS News, HBO, Turner Classic Movies and two historic Hollywood studios.

“It’s a flagging industry. … The industry will have to consolidate to survive,” said C. Kerry Fields, a USC Marshall School of Business economics professor. “Those who have content plus [streaming] distribution are going to be the winners.”

Roberts knows distribution. His father in 1963 bought his first cable TV system in Tupelo, Miss. It was a quirky bet for Ralph Roberts, who figured his belts and suspenders business would soon be toast as beltless polyester pants became the rage.

Brian Roberts joined Comcast as a high school intern, setting up supermarket promotions. In 1975, he became a trainee cable installer, climbing poles and stringing cables. He joined Comcast full time in 1981 after graduating the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

For more than 30 years, he worked in tandem with his dad. With key associates, they built the nation’s foremost cable TV service — then the entertainment gateway — and grew stronger by offering internet, phone and then wireless service.

Analysts credit the 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal as a huge success; Comcast rescued a company that was on the ropes due to General Electric’s under-investment.

Over the years, Comcast rebuilt NBC and Spanish-language Telemundo, writing big checks for the best sports rights, including the FIFA World Cup, NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball.

Comcast also recognized value in theme parks and invested heavily, building Universal Studios as a formidable rival to Disney. NBC finished the season in first-place among traditional TV broadcasters and its L.A. film studio is an industry leader.

But the world has changed.

“One of the defining characteristics of this company has always been our willingness to look ahead, embrace change, and position ourselves for the future,” Roberts told analysts during a Monday call.

Reif Ehrlich, the Bank of America analyst, said Comcast needed to do something — or watch its stagnant stock sink farther.

Wall Street has punished the company amid steep losses in its cable TV and broadband internet units, and because NBCUniversal has historically generated its biggest profits from its cable channels.

In January, Comcast spun off those networks, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network and Golf Channel, to create a new entity called Versant.

But the move failed to boost Comcast’s battered stock, which dropped 3.3% on Wednesday to $23.73.

Five years ago, Comcast stock topped $50 a share.

“It was just a very challenged market on both sides, and it’s getting worse, not better,” Reif Ehrlich said.

Comcast faces competitors beyond traditional telecommunications firms, including AT&T and T-Mobile. SpaceX’s Starlink provides satellite internet service.

NBCUniversal must jockey alongside other well-capitalized players, including Amazon, Netflix and Disney. NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, has struggled to get traction. It counted 46 million paying subscribers as of the first quarter, a fraction of Netflix’s 325 million and the nearly 132 million subscribers of Disney+.

“It’s kind of a subscale player,” Reif Ehrlich said. “It’s just a real battle, and NBC has expensive sports rights.”

Roberts conceded the difficult landscape on the analyst call.

“The world is changing faster than ever,” Roberts said. “Technology, consumer behavior, competition, capital requirements are all evolving at an unprecedented pace … When we acquired NBCUniversal, more than 15 years ago, the industry looked very different.”

He will retain control for at least three years. The NBCUniversal spin-off is envisioned as a tax-free transaction for shareholders, providing a short-term buffer from deal-making to preserve that structure.

NBCUniversal could be up for grabs by 2029 — a pivotal year when the NFL is expected to open negotiations for a new round of broadcast rights. That auction is expected to draw heavy interest from Amazon and other streamers — not just veterans Fox, NBC, Disney’s ESPN and Paramount’s CBS.

“Brian Roberts has already proven his willingness to play the long game and with continued control should be the end decision maker,” Fishman said.

Much like Murdoch, who is now 95 and partially retired.

“Rupert was the smartest guy in Hollywood — he got out at the top,” Reif Ehrlich said.

He entrusted power to his 54-year-old son, Lachlan, who has been busy remaking Fox after the 2019 sale to Disney, which included Fox’s film and TV studios, streaming service Hulu and the FX and National Geographic channels. Fox also unloaded its regional cable sports networks — a savvy move before that business cratered.

The Murdochs kept Fox Sports, the Fox broadcast network, TV stations, Fox News Channel and the studio lot.

The company has been expanding. Lachlan Murdoch led Fox’s purchase of Tubi, which provides free TV channels and movies for smart televisions, keeping Fox in the streaming game. The company launched Fox News and weather products, and subscription service Fox One, which streams the company’s sports and news.

Earlier this month, Lachlan Murdoch stunned the industry by agreeing to pay $22 billion for Roku, a leading streaming platform that reaches 100 million viewers worldwide. Murdoch called the proposed purchase “a defining moment for Fox.”

The U.S. Justice Department has cleared the way for Paramount Skydance’s $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery — a major milestone that moves David Ellison closer to his goal.

After a months-long review, Justice Department antitrust regulators on Friday concluded the combination would not violate federal anticompetition laws. Approval had been expected because President Trump — who has friendly ties with Ellison and his father, tech billionaire Larry Ellison — favors the deal.

The government stopped short of asking Paramount to make concessions or divestitures.

Buying Warner Bros. would allow Paramount — Hollywood’s smallest major company — to bulk up with such prestigious properties as HBO, CNN, HGTV and Food Network. Those would be combined with properties Paramount already owns, including CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.

The deal would put two historic film studios and two prominent news organizations under the same roof. It would give Paramount four streaming services, including HBO Max, and dozens of cable channels.

In its four-page closing statement, the Justice Department emphasized that career antitrust regulators — not political appointees — had performed a rigorous review, sifting through some two million documents the government received from dozens of sources, including third-party organizations.

They conducted meetings and deposed senior-level executives and other witnesses.

“These investigative efforts all led to the same conclusion: the film and television industry is highly dynamic, and the proposed transaction is not likely to harm competition or American consumers,” Justice Department regulators wrote in their summary.

Regulators zeroed in on three potential areas of concern. They looked at whether the merger would give Paramount too much power in the streaming video-on-demand market; the traditional linear television channel space; as well as in “studio development, production, or distribution of films for theatrical release,” the Justice Department said.

Competition in streaming would not be crimped, according to the regulators.

“To the contrary, the combined firm is likely to increase competition by offering consumers a more robust competitive alternative to the larger [streaming] offerings,” they wrote.

The antitrust division also found that theatrical distribution and opportunities for creators, including writers and actors, would not be harmed as long as the combined company maintained current production levels.

Ellison has promised to continue releasing 30 films a year with a combined Warner Bros.-Paramount studio. He also has said he would protect the HBO brand.

The proposed merger is controversial because many in Hollywood fear it will bring thousands of job losses, which was the result of past consolidations, including Walt Disney Co.’s 2019 takeover of Fox entertainment properties. More than 5,000 entertainment industry workers, including Jane Fonda, J.J. Abrams, Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo, have signed an open letter calling for the merger to be blocked.

There’s a political dimension as well. Paramount’s standing with the Trump administration (Paramount+ is set to televise Sunday’s UFC fight spectacle at the White House to celebrate Trump’s birthday as part of the company’s relationship with the UFC) has given left-leaning groups pause.

They worry about collapsing CNN and CBS News into one unit, particularly after all the turmoil that has ensued at CBS News since the Ellison family bought Paramount in August and installed Bari Weiss as CBS News editor in chief.

This month witnessed a dramatic shakeup at the iconic “60 Minutes,” with top executives and three well-known correspondents tossed out.

“We’ve already seen how far Paramount and the Ellison family are willing to go to diminish a once-proud network and news organization like CBS,” Craig Aaron, co-chief executive of the progressive group Free Press, said in a statement. His group fears the Ellisons would “do worse if they get their hands on Warner Bros., HBO, CNN and all the rest.”

Paramount, for its part, said it was grateful for “the Department of Justice’s thorough review of this transaction, as well as the work of the other agencies that have completed their reviews and provided clearance to date.”

“This deal is pro-competitive, resulting in a stronger company better positioned to compete against dominant technology platforms in an industry increasingly defined by intense competition for audiences, talent, technology, and investment,” Paramount said. “We remain focused on completing the transaction as soon as possible and delivering its benefits to consumers, creators, and the entertainment industry as a whole.”

Paramount wants to finalize its purchase by September.

With Friday’s victory, Paramount is staying on that timetable, but regulators in Europe and Britain have opened their own regulatory investigations and are expected to make their own determinations in the coming months.

Separately, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and other state attorneys general have been scrutinizing the proposed merger, and are widely expected to file a lawsuit, perhaps as early as this month, to try to block it.

Paramount applied for Justice Department approval in December — more than two months before it edged out Netflix in the Warner sweepstakes.

In its statement, the Justice Department said it began its review last fall when it was clear Warner Bros. was in play. Regulators said they were familiar with Warner’s businesses, because the division had scrutinized four other mergers involving the company, dating back to the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger in 2001.

Paramount’s deal would mark the third time Warner has changed hands in the last decade. AT&T bought the company in 2018 and then sold it to the smaller Discovery four years later. That deal left Warner Bros. burdened by debt, setting the stage for the Ellison takeover.

Justice Department approval could complicate efforts by Bonta and other state attorneys general to block the deal. Should Bonta or others sue, they would have to convince a judge that the nation’s top antitrust regulators failed to make a proper finding despite their lengthy review.

That may pose a high bar for the state officials, who are facing political pressure to stop the deal.

“State AGs must block this merger,” U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement Friday, adding that the Justice Department’s approval was “terrible news for every American who doesn’t want Trump-aligned billionaires to control what they watch and how much they pay.”

The Justice Department said state attorney general offices had participated in its investigation, which allowed federal and state officials “to share information with each other and for the States to attend and participate in the [antitrust] Division’s depositions.”

Last month, David Ellison appeared before the regulators in a two-hour session.

Paramount’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim, who previously served as the nation’s top antitrust regulator during the first Trump administration, also was busy quarterbacking Paramount’s outreach with regulators.

Luka Doncic could be involved in two championship bids this upcoming season.

The Lakers superstar and former Dallas Mavericks general manager Donnie Nelson are leading an investor group that acquired a professional basketball team in Italy, it was announced Friday, with hopes that the franchise could become part of the NBA’s new European venture.

The group plans to move Vanoli Cremona, a team that plays in a northern Italian city about 60 miles southeast of Milan, to Rome, and submitted a bid for the club to join NBA Europe, making Doncic the first player to state his ambition to become part of the NBA’s expansion across the pond.

“I have dreamed about owning a team in Europe for a long time, to finally have this happen is amazing,” Doncic said in a statement. “Vanoli has a great history, and we are ready to take it to the next level in Rome. We have an amazing group of partners, and I really believe we can do something special for basketball in Italy and Europe.”

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said this year that the NBA is working with FIBA, the world governing body for basketball, to begin a stand-alone league in Europe. The league could begin as soon as October 2027 with up to 16 teams hosted in major cities in England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece and Turkey.

Rome and Milan are the top Italian targets to host NBA Europe teams. Rome, the Italian capital, has not had a Serie A team since 2020, when Virtus Roma ceased operations because of financial difficulties. Vanoli will begin playing in Rome for the 2026-27 season.

“Rome deserves world-class basketball, and we are excited to be bringing it back,” Nelson said in a statement. “Vanoli Cremona has a proud history, and we are committed to honoring that legacy as we build toward an exciting future in Rome. This city has been without top-flight basketball for too long. That changes now. We are bringing the resources, the expertise, and the passion to make this club a source of pride for Rome and for all Italy.”

Nelson, who is the lead investor and managing partner, was the general manager when the Mavericks traded for Doncic on draft night in 2018 and was the architect of Dallas’ 2011 NBA championship team led by German star Dirk Nowitzki. The investor group also includes Valerio Bianchini, a celebrated coach in the Italian league, and Rimantas Kaukėnas, a 17-year pro across European leagues.

The 27-year-old Doncic, who was born in Slovenia and started his professional career with Real Madrid in Spain, is part of a recent wave of international stars taking over the NBA. The last eight most valuable players have been born outside of the United States. Doncic finished fourth in MVP voting this year behind two-time winner Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is from Canada, three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, who is from Serbia, and Victor Wembanyama, a 22-year-old Frenchman expected to dominate the league for years.

The NBA played two regular-season games in Europe this season, with the Memphis Grizzlies and Orlando Magic facing off in Berlin and London. Next season, Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs will play in his home country against the New Orleans Pelicans and in Manchester, England.

Kobe Bryant rookie trading cards aren’t particularly rare. And because rarity equates to value, standard issue 1997 cards featuring the late Lakers great retail for a pedestrian $100 to $300.

Then there are 1997 Kobe Bryant Metal Universe Precious Metal Gems Green cards, which just by typing that highfalutin name can give even the most savvy collector goose bumps.

The key word is green. Most Bryant rookie Metal Universe Precious Metal Gems cards have a red background and fetch around $300,000. Only 10 were made with a metallic green background and only three have been graded by respected grading firm Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA).

So green translates to greenbacks. Alt, a company that enables users to sell, buy and securely store collectible cards, announced Thursday it purchased one of those — take a breath first — 1997 Kobe Bryant Metal Universe Precious Metal Gems Green cards in a private transaction for $3.15 million.

The company said on Instagram that the purchase makes it the most expensive Bryant card ever sold, eclipsing the previous record of $2.4 million set in September. Another copy of the same card sold for $2 million in 2022.

“It was on every collector’s wall, in every price guide, at the top of every wish list,” Alt CEO Leore Avidar Avidar said on Alt’s Instagram page. “Acquiring it for our fund is personal, but it’s also a reflection of where this market has gone.”

The image of Bryant in midair passing — not shooting! — highlights the card, which earned a PSA 5 grade.

The card adds to Alt’s impressive collection. The fund set price records at time of purchase for LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo cards in addition to the one of Bryant.

The most paid for a sports trading card was $12.932 million for a 2007-08 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection Dual Logoman Autographs signed card featuring Bryant and Michael Jordan last fall. The purchase was made by investor and “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary along with veteran collectors Matt Allen and Paul Warshaw and surpassed the previous record of $12.6 million held by a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card.

The Bryant/Jordan card is the second-most expensive sports collectible of all time behind Babe Ruth’s 1932 World Series “called shot” jersey, which sold for $24.12 million in 2024.

High-end Bryant cards remain coveted by collectors. Allen, well known in the industry as Shyne150, privately spent $4 million on two Bryant 1-of-1 signed Panini Flawless Logoman cards.