The settlement ends a fractious two-month legal battle.
LOS ANGELES — Rob Bonta on Monday defended his settlement of an antitrust case with Paramount Skydance that cleared the way for the company to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery and become one of the world’s largest media conglomerates.
The California attorney general, who had joined forces with other states in a lawsuit to block the transaction, argued the settlement would soften the impacts of media consolidation even as he maintained he did not believe the companies should merge.
Click Here to Subscribe to the California Political Review
“Some of you who may be watching this may have wanted a different outcome. I understand that,” Bonta said at a press conference in Los Angeles. But he argued he’d reached a settlement capable of “providing more film production that protects Hollywood workers and their livelihoods, that places guardrails allowing for robust cable negotiations, that protects competition and creates more choice for consumers about what this merger could mean for the industry.”
It “resolves the antitrust concerns at the heart of our lawsuit against the company and Warner Brothers,” he said.
The settlement ends a fractious two-month legal battle that was seen as a major test of California’s ability to exert regulatory power over a high-profile business deal that Donald Trump signaled he wanted completed — and a defining moment for Bonta, whose national profile had risen during the dispute.
Paramount agreed in a consent decree to increase spending on domestic film production by at least $300 million annually, produce 30 movies in each of the first two years of the deal and establish an independent board of journalists to monitor the editorial independence of CNN and CBS News, both of which would be owned by the new media conglomerate.
The agreement came as a disappointment to opponents of the transaction, including the Block the Merger Coalition, which cast the settlement as a sweetheart deal for Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison and his father, Oracle Co-Founder Larry Ellison, who is financially backstopping the acquisition.
“This is a bad deal for the future of film, entertainment, independent journalism, and a strong democracy in this country,” the coalition said in a statement. “We are disappointed and angry that the interests of average Americans have been trampled to benefit oligarch billionaires.”
The Writers Guild of America in a statement predicted the merger would still be harmful to the industry but that the union “must contend with the reality of forging ahead alone, with no backing from government enforcers.”
David Ellison in a statement thanked California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had reportedly expressed concerns about the states’ lawsuit, “for his support throughout this process.”
