Why the AGs Must Take Their Case Against This Monstrous Merger to Trial

When 12 state attorneys general sued to block the corrupt and unlawful merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery back in July, merger opponents like Free Press applauded the decision to halt a deal once seen as inevitable. True to form, the Trump-friendly Ellisons — David, who’s the CEO of Paramount Skydance, and his father Larry, who happens to be one of the planet’s richest people — have engaged in all sorts of shenanigans to scuttle the lawsuit.

As pressure mounts on the AGs to settle the case, Free Press and allies have launched a petition urging them to reject any concessions and take the case to trial. NoParamountConcessions.com is a project of groups including Free Press, the Archival Producers Alliance, the American Economic Liberties Project, the Committee for the First Amendment, Common Cause, Democracy Defenders Action, the International Documentary Association, the Media and Democracy Project and Public Citizen.

“Media deals of this scale can’t be salvaged with unenforceable pledges and empty promises,” Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron said in a statement announcing the effort. “The serious antitrust concerns in this case can’t be resolved via backroom negotiations and corporate PR stunts, but must be litigated in a court of law. Any talk of concessions is just wishful thinking from desperate billionaire owners who know that their plan to seize control of our media endangers our democracy.”

Remind me — why is this merger so bad?

This deal would give one Trump-aligned family control of CBS, CNN, HBO, Nickelodeon, TikTok, two of the five biggest movie studios and many other prominent media properties. It would lead to higher prices, fewer choices, and major job losses in the news and entertainment industries.

And given how the Ellisons — with a big assist from Bari Weiss — have worked to turn CBS into a MAGA mouthpiece, handing CNN to this corrupt family would lead to more propaganda and less trustworthy journalism. Trump has railed against CNN for years, and during a morning briefing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network the better.”

The deal’s announcement spurred widespread protests led by a coalition of First Amendment advocates, unions, consumer-rights groups, and Hollywood actors and directors.

What’s the status of the legal case?

The AGs filed suit on July 13 on the grounds that the merger would violate federal antitrust law, leading to higher prices for film and cable audiences and resulting in fewer movies and TV shows. Then on July 20 California federal District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ordered a temporary halt to the $111 billion deal. 

Seeing the writing on the wall, Paramount Skydance agreed to delay the merger until June 2027 or after the conclusion of a trial. “Paramount tried to tell us this deal was a slam-dunk, but it just shot an airball,” said Craig Aaron. “Late in the game, Paramount’s lawyers grasped what we’ve said all along: The states have a very solid case that this deal violates U.S. antitrust law.”

Paramount asked the judge to schedule the trial for November, but she set it for March 2027. That timeframe will literally cost Paramount: Beginning Sept. 30, it will have to pay Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders a daily ticking fee of $7 million for every day the merger is delayed. Back when it was in a bidding war with Netflix over WBD, Paramount proposed the ticking fee to sweeten the deal. Given everything David Ellison was doing to court the Trump administration to approve the merger — including holding a swanky gala in the president’s honor — he likely never imagined he would need to pay up.

So why shouldn’t the AGs settle?

The history of mega-mergers tells us this: Concessions are unenforceable, frequently abandoned and pit impacted parties against one another. Research from the American Economic Liberties Project and the Writers Guild of America West document how concessions fail to protect workers and consumers.

And Paramount is hardly a trustworthy company. Since it agreed to put the merger on hold, it’s resorted to all sorts of deceitful pressure tactics to push for a settlement. David Ellison wrote a pro-merger New York Times Op-Ed that was chock full of lies. An astroturf group called Neighbors for Strong Communities texted Los Angeles residents to urge them to pressure Attorney General Rob Bonta — who’s leading the lawsuit — to settle. The Intercept reported that Warner Bros. Discovery denied funding the text-message campaign while Paramount Skydance didn’t respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Ellison has threatened to move the company to Tennessee or Texas if the AGs refuse to back down.

On Aug. 24, Bonta canceled a scheduled settlement meeting with Ellison because the CEO was engaging in his usual underhanded antics. “Not only did Paramount leak the alleged substance of settlement discussions, but they misrepresented these discussions, demonstrating a lack of good faith,” Bonta said in a statement. “As soon as Paramount stops playing games and engages sincerely, my office is happy to meet again.”

There’s a lot of pressure to settle the case, and it’s up to us to speak out to make sure that doesn’t happen. Urge the state attorneys general to stand firm, reject any concessions and take the case to trial.