Free speech and media advocacy groups urged a judge to block a California settlement with Paramount Skydance that would let the company finalize its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Twelve states led by California sued to block the deal in July and were able to delay it when US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled that Paramount combining with Warner Bros. would likely reduce competition substantially and violate antitrust laws. Despite that initial victory, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a settlement with Paramount earlier this week and the other states involved in the lawsuit signed on to the deal.
Martínez-Olguín must decide whether to approve the settlement. A coalition of free speech and media advocacy groups told the judge in a filing yesterday that the deal will give residents of the states that sued Paramount “virtually nothing.” The filing was submitted by the Committee for the First Amendment, Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Future Film Coalition, and International Documentary Association. Bonta “publicly criticized the very behavioral remedies that the parties now ask the Court to approve,” the filing said.
That’s a reference to Bonta saying that proposed merger conditions such as Paramount’s pledge to release 30 movies a year are “typically not enforceable in the way that we like,” and “not particularly good at solving the problem.” The groups said the lawsuit filed by states two months ago alleged that “the tie-up would ‘extinguish competition’ between the two and raise prices, reduce output, lower quality, and lessen choice… But whatever the reasons for the States’ about-face, neither time nor circumstance changes the fact that this merger lessens competition.” The League of United Latin American Citizens raised similar concerns in its own court filing. The states alleged that the “merger would permanently eliminate competition between Defendants over the films and television programming Americans can watch,” but the settlement “leaves that loss of independent decision-making largely intact,” the filing said.
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