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COURTS✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Paramount settles with state AGs over Warner Bros. merger
Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk
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Waltz of Treachery
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Print made by: Samuel Collings Published by: William Humphre · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Paramount Skydance settled with a coalition of state attorneys general, led by California's Rob Bonta, who had sued to block its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Under the deal, the combined company commits to at least $300 million more a year in domestic production, a slate of 30 to 32 movies annually with a chunk from independents, honoring union contracts, and funding workforce training. It will also create an editorial independence board for CBS News and CNN and split cable packages from Warner Bros.
The agreement runs five years under an independent monitor, and still needs a judge's sign-off. The Writers Guild, which sued separately, also reportedly settled over the weekend, though details weren't available.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
A merger that would hand one company a third of movie screens and cable channels gets waved through once the buyer agrees to spend money it was probably going to spend anyway. Calling that a win for workers is like a landlord bragging he fixed the leaky roof he caused. The real test is whether anyone checks back in five years, or whether the monitor's report ends up in the same drawer as the promises.
