A massive merger within the entertainment industry has resulted in a dozen states coming together to file an antitrust lawsuit. There should be more.
The battle over who is set to own Warner Bros. Discovery has been a long and tiring battle since the start of the bidding war in 2025. Since then, it’s evolved from a situation strictly impacting the entertainment landscape towards directly affecting American political media itself. While a monopoly is generally a net-negative for average citizens and lawmakers, when it came to choosing between Netflix and Paramount, many saw Netflix as the lesser of two evils.
This is largely due to the ownership of Paramount’s parent company, Paramount Skydance Corporation. The Ellison family has been infamous in American politics for the past few years due to their handling of the American news network CBS and the popular 60 Minutes program.
Many journalists within the mainstream news media and politicians have called out the Ellison family for forcefully pushing the network to favor conservative-leaning values and messaging in their reporting, largely due to their close ties with Donald Trump and his presidential administration.
Many see Paramount’s attempt to acquire Warner Bros Discovery as a way to control a good portion of American media and format it in a way that only favors Republican and conservative talking points, because of Warner Bros’s ownership of CNN. Outside of politics, Paramount would potentially own 30% of the global blockbuster theatrical film distribution market and 34% of the basic cable channel market.
