The California AG trying to stop Hollywood’s biggest merger (with Rob Bonta)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Rob Bonta** (0:21)
That's what it means to be a monopolist. You're a king in the economy. You have all the power, you have all the market share, and you have all the authority.

**Dasha Burns** (0:33)
Hello, hello, and welcome to The Conversation. I'm Dasha Burns, and every week on this show, I talk to the most compelling and sometimes unexpected power players in Washington and beyond. This week, I sat down with California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Bonta has been one of the most vocal opponents of Paramount's effort to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, a merger that would combine two of the biggest names in entertainment valued at $111 billion.

**Rob Bonta** (1:02)
Americans deserve a fair market, not a rigged market. They deserve to know they're not being cheated by corporations that break the law and take advantage of workers and consumers to fill their coffers.

**Dasha Burns** (1:16)
The deal is wrapped up in a lawsuit from several attorneys general led by Bonta and argues that the acquisition violates anti-trust laws. Because of that suit, a California judge has put the merger on pause. Bonta is taking that pause as an initial win and in his view, hopefully an indication of how the lawsuit will play out. In our conversation, Bonta and I unpacked the merger and a lot more, including his thoughts on vague tech, election integrity, and the odyssey. Before we get into it though, now is a good time to make sure you're subscribed to the show. Now, Rob Bonta joins The Conversation.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, thank you so much for joining The Conversation.

**Rob Bonta** (1:59)
My great pleasure. Thanks for having me.

**Dasha Burns** (2:01)
Well, let's dive right in because California is my home state, so I'm very interested to talk about all the things that are going on. Over there, you are right now the most prominent opponent of Paramount's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing that it would raise prices, cost jobs and further concentrate control of movies, TV and news. Paramount, on the other hand, says this deal would strengthen theatrical business and help the combined company compete with much larger technology platforms.
Why is Paramount wrong?

**Rob Bonta** (2:33)
Well, a judge has already said they're wrong, so there's no opining anymore about what they think is the right argument. Their arguments have already been rejected by a judge. We have a temporary restraining order that's in place, that received their arguments and our arguments, the judge agreed with ours.

**Dasha Burns** (2:50)
But that's not the final ruling, right?

**Rob Bonta** (2:53)
Well, it's a sneak peek at the final merits. They found that we are likely to succeed when this is all said and done. That's the standard, likely to succeed on the merits, and that would suffer irreparable harm if this merger goes through. But the why? This is an antitrust case. Antitrust cases are about affordability, about blocking unlawful monopolistic mergers that raise prices for everyday consumers, Americans, Californians, that lead to job cuts and lower wages that reduce choice competition quality. And we have seen this movie before with mergers in this industry. This is an already concentrated marketplace with Fox Disney, that merger from a few years back. And so an additional mergers in this industry would create market concentrations that are unlawful. And there's a numerical calculus that is used to identify the market concentration. And when you have a merger of two companies, and these are titans of the entertainment industry. And if they merged, once competitors will now become an entertainment behemoth, where they will merge in multiple markets, they're diversified companies, their potential mergers, should it happen, would impact multiple markets. And we've identified three markets where we believe that the market concentration that would result from this merger is unlawful. And that involves wide release theatrical films, the distribution of movies, the distribution of blockbuster movies, and the cable channel space.
And you're not allowed to have an unlawful market concentration as the result of a merger in a single market. And we've identified three.
And so, the data doesn't lie. There's an indicator where the market concentration in those three markets is presumptively illegal. And the judge, in a footnote, in her temporary restraining order that she issued earlier this week on Monday, batted away and swatted away their core argument that they've been making in their defense. This argument that their merger will allow them to become more competitive. And particularly, it will allow them to compete in the streaming market with Netflix and Apple and Amazon. And the judge said that it is improper to raise that argument, that it is irrelevant, that it is not a market, that we are challenging in our lawsuit, that the plaintiffs, the 12 states have brought, and basically swatted away their main talking point, their main legal defense, and said it has nothing to do with this case.