The High Stakes Game of Bargaining with the News

Brian Reed (0:00)

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From KCRW emplacement theory, this is Question Everything. We investigate how the truth gets buried, distorted, denied, and the ways people are fighting to make it matter again. I'm Brian Reed. This week, David Ellison took over Warner Bros, meaning he's now in charge of both CBS News and CNN.

Today, I'm speaking to one of the officials who tried to stop Ellison from doing this, from gaining control of two of our country's major news networks and failed.

William Tong (1:17)

I said this David on a Zoom. I said, I don't trust you with news.

I'm really angry.

Brian Reed (1:25)

We'll be back with that in a minute.

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On Tuesday, Paramount, which is newly owned by billionaire father-son duo David and Larry Ellison, acquired another media behemoth, Warner Bros. Discovery, for $111 billion. Meaning in addition to the Paramount and Warner Bros. movie studios and a bunch of other networks and streamers, the Ellisons are now in charge of CBS News in 60 Minutes, which they got as part of Paramount and CNN, which was part of Warner Bros. The new combined mega company is called Skydance. This merger will surely lead to thousands of layoffs, less competition for filmmakers, and probably higher prices for consumers. It's arguably creating a media monopoly, which is illegal. But the antitrust division in the Department of Justice rubber stamped the deal to go through.

There was a group that tried to stop it. Earlier this year, the Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta, led a collection of Democratic Attorneys General from New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Arizona, Connecticut and more, 12 states in total, in filing their own antitrust suit to kill the deal. A judge paused the merger, and Paramount and the Ellisons seemed like they were over a barrel. Because under their agreement with Warner Bros, once it hit October 1st, they were going to have to pay a $7 million penalty for every day the deal did not go through. The judge had set a trial date for March, so that could have cost the Ellisons more than a billion dollars, and they still could have lost a trial. Feeling this pressure, at one point, David Ellison floated the possibility that he would move Paramount's headquarters from California to another state that wasn't suing him, maybe Tennessee, along with its thousands of jobs, if Attorney General Bonta didn't settle before October 1st. But in interviews, Bonta stood firm, said that didn't scare him.

Rob Bonta (4:22)

It seems like what a potential monopolist would do to try to get their way, to threaten a state that is simply doing its job of enforcing the law here.

It felt like a somewhat desperate last-ditch effort to blackmail the states into allowing an illegal merger to go through, and that's just not going to happen. And this is an illegal merger, period, full stop.

Brian Reed (4:45)