12 States Just Filed a Lawsuit to Block the Paramount and Warner Bros Merger

The post 12 States Just Filed a Lawsuit to Block the Paramount and Warner Bros Merger appeared first on Android Headlines .

On Monday, 12 state Attorneys General filed a lawsuit challenging Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery. This lawsuit seeks to block the merger for antitrust concerns. It was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, with support from California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading this lawsuit.

As well as attorneys general from Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington. They are claiming that the “unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the US.” If the acquisition is allowed to go forward, it would form the largest portfolio of TV networks in the US, bringing Paramount’s broadcast network CBS and its pay TV channels like MTV and BET over to Warner Bros Discovery’s channels like CNN and TNT.

The acquisition was on track to close in September. But with this new lawsuit, it could delay things a bit. The Android Headlines Take We’ve seen lawsuits like this before for mergers, and they usually end up with the company making some concessions to close the deal.

For instance, when T-Mobile and Sprint were merging back in 2019-20, they conceded that they would not raise prices for a set amount of time. The same thing happened when the US tried to block AT&T from buying Time Warner (only for AT&T to spin out every part of Time Warner and not own any of it now). This lawsuit will likely push the acquisition from closing in September, but when it comes to consumers, it likely won’t change much.

Paramount Skydance will likely agree to not raise prices for a few years, then skyrocket them once that deal has expired. The post 12 States Just Filed a Lawsuit to Block the Paramount and Warner Bros Merger appeared first on Android Headlines .