Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) released a 13-minute video titled Warner Bros-Paramount Merger, the Corporate Propaganda Monopoly: Ellison Media Cartel DEEP DIVE. The WGA gathered a handful of media and antirust leaders for a Zoom press conference Wednesday on Rejecting the Paramount Skydance Bid: Why WBD Shareholders Must Vote ‘No’.
Jane Fonda’s Committee for the First Amendment and other groups said they will rally outside Warner Bros. Discovery’s New York headquarters Thursday morning as WBD shareholders vote on the sale of the company to David Ellison’s Paramount for $31 a share in cash. Speakers will include NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, former NYC Comptroller Brad Lander; and Oscar-winning documentarian David Borenstein.
The special meeting of shareholders, set for 10 am ET Thursday, is virtual and expected to be quite short.
Todays movement follows hearings and an open letter against the deal with over 3,000 signatures including many leading entertainment figures. Debate has been heated from Wall Street to Hollywood and gripped big trade conferences like the recent exhibitor event CinemaCon in Las Vegas last week.
“The merged company would become the largest employer of our members. Both companies are industry giants, and the loss of direct head-to-head competition will harm writers and eliminate jobs across the industry,” said Michele Mulroney, President, Writers Guild of America West, on the Zoom presser with former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, and journalist and former CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta.
“A merger would fundamentally threaten the diversity of storytelling, diminishing American culture and our democracy by increasing the power of gatekeepers to decide whose stories get told, Mulroney added. “Consolidated economic power can easily be turned into political power that threatens free speech and creative expression. It’s simple, [a combination] would create a media behemoth with tremendous leverage to reduce content, to raise prices, to increase control of production, to suppress member compensation, worsen working conditions and silence the voices of our members.”
Acosta said “one of my former colleagues at CNN told me recently, they’re not worried about hitting the iceberg. They now see the iceberg, and they are bracing for impact.” He noted a recent comment by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that, “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” referring to WBD-owned CNN. The Ellison family has a close relationship with President Trump.
Paramount CEO David Ellison has promised to ramp up film and television production. He’s targeted $6 billion in cost cuts but says that’s across a range of areas, not all personnel. He’s touting a modern, tech-driven media company that will help grow the industry, not shrink it.
In the video, Booker said, “We’ve already seen … case after case of people saying, before the merger, oh, we’re not going to do this. Oh, we’re not going to do that. And then after the merger, that big corporation turns around, does exactly what they said they wouldn’t do.”
Ellison has said he expects the transaction to close in the third quarter.
The $110-billion deal was announced Feb. 27. WBD shareholder approval is a key step but not the last. The merger still needs final clearance from antitrust regulators including the U.S. Department of Justice, the EU, and the UK. Participants on the Zoom call expressed hope that California Attorney General Rob Bonta in concert with other AGs would sue to block the deal.
English (US) ·