Warner Bros. Discovery

Paramount Skydance has settled the antitrust lawsuit filed by a dozen states.

The settlement clears the way for its merger with Warner Brothers Discovery.

The Wall Street Journal says the merged company will not need to sell cable channels.

Paramount Skydance has been negotiating to close the deal since CEO David Ellison won the bidding war with Netflix to buy Warner Brothers back in February.

The Journal says a wide range of concessions were discussed.

Paramount offered to pay expensive ticking fees as part of the offer to top Netflix, and it must begin paying if the deal doesn't close by October first.

People might be watching this one.

We've certainly talked about it a lot for political reasons, for how's it changing the world of streaming and Paramount attempting to buy Warner Brothers Discovery for $110 billion.

Some lawyers in California or other states were trying to block it, but Paramount has settled with these lawsuits, settled these lawsuits now.

So it looks like full steam ahead, does it?

And timing matters.

The deal has what they call a long stop date, i.e. it has to close by 30th of September.

Otherwise, Paramount faces $7 million a day of a penalty fee, a ticking fee, as it's called in M&A world, that's payable to the shareholders of Warner Brothers.

So the Ellison family was very keen on resolving this as soon as possible.

Later on in the show, we'll talk about the Paramount settlement.

Now the deal with Warner Brothers Discovery is clear.

That's it.

And the AEW trolling has already begun.

Some of it may kind of lead to where AEW's future could be.

I mean, don't get me wrong.

The trolls out there are saying, okay, the beginning of the end of AEW and Warner Brothers Discovery TV has now entered.

Some people out there will try to write it off as, I'm just going to give you facts, you interpret however you want, all right? As part of the agreement in this court lawsuit, in order for this sale to be finalized, the combined studio of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery have to release at least 30 movies a year for the first two years.

How about data centers? How about AI and flock cameras? The powerful, the billionaires seem to be getting their way, and voices like ours don't get heard.

This is just another example of it, and I don't see a groundswell of people excited by the idea of Paramount Skydance buying or taking over Warner Brothers Discovery.

There was a story out there that Gavin Newsom pushed the attorney general to cut a deal.

What do you make of that? And then there are people who are saying Paramount didn't really give up much for this deal for this lawsuit to go away.

Her body has never been found.

The mega merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Brothers Discovery is moving forward.

California's Attorney General announced this morning that he and 11 other states reached a settlement with Paramount CEO David Ellison, son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

Under the terms, Paramount agrees to freeze the merger until an antitrust challenge is resolved.

To reach the deal, Paramount agreed to increase film production in Hollywood and the US.

Paramount is required to move production back to the United States by spending as a floor at least $300 million more each year in domestic production.

The settlement also requires the new company to negotiate basic cable channels for Paramount and Warner Brothers, independent of each other, to preserve competition.

All right, coming up next, cleaning up the Oakland estuary.

Welcome back to Washington Today, which you can listen to as a podcast on the free C-SPAN Now mobile app and wherever you find your podcasts.

Story from NPR, Paramount's owners have made a series of concessions to a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general to resolve a lawsuit that endangered the media company's $111 billion takeover bid on of its larger Hollywood rival, Warner Brothers Discovery.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference Monday the settlement is not a vote of support for this merger, adding he didn't think the two companies should merge, but he said the settlement is a strong solution that protects competition and consumers.

Reporting from NPR, here's the Attorney General in Los Angeles.

A lot more buyers than sellers.

Warner Brothers Discovery, one of the benefits of their largesse, up $3.09, trading $30.89, putting up 520,000 contracts.

It's just Warner Brothers Discovery.

520 on the tape for them already.

And that's our number 10 spot.

A lot more buyers than sellers.

Warner Brothers Discovery, one of the benefits of their largesse, up $3.09, trading $30.89, putting up 520,000 contracts.

It's just Warner Brothers Discovery.

520 on the tape for them already.

And that's our number 10 spot.