Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has a notable supporter in Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr. The FCC boss told CNBC today that the Paramount/WBD combination “is a lot cleaner” than the now-defunct Netflix deal to buy WBD.
Netflix “would have had a very difficult path forward from a regulatory perspective” because of “the scope and scale” of the streaming service that would have been created by combining Netflix with WBD property HBO Max, Carr said. There were “a lot of concerns in DC” about Netflix buying the company, he said.
Netflix backed out of its deal with Warner Bros. instead of matching the Paramount offer. Although Paramount plans to merge its own Paramount+ streaming service with HBO Max, Carr said the Paramount/WBD merger “does not raise at all the same types of concerns [as Netflix]. I think there’s some real consumer benefits that could emerge from it.”
Paramount Skydance is led by CEO David Ellison. His father, Larry Ellison, pledged $40 billion toward the deal. The Ellisons seem to have won President Trump’s backing for the merger.
The FCC plays a big role in reviewing mergers when broadcast licenses are transferred from one entity to another. There are no license transfers in this case because WBD doesn’t own any TV broadcast licenses.
But Paramount Skydance must comply with the FCC’s foreign ownership rules because it is already an FCC licensee with 28 local CBS stations that it owns and operates. Paramount is apparently financing the WBD purchase partly with money from foreign investors, which could trigger an FCC review of whether a foreign entity would gain control of a broadcaster.