Transcript
A (0:01)
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B (0:35)
balance of power on Bloomberg TV and Radio. I'm Joe Matthew. Thanks for joining us on the Friday edition. After a months long battle for Warner Brothers, Paramount has officially outbid Netflix by agreeing to pay $111 billion for the Hollywood studio and paying Netflix for the $2.8 billion breakup fee to terminate its initial merger agreement just a short time ago. The merger raising concerns about market consolidation, of course, job losses. You've heard about it on Bloomberg. It's still pending regulatory approval with Paramount chief David Ellison already asked to testify before Congress next week as Democratic Senator Cory Booker announces a probe into the potential Paramount Warner Brothers merger. And Booker is not the only one. With California's Attorney General Rob Bonta warning Paramount's WBD takeover is not a done deal yet, vowing a vigorous investigation and he's with us right now for more. Attorney General, is this deal not over? What are you looking at?
C (1:29)
Not a done deal? The regulatory process still needs to be completed. There are hurdles there that have not been traversed yet by this, this proposed deal. And we have a job to do and we're going to do it. We are. We have an investigation. We're looking at the deal, we're looking at its potential anti competitive impacts. And we know that corporate consolidation tends increased prices, lower wages, lower competition, lower quality and limit choice. So we're going to take a close look at that as is our job, and make an independent assessment based based on the law and the facts.
B (2:07)
I suspect that's an investigation that could take some time. This is a massive and sprawling deal with a lot of properties. Attorney General the critics say the problem with this deal and those who favored the idea of Netflix buying it is that this takes an entire movie studio off the table. Is that how you're looking at this and what would that mean for California's economy?
C (2:28)
Well, one of the we are looking at that for sure. One of the first questions is what is the appropriate market at issue? The market definition and one is studio, you know, it will be a studio market consolidation there's also a streaming service market consolidation here. So there's a couple of different markets at issue. And you know, California is the home of Hollywood with the fourth largest economy in the world. What could this merger, should it go through and be approved and get through the regulatory process mean? It could mean less choices for consumers, higher prices for consumers, less a less robust creative output and set of processes. It can mean, you know, fewer choices and lower quality. So there's a lot at stake here for the 40 million Californians. But these companies, they're so large, there's going to be impacts nationwide and worldwide as well.