[Rdd]

The department of justice simply won't let this happen. Besides, wbd owns part of the cw, and therefore either that or cbs would need to be spun off. Wbd and paramount will not be able to merge.

They only own a small minority stake now, since they and their original co owners (guess who? CBS, part of Paramount) sold out to Nexstar. The CW won’t be an issue (and indeed there was no issue with CBS owning 50% of the CW for most of its existence). It’s not like the 21CF/Disney deal which potentially involved ABC and Fox under the one roof (the Murdochs held on to Fox to avoid that).

I think there’s a number of areas of concern, but none is likely to be an obstacle. One is the combination of Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros Pictures. Another is the combination of CBS News and CNN. Yet another is the combination of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Still another is Max and Paramount+. But in none of those areas would a combined player be dominant. And for that reason I think this stands a good chance that this will get through US competition authorities. That doesn’t mean I think it’s a good thing for viewers or content makers, given what WBD (who would be the buyers here) has done, but ultimately that won’t be the test - as always, the directors of each company will make a recommendation on any deal reached based on value to shareholders, who are the only people they are accountable to.

Anyway, by all accounts these are only exploratory talks, and there is no deal yet.