The Balanced Economy Project opposes Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has cleared Paramount Skydance's $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. The Culture Secretary has decided not to intervene on public interest grounds, accepting instead a set of promises that Paramount signed on 5 August about news independence, children's programmes and Channel 5.

The Balanced Economy Project opposed this takeover. We reject both decisions.

Two studios, two streaming platforms, two sets of cable channels and two news operations are now going to one owner. The CMA examined film distribution, children's channels and streaming one market at a time and found competitors left standing in each. Neither the CMA nor the Secretary of State asked what a company that size will be able to demand of the writers, performers, producers and cinemas who depend on it.

Paramount can put its commitments on hold if its business in the UK takes a hit and its board decides that keeping them would hurt the business. The protections for news and children's TV depends therefore on how well the company is doing. The Secretary of State could have appointed someone to check compliance with these promises, but she has chosen not to. So the only check at the moment will be a letter from Paramount once a year telling her whether it has kept its word.

On 30 June the Secretary of State said she would legislate to let Ofcom examine the deal's effect on streaming services, which is the way most people now watch TV. She has dropped that too. Her powers, she accepts, reach neither film nor the wider creative industries.

The merger is still on hold in America. Twelve State Attorneys General and the Writers Guild sued in July, a judge halted the deal, and trial begins on 2 March 2027. The European Commission required Paramount to give up its stake in United International Pictures before clearing. UK regulators asked for nothing.

Claire Godfrey, Executive Director of the Balanced Economy Project, said:

"The UK accepted a set of promises. In America it took 12 states and a writers' union to do what regulators would not. Only their action is a serious answer to a merger this size."

Parliament must scrutinise both decisions when it returns in September, and require the Secretary of State and the CMA to answer for what each of them left out.  Ministers must stop treating clearance in other jurisdictions as grounds to clear here. We call on the Secretary of State to appoint an independent monitor, publish what it finds, and bring forward the streaming services legislation she has shelved. The CMA should publish its full reasoning, including what it made of the merged firm's buying power over creative work."