The Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger should not be harder to resolve than the Middle East conflict. Yet California Attorney General Rob Bonta pulled out of talks at the last minute on Monday.
Somehow, President Donald Trump is willing to sit down with the ayatollahs, who want to kill him and to destroy America, but Bonta won’t sit down with companies that employ thousands of fellow Californians.
Bonta’s excuse? That Paramount supposedly leaked details of what had been discussed at a previous meeting. The attorney general declined to say what, exactly, Paramount had leaked.
And why wouldn’t a publicly-traded company tell its investors, and the public, what it had been discussing with a state that is suing it under antitrust laws?
It all looks incredibly petty, especially because Paramount is threatening to leave the state if Bonta won’t come to terms.
That’s a credible threat, because California has been making life tough for the film industry, among other industries, and isn’t providing tax incentives high enough to compete with other states.
The markets seemed happy with Bonta’s decision to walk away. Paramount’s shares on the NASDAQ jumped 1.45% on Monday, and Warner Bros. Discovery’s stock price rose 0.53%. That’s not because the markets don’t want a merger. It’s because the markets think Bonta’s case is both weak and short-sighted.
Recall that Bonta joined other Democrats in opposing the Spirit-JetBlue airline merger, bringing California into an antitrust case with several “blue” states and the Biden Department of Justice. They argued that the merger would be bad for competition.
But after courts blocked the merger, Spirit collapsed, taking a major budget carrier offline and hurting consumers’ ability to find cheaper, no-frills alternatives to the big airlines.
A report by LA County claimed that the merger will cost the area 4,500 TV and film jobs. What the county failed to consider was the number of jobs that will be lost if the merger doesn’t go through, and the even greater number that will be lost if Paramount simply leaves. The figure is likely in the tens of thousands.
These are big stakes for Hollywood and for the entire economy that it supports. These are crucial jobs that should not be pawns in Rob Bonta’s political games.
Sitting down to talk with Paramount was the right move. Walking away from talks was the wrong move. We need leadership from Bonta — before it is too late.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
