Skydance Media and Paramount Global have said objections filed with the FCC over their planned merger “lack merit” and “seek relief that raises constitutional concerns” — and the companies have formally asked the agency to dismiss them.
In particular, Skydance and Paramount said a petition by the Center for American Rights, a conservative public-interest law firm, made “baseless claims” in its petition to the FCC seeking to add conditions to the agency’s transfer of CBS station licenses to the newly merged entity. The Center for American Rights’ Dec. 16 filing objected to CBS’s supposed “track record of ideological bias and news manipulation” and alleged CBS “has apparently engaged in illegal racial quotas for its hiring.” The group also raised concerns about the potential for “undue foreign influence from China” on the merged Skydance-Paramount, citing the minority interest in Skydance held by Chinese company Tencent Holdings.
The Center for American Rights’ petition asked the FCC to condition its grant of approval of the Skydance-Paramount merger on “specific commitments by the new corporation to address these issues, and to place the approval on a probationary status for an appropriate period of years until compliance with the conditions is evident.”
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“The Commission must press the owners of New Paramount to commit to viewpoint diversity, with real benchmarks and expectations,” the group said in its petition. The Center for American Rights cited findings by conservative watchdog group Media Research Center that from July 21 (when President Biden dropped out of the race) through Sept. 27, “CBS Evening News” and “CBS Weekend News” coverage of VP Kamala Harris was allegedly 84% positive while coverage of Donald Trump “has been lopsidedly negative (79%).”
In their Jan. 2 filing with the FCC (available at this link), Skydance and Paramount said, “The ‘viewpoint neutrality’ condition sought by the Center would improperly encroach on broadcasters’ editorial discretion and is squarely foreclosed by the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent.”
“As a threshold matter, the Center’s concerns about viewpoint diversity and alleged bias or manipulation are manifestly not transaction-specific,” Skydance and Paramount said. “The Center complains about a purported lack of diversity across ABC, CBS and NBC (and the media industry more generally), and to the extent it focuses specifically on CBS, the Center makes no effort to show that any alleged harms will be caused by the Skydance Consortium’s acquisition of Paramount.”
The filing continued, “The Center’s other allegations, relating to supposed Chinese influence and ‘racial discrimination,’ have no factual foundation and are legally unavailing.” As such, the Center for American Rights “cannot be deemed a party in interest in this proceeding,” the companies said.
Separately, the Center for American Rights filed a consumer complaint with the FCC concerning “news distortion” by CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” alleging the show “manipulatively edited an answer by Vice President Harris in an interview on an important topic of foreign policy.” Prior to the 2024 election, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS over the Harris “60 Minutes” interview. CBS News has said Trump’s claims about the “60 Minutes” Harris interview are false and that the lawsuit is “completely without merit.”
Brendan Carr, the FCC commissioner whom President-elect Trump has picked as the agency’s next chair, has said Trump’s lawsuit against “60 Minutes” will likely will be a factor during the FCC’s consideration of the Skydance-Paramount merger.
In October 2024, Skydance and Paramount filed an application requesting the FCC approve the transfer of control of television broadcast licenses for CBS’s 28 owned-and-operated local TV stations to the newly merged entity. Under the $8 billion-plus deal, Skydance and RedBird Capital Partners would acquire Shari Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. (Paramount’s controlling shareholder) then merger Paramount and Skydance. The deal is expected in the first half of 2025.
Skydance and Paramount, in the Jan. 2 filing, also asked the FCC to reject the petition of LiveVideo.AI to deny the transfer of CBS stations licenses. LiveVideo.AI had alleged it made “a superior bid on July 5, 2024” to acquire NAI and Paramount and that it “has been injured by the anti-competitive acts involved in what the Petitioner has discovered was a rigged sales process.” In response, Skydance and Paramount said LiveVideo.AI’s “complaints about the Paramount sale process are not cognizable in this proceeding, and its vague allegations of misconduct are unfounded and insufficient to warrant denial of the Applications.”
In addition, Paramount and Skydance commented on the objection filed by Fuse Media, which alleged that it “experienced firsthand Paramount Global’s self-preferencing behavior on the Pluto TV platform, one of the leading and fastest-growing free streaming platforms critical to the future of video programming services, and believes the proposed transaction will worsen the competitive viability of Fuse and other independent programming sources.” Fuse Media urged the FCC “to consider whether the proposed transaction as currently structured fosters the kind of competition and viewpoint diversity that the public interest standard demands.”
Paramount and Skydance said the FCC “lacks authority to impose the conditions sought by Fuse Media — as they relate to streaming media services, rather than the proposed transfer of control of CBS’s broadcast station licenses — and such conditions are wholly unjustified in any event.”