Paramount, Skydance and National Amusement’s talks with the FCC continued on Tuesday, with representatives from the three companies meeting with commissioner Olivia Trusty and her staff to tout the “significant public interest benefits” of their pending $8 billion merger.
Per a regulatory filing posted on Wednesday, representatives spoke with Trusty, her chief of staff and senior counsel Krista Senell and legal advisor Jessica Kinsey, to express Skydance’s “commitment to unbiased journalism, its embrace of diverse viewpoints, and its intent to promote non-discrimination and equal employment opportunity at New Paramount.”
The group also discussed allegations of undue foreign influence, reiterating that China’s Tencent holdings would hold a non-voting passive interest in New Paramount of less than 5%.
Additionally, they said conditions seeking to “regulate carriage of third-party programming on New Paramount’s streaming platforms, mandate expansion of collective bargaining arrangements, and intervene in commercial arrangements between CBS and its network affiliates” are not transaction-specific and are “more appropriately addressed in separate Commission proceedings.”
The move follows similar meetings with FCC chairman Brendan Carr and staff members of the agency’s lone Democrat commissioner Anna Gomez.
More to come…
