On Monday July 7, representatives for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and its Hollywood Local 399 and the conservative public interest group the Center for American Rights met with staff of the Federal Communications Commission to discuss a deal important to both of them: The Skydance-Paramount merger.
The FCC has to approve the transfer of Paramount’s broadcast licenses to Skydance, and the Commission has spent some 238 days reviewing it. While a settlement between President Trump and Paramount is widely seen as clearing the path toward the deal consummating, the FCC is still expected to demand meaningful concessions in order to approve the transfer, and those talks will heat up in the coming days, as Charlie Gasparino notes.
In fact Monday’s meeting with the Teamsters and Center for American Rights underscored the concession issue, while also taking a tone that recognized that the end is near: “If the FCC approves the Paramount deal, the petitioners have provided specific, concrete ideas for how the FCC can improve the deal,” the representatives told the FCC, according to an ex parte filing. “As part of its process, the FCC owes stakeholders and the American public a robust review of this transaction. Rubberstamping the transaction as-is does not serve the public interest.”
The Teamsters and the Center ended their meeting by reiterating “our commitment to explaining and applauding a final license package that protects the interests of workers, consumers, and investors.”
If the concessions are strong enough, they are ready to publicly laud the deal.
So, what will it take to get the Skydance deal over the line? A review of filings from the Teamsters, Center and other petitioners, as well as comments from FCC chairman Brendan Carr himself, paint a picture.
NO MORE DEI?
Carr has opened investigations into companies over the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and policies, and has repeatedly said that ending those programs will be critical to any company seeking FCC approval. “Any businesses that are looking for FCC approval, I would encourage them to get busy ending any sort of their invidious forms of DEI discrimination,” Carr told Bloomberg in March.
The companies are listening. Just this week, T-Mobile, which is seeking FCC approval to acquire U.S. Cellular and Metronet, wrote to Carr with a pledge to end its DEI programs:
“You’ve made clear that you expect companies the FCC regulates to have practices that are lawful, free from invidious forms of discrimination, and open to all,” T-Mobile wrote in its letter. “We have conducted a comprehensive review of T-Mobile’s policies, programs, and activities, and pursuant to this review, T-Mobile is ending its DEI-related policies as described below, not just in name, but in substance.”
The FCC secured a similar commitment from Verizon earlier this year. Given the circumstances, it is all but assured that Skydance will need to agree to do the same.
A CBS NEWS OMBUDSMAN?
A filing from the Teamsters and Center for American Rights outlines the possibility of requiring CBS to have an “independent, well funded, empowered, balanced ombudsman or oversight board” that would monitor for bias.
Such a move would surely anger CBS News employees, many of whom are already on edge after the settlement. It would sting particularly hard at the newsmagazine 60 Minutes, which has long held a level of independence from the rest of CBS News. In fact, a more hands-on approach from some CBS executives were one of the things that caused former executive producer Bill Owens to resign.
SHIFT RESOURCES FROM NEW YORK TO LOCAL STATIONS
The Center for American Rights has asked the FCC to require Paramount to move newsgathering resources outside of New York and Los Angeles and toward its local stations scattered across the country, and then use more news coverage from local stations on its national newscasts.
“With such a model, properly resourced, Americans nationwide could start seeing more stories from places like Detroit, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh,” the Center in a letter May 6. “In other words, CBS should flip the script: rather than local stations as pass-throughs for nationwide content, viewers should see the best local reporting from diverse geographies being used on nationwide programs.”
NO MORE AMPTP?
Similarly, the Teamsters wrote to the FCC on May 5 requesting that the Commission implement a condition that the new Paramount would not reduce staffing levels at its local stations, and even floated the possibility of having the company stop negotiating its deals through the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
“The Teamsters prefer to enter into a private agreement with Skydance to address the treatment of workers at New Paramount,” the Teamsters wrote in their letter. “In addition to other terms listed in previous filings in this docket, the Teamsters believe that New Paramount should negotiate directly with the Teamsters regarding current and future collective bargaining agreements, and not through the industry group, ‘AMPTP.’ Failing any such agreement, however, the Teamsters fully support a station-level staffing condition like the one attached.”
FORMALIZE PRO-WORKER PROMISES
On March 31, Teamsters president Sean O’Brien (read The Hollywood Reporter’s profile of the union boss here) and Local 399 VP Lindsay Dougherty met with Carr, asking that the Commission “either should memorialize Skydance’s pro-worker commitments as a merger condition, or encourage the parties to reach an agreement on how best to protect workers post-transaction.”
The Teamsters and Writers Guild of America have called for a commitment from new Paramount to maintain current staffing levels for full-time employees for at least eight years. Under the proposal, the company wouldn’t be able to circumvent the requirement by consolidating operations across stations, outsourcing work or reclassifying employees in a manner that reduces their hours or benefits. This may run up against plans to slash $2 billion in costs, half of which would be realized in the first year, suggesting immediate layoffs once the merger is completed.
Skydance and Paramount have pushed back on this restriction. “Rejecting the Labor Unions’ requested condition would be consistent with the public interest because the Commission does not have sufficient industry-wide information to conclude that any particular level of employment at a broadcast station is necessary or appropriate at a given time,” they wrote.
Also in play: conditioning approval of the transaction on sustaining current acquisition levels of union-creating programming.
REQUIRE INDEPENDENT CONTENT ON STREAMING
The niche streaming platform Fuse has asked the FCC to demand that new Paramount “set aside a fixed percentage of programming services on PlutoTV and other streaming platforms for independently owned content providers.” Such a requirement could be a boon for small, independent streaming and content companies seeking to cut deals for access to its streaming platforms.
Fuse’s competition concerns relate to new Paramount potentially leveraging the technological resources of Oracle — owned by David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison — to squeeze indie networks in content acquisition and distribution on Pluto TV by self-preferencing its own content or completely boxing out competing content, among other things. By the company’s thinking, Paramount’s control of the distribution platform and insight into the available data it provides through Oracle would make it increasingly difficult to compete on visibility, ad revenue and audience engagement.
Fuse pointed to the launch of Shades of Black, a streaming channel aimed at African American audiences in 2021 available on Pluto TV. It said there was a drastic drop in viewership on the platform when Pluto TV started to promote its own proprietary programming aimed at the same audience. It added, “Oracle’s AI could facilitate the creation of synthetic or semi-automated content based on performance data across their platform, drastically reducing the need for independent programmers’ owned and licensed content libraries.”