This is despite a pre-existing rule that limits foreign equity ownership to 25 percent.
The saga of the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger that not many people seem to want other than one failson and his billionaire daddy continues. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just announced that it’s waiving its own rules regarding foreign equity ownership, according to a report by The Verge.
The rule states that foreign entities can only own up to 25 percent of media companies that broadcast on public airwaves, and Paramount owns 28 TV such stations. Fortunately for David and Larry Ellison, the totally non-political FCC has decided to allow a stake of 49.5 percent by a trio of wealth funds coming from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. That’s right. Three Gulf states will own nearly half of Paramount-Warner Bros. if this merger goes through.
Don’t worry though. The FCC says these entities “will not be able to wield any influence, let alone control, over decisions involving the Licensees.” This is because the stock options don’t come with official voting rights.
https://x.com/DanielNMiller/status/2100689735371108774
Now I’m just a humble tech reporter who is confused by the ways of big business, but couldn’t three entities that own half of a giant media conglomerate sway voters in a myriad of ways even while not sitting in the boardroom? They would own half of the company, which certainly grants a level of influence and control, no matter what the FCC would like us to believe.
Also, this could be just the beginning. The petition actually asked the FCC for permission to allow foreign entities to own up to 100 percent of Paramount-Warner Bros., which was granted. The commission did put on its big boy pants and say the company would have to issue another request for these groups to gain voting shares. So they have to ask nicely before handing over absolute control. Pretty bold stance FCC.
The advocacy group Free Press and a number of Democrats are against the move. “Control over for-profit, commercial domestic news media by any government is an extraordinary situation that would surely strike most Americans as unseemly, precisely because of the utility of the news media as a propaganda tool for those governments,” Free Press told Variety.
“Ellison, legal fixer Makan Delrahim, and other Paramount mouthpieces are speed-running through the four stages of greedy corporate grief: abandonment, astroturf, antisemitism and assholery.
They are, as the kids say, crashing out.” – @notaaroncraig.bsky.social
Anna Gomez, who is the only Democratic member of the FCC, responded that the organization “just let some of the most repressive governments in the world indirectly control nearly all of a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. An investment this large in one of America’s biggest media companies doesn’t just buy equity, it secures influence over what gets said and made.”
Of course, the elephant in the room is the FCC itself. Since Trump got elected, Brendan Carr and his organization has repeatedly threatened channels for airing stuff it didn’t like, tried to block stations from platforming people it didn’t like, censored late-night TV hosts and attempted to bully journalists. So it seems it reserves all of its real teeth for, uh, Americans and not global wealth funds with their own agendas.
The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is still up in the air pending an antitrust suit filed by California and 11 other states. A trial is set to begin next March.
