Op-Ed: Warner Bros. Should Reject Both Big Offers

Now that Paramount and Netflix are competing to buy Warner Bros. Discovery with rival bids, which is the better choice? Columbia law professor Tim Wu opts for "none of the above" in a New York Times essay. "Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by antitrust authorities," he writes. "The message to Warner Bros. Discovery should be: If you must sell, maybe try finding a buyer who is not a direct competitor." At this point, most people arguing for one or the other are trying to assess which would be the lesser of two evils, and that's no way for such a massive deal to be decided, he writes.

Wu digs into the particulars of both potential options and sees too much overlap in each: Either way, the consumer is bound to lose—both in terms of pricing and reduced creativity from the resulting behemoth. He also makes the case that the Clayton Act of 1914 clearly bans such deals when the effect "may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly." Wu is hopeful that federal regulators will quash both offers or, if not, that California will challenge any deal to protect workers in the movie industry. Read the full op-ed.