“Full Stream Ahead: Competition and Consumer Choice in Digital Streaming”
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House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 1
And let me be clear, this hearing is not about picking winners or losers in the merger context. This is for Warner Bros shareholders. Today, we're here to start a much-needed conversation about whether further consolidation in the streaming industry would be helpful or harmful to consumers. Economic theory teaches us that mergers create efficiencies, and that's no different when it comes to the streaming industry. By vertically integrating content production and distribution, platforms can eliminate redundancies and also work on lowering redundancies and focus on delivering high quality content to consumers at lower prices.
Some will argue that eliminating arrival will hurt competition or further entrench a dominant player. Others may say it will harm our already distressed theatrical film industry. We should take all of those concerns very seriously. But I would remind colleagues that the antitrust law is meant to protect consumers by promoting competition, and any potential harm should always be weighed against the consumer benefit. And a merger that results in greater choice in video libraries at lower prices is welcome, while delivering to consumers a solution to their current frustration with the fractionalized streaming content.
And it does not strike me, certainly, I think, and many of the other members, as a merger. We should initially be concerned with a look at the entire entity of what's being promised. I wanna thank our witnesses for being here with us today, and I look forward to your testimony. I now will recognize the ranking member, Mr. Nadler, for his opening statement.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mister chairman, the entertainment and media landscape has been transformed in recent years. Many of these changes have brought undeniable benefits, such as streaming services that give viewers more options at their fingertips than ever before. But many of these changes have also come at a cost, as lax antitrust enforcement and waves of consolidation have concentrated power in just a few major players. And one thing has seemed to be constant over the last few decades, a merger involving Warner Bros.
It began with the disastrous AOL Time Warner merger in 2000, then the short-lived partnership with AT and T in 2019, then its latest incarnation since 2021 as Warner Brothers Discovery. And now, once again, Warner Brothers is up for sale to another media giant. This time, it has accepted a bid from Netflix, the global leader in streaming services and a major content producer in its own right, to control Warner's streaming and studio assets, including such mammoth properties as DC Studios, HBO and HBO Max, and Warner Brothers Motion Picture and Television groups, as well as Warner's 128,000,000 streaming subscribers. What we know today about this proposal raises a host of questions about its effect on the pricing, production, and distribution of content going forward. We have also heard with great alarm from the movie theater industry, which despite claims from Netflix that it will keep theatrical businesses operating largely as they are, takes seriously comments from its co CEO who called movie theaters, quote, an outmoded idea and, quote, not consumer friendly.
Further, labor groups like the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild have raised concerns and say that this proposed merger is not in their interest or the public's. Serious concerns have been raised about whether this deal, which by some measures would give the merged company over 30% of the streaming market, could reduce competition, diminish consumer choice, raise subscription prices, threaten jobs, wages and working conditions in the creative industries, and reduce diversity of content and viewpoints. Netflix argues that this merger would allow it to better compete with a range of other platforms that are battling for eyeballs and attention from viewers, including other streaming giants like YouTube, traditional movies and television, social media, and more. But if Netflix must get bigger in order to compete, that is a sign of a market that is already highly out of balance. Under the Netflix deal, Warner's cable channels, including most notably CNN, would be spun off into a separate business that would not be part of the sale.
But another major media conglomerate, Paramount Skydance, has now made a hostile bid to control all of Warner's properties, including CNN. Even though the Warner Brothers Board has rejected the Paramount bid for now, Paramount could still pursue a buyout of Warner Brothers. A potential merger with Paramount presents its own set of antitrust concerns by collapsing what are now five major movie studios down to four, thereby reducing competition and substantially increasing concentration within an already concentrated industry. Not only could this bring higher prices and fewer choices for consumers, but it could also bring fewer jobs and lower wages for content creators. The Paramount bid also brings its own unique set of circumstances or concerns because it would place CNN under the control of the Ellison family, the same billionaires who have curried favor with Donald Trump by imposing control over the content of CBS News.
Just weeks ago, Barry Weiss, the controversial minder placed in charge of CBS News, spiked the story on sixty minutes that would have shed light on the Trump administration's lawless campaign to send migrants to be tortured in an El Salvadoran prison. Excuse me. Presumably, the elephants have similar designs on making CNN more Trump-friendly. A merger with either Netflix or Paramount would result in a behemoth that poses significant antitrust and other public policy concerns that require careful scrutiny. I have long believed that the unchecked concentration of economic power in any industry poses a danger to economic fairness and to our democracy.
While I do not prejudge the merits of any proposed merger, I am concerned with any deal that would significantly increase the concentration in a market that is already highly concentrated. Such increased concentration could not only harm consumers, but we have also heard great concern from the creative guilds. We have borne the brunt of decades of media consolidation that historically has been followed by fewer jobs, downward pressure on wages, and reduced creative opportunities. That is why it is so important that any merger be reviewed with careful and impartial analysis by the antitrust regulators. Unfortunately, under the Trump administration, the antitrust review process has been dangerously corrupted and politicized.
Just last month, we heard from a former senior Trump administration antitrust official who testified that under this administration, the rule of law is being replaced by the rule of lobbyists and corporate interests. We know that the White House routinely intervenes in Justice Department matters, often to benefit the president and his cronies. And already, Trump himself has said, quote, I'll be involved in that decision, unquote, when asked about the Warner Bros. deal. Does he intend to put his thumb on the scale in favor of Paramount as a reward for his friends, the Ellisons? Who, according to press reports, have already promised to implement, quote, sweeping changes over CNN if they were to take control.
That this is not a far-fetched scenario. There were troubling reports that Trump tried to block the AT&T Time Warner merger as retaliation for CNN's critical coverage of him during his first administration and campaign. Mister chairman, we have seen this movie before, and the sequel is almost always worse. A hallmark of the second Trump administration has been a determined effort to exercise control over the independent news media, whether through frivolous lawsuits against media outlets, limiting press access to the White House and the Pentagon, and gutting funding for public radio and PBS. The White House must not be allowed to use the merger review process as another tool in its campaign to bend the media to its will.
A proposed merger, whether it be with Netflix, Paramount, or some other suitor, must be analyzed on its own merits. What we know already about the antitrust review process under this administration has caused a serious congressional oversight. And, unfortunately, our Republican colleagues have turned a blind eye to their oversight responsibilities during this Congress. And today, just one more missed opportunity. It is vitally important that we examine the Warner Brothers merger closely to ensure that any deal will protect competition, consumers, and workers.
And I appreciate our witnesses being here today to lend their expertise. I look forward to today's hearing, and I yield back.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen, yields back. I now recognize the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Raskin, for his opening statement.
Speaker 3
Mister chairman, thank you very much, and thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today. Against the background of a media industry that is already heavily concentrated under the control of several multibillion-dollar media companies, we're gathered to discuss the proposed acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery by Netflix, two giant rivals in the field of entertainment. The alternative acquirer, Paramount Skydance, is itself not only a giant rival in entertainment, but also a rival in news. In ordinary times, we proceed carefully with an acquisition of this size to ensure that it passes scrutiny under American antitrust laws. But these are not ordinary times.
Just last month, this subcommittee heard testimony from whistleblower Roger Alfred who served in antitrust at the DOJ during both the first and second Trump terms. During Trump's first term, Alfred served as deputy assistant AG, and during the second, as the principal deputy assistant AG, which is second in command. He testified to the pervasive practice of lobbyists attempting to corruptly influence antitrust law enforcement at the Department of Justice, telling us the corporate lobbyists now boast about their ability to overrule both the professional antitrust experts and President Trump's own handpicked leadership at the antitrust division. And just to be clear, Professor Alfred is a strong supporter of President Trump. He served in both the first and second terms.
He sees clearly that this political and financial corruption of antitrust law betrays Donald Trump's favoured populist agenda as he sees it, the one of lower prices, affordability, and increased choice in competition that the president once long ago promised the American people on the campaign trail. Well, we already know how this corruption works in Trump's Washington. Professor Alfred gave a detailed description of what he called the HPE-Juniper merger scandal. He told us that on numerous occasions, in a variety of matters, we implored our superiors and lawyers on the other side to call off the jackals, but to no avail. Today, cases are being resolved based on political connections, not on the legal merits.
These warnings from a top Trump appointee command our urgent attention, yet my Republican colleagues refuse to conduct any kind of serious oversight of what's going on in the administration. In twelve months, our colleagues have had just one administration official coming up here before the committee, FBI director Cash Patel. Committee Democrats have invited two Trump officials as minority witnesses. And as you know, we only get to invite one witness, but we've had two of them, Mr. Alford and FTC commissioner Alvera Bedoya. The chairman has had only one.
We urgently need the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to appear before the judiciary so we can conduct oversight over an increasingly out of control, lawless, and corrupt Department of Justice, both in the antitrust domain and in many others. And it's not just the DOJ. The whole government is now saturated in pay-to-play corruption and lawlessness. Take the example of Skydance's acquisition of Paramount last year. In late 2024, incoming FCC commissioner Brandon Carr accepted two tickets worth $12,000 to go to the Kennedy Center gala.
The donor was Paramount, whose proposed merger with Skydance was about to require Commissioner Carr's approval. Now I concede that $12,000 these days is petty cash compared to the billions of dollars that are being raked in by the president routinely, and the corruption flowing throughout the administration. But pre Trump, a $12,000 gift to an FCC commissioner that you appear before would have been a scandal. Well, at the gala, Commissioner Carr reportedly pulled his host aside and gave them advice. Paramount owns CBS.
President Trump had sued CBS for $10,000,000,000 in damages because he didn't like the way that they edited an interview with vice president Kamala Harris. Well, that, of course, is an entirely frivolous legal claim. I don't like the way that Fox News edits the interviews with Donald Trump, but that doesn't constitute defamation against me. That's just stupid. But commissioner Carr reportedly told the Paramount executives that Trump's grudge against CBS News was so serious that it would make review of the merger, quote, tougher than anticipated, and they might need to make some concessions directly to the president to convince him to approve the deal.
Once in office, Carr sat on the merger for months. Why? So Trump could extract extraordinary benefits from the companies in exchange for the approval of the deal. And look what he got. A $16,000,000 contribution to his presidential library.
Millions dollar more committed in free advertising, a promise to install a Trump-friendly monitor minder in the CBS newsroom, and the cancellation of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Only then did Carr permit the merger to proceed. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not antitrust law. This is a political and financial shakedown substituting for an antitrust merger review. It's got nothing to do with antitrust law, or consumer choice, or lower prices.
It is corruption. It's exactly what Professor Alfred was warning us about. And one key result of this corruption is a newsroom that refuses to broadcast news that the administration disfavors. Few days after Alfred testified, CBS's 60 minutes was scheduled to air a special on CCOT, the notorious torture prison in El Salvador, introduced to inmates there as hell on earth that the Trump administration has used as a dumping ground for immigrants, many of them lawful asylum seekers. Right before the story was set to air, it was indefinitely postponed.
Why? What happened? Well, we don't have to wonder. Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief at CBS and the new government-imposed Pravda Lake media monitor in minder, said she would not let the broadcast go forward without getting comment from a government spokesperson on the air, but the Trump administration had refused to allow any of them to comment on the air. Here's Sharon Alfones, the sixty minutes correspondent, who said our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and standards and practices.
It was factually correct. In my view, pulling it now after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision. It's a political one. We requested responses to questions in our interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement.
It's not a veto. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed the government a kill switch for any reporting they find inconvenient. I hope that this kind of consolidated corporate government censorship troubles all of our colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, who still have a First Amendment bone in their body. This kind of censorship regime aligns us with the state of press freedom in Putin's Russia or Mohammed bin Salman's Saudi Arabia.
The economic effects of these side deals must trouble us too. Each new merger acts as a new opportunity for the president to enrich himself and his family and friends. The cost of businesses involved in these deals now, even as a term in the economic literature, the Trump transaction tax. Every party to this kind of transaction now bears the risk of a political shakedown for money confessions that are not connected to a proper antitrust review. It's about what enriches and satisfies the president.
Hundreds of economic studies and gangster states show that these kinds of corrupt practices reduce investment, distort markets, increase costs, and lead to lower employment. So here we are again. When Warner Brothers announced that it would put itself up for sale, president Trump promised that he would be involved in that decision. Although no law gives him a role in it,
Speaker 4
You see. Mister chairman, I must object. I fully believe that opening statements can be as long as for the ranking members can be as long as necessary if they stay on topic. This is clearly a bashing of the president beyond the pale of this committee.
Speaker 3
I'm not gonna accept any subject matter or content regulation by the gentleman from Aisle 40. I'm about to finish. So let's not belabor a ridiculous point. We've never interrupted an opening statement of anybody on your side of the aisle. What a ridiculous thing to do.
Speaker 1
I would just remind the ranking member that we're up against an 11:30 kind of hard stop.
Speaker 3
I appreciate that, and I'll be done in a minute. Okay? The president seems to want Paramount and Netflix to compete for his approval of a deal. Both companies are already lobbying the White House right now. And to state the obvious, President Trump is not an antitrust expert, nor is he committed to antitrust law.
He's long been critical of CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. For years, he's told us that he hates their reporting, he hates their reporters, and he wants to sue the network. Does anyone doubt that one way to entice the president's favor is to promise him more direct control over CNN? Mister chairman, we should be calling in the government officials who have participated in or acquiesced to these side deals. To date, I am sorry to say the closest we've gotten to hearing from a real administration witness is professor Alfred, who we invited here at the minority's invitation when he could have been your witness months ago.
This proposed merger poses significant antitrust questions. I'm eager to discuss them, but this committee must also do the work of ensuring that the antitrust laws are actually being enforced and not replaced by a system of corruption. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll go back.
Speaker 1
Ranking member yields back. Without objection, all of their opening statements will be included in the record. We'll now introduce today's witnesses. Mister Jay Ezralev is the founding and managing principal of Elevicon, a consulting firm. He also serves as an adjunct professor at George Mason University and Antonin Scalia Law School.
You previously served as an economic adviser to the FTC chairman Joseph Simons. Miss Jessica Malusian. Miss Malusian is the director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Her research focuses on antitrust, online privacy, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, social media, and net neutrality regulation. Doctor John Yoon.
Doctor Yoon is a professor of law at George Mason University, Antonio Scalia Law School. His research focuses on antitrust, intellectual property, data, and privacy. He previously served as the acting deputy assistant director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Matt Wood. Mister Wood is the vice president of policy and general counsel at Free Press, a nonprofit organization that advocates on issues relating to media and technology.
Mister Wood leads the organization's policy and legal efforts. We welcome our witnesses and thank them for appearing today. We will begin by swearing you in. Would you please rise and raise your right hand? Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you are about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you God?
Let the record reflect that the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Thank you, and you can be seated. Please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, we ask you to summarize your testimony in 5 minutes. Doctor Ezrelev, you may begin.
Speaker 5
Mister chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on competition and consumer choice in digital streaming. I'm Jay Asriela, founder of the economic consulting firm Elevicon. I'm also an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. From 2018 to 2020, I worked at the FTC as the economic adviser to chairman Joseph Simons. Digital streaming has revolutionized how we consume video content.
It has driven innovation in both content creation and distribution, which benefits consumers. It is now the most popular way we consume video content. We now have two potential blockbuster merger deals in digital streaming, with both Netflix and Paramount seeking to acquire Warner Brothers. These deals have the potential to reshape the competitive landscape in digital streaming. There is an understandable concern about these deals, what these deals will mean for streaming and content creation.
Will we continue to have innovation and new compelling content delivered via digital streaming? The two potential deals will face antitrust merger review, most likely by the DOJ. Will this review make sure that we continue to have the benefits of digital streaming competition? The two deals come at a pivotal time for antitrust. Antitrust enforcement agencies have been shifting the focus of enforcement from the core focus of harm to competition to pursuing broader policy goals.
This shift began under the Biden administration with the antitrust enforcement agencies pursuing a broader policy agenda, such as combating unfair treatment of workers and seeking to diminish corporate power. This is a troubling development for antitrust. Deviating from the core antitrust principles will diminish antitrust as a tool for preventing harm to competition. Expanding antitrust beyond this core principle replaces efficient market function with enforcers' views of what is fair and equitable. It chills entrepreneurship by supplanting an entrepreneur's judgment about the best way to allocate capital.
It is this entrepreneurship that has brought us enormous innovation and prosperity. While it's still early days, antitrust enforcement agencies under the current administration are continuing to apply a broad scope of antitrust enforcement. Even more troubling, states are increasingly pursuing their own antitrust agendas beyond preventing harm to the competition. In reviewing the potential Netflix and Paramount deals, antitrust enforcement should focus on the core antitrust goal of preventing harm to competition. The enforcers should not be picking which of the two deals should go through based on what they think will deliver the best outcome for the consumers.
This choice is for Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders. The enforcers should also not use their leverage to extract a settlement that advances a policy agenda. The focus should be strictly on preventing harm to competition. I don't know if there's a compelling antitrust case against either of the ideals. However, I would be highly skeptical of an enforcement case based entirely on a structural presumption or a presumption over substantial lessening of competition based on an increase in market concentration in the relevant market.
Such an increase in market concentration should be a starting point for determining whether to move further in the investigation. An increase in market concentration is not by itself a reliable indicator of harm to competition. Most importantly, let's keep Antitrust focused on preventing harm to competition and not on advancing a political agenda.
Speaker 6
Chairman Fitzgerald, ranking member Natalie, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify. My name is Jessica Malugian. My work focuses on technology and antitrust at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan public policy organization. I am also an antitrust and competition fellow at the Innovators Network Foundation. It's sometimes said that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
Certainly, there is a familiar tone in today's conversation around the merits of antitrust intervention in digital streaming markets to what we've heard before in past calls to intervene in entertainment mergers. In 2005, after what The Wall Street Journal then described as, quote, the not-so-gentle prodding of federal antitrust authorities, the movie rental chain Blockbuster dropped its bid to purchase rental chain rival Hollywood Entertainment. Defenders.
Speaker 6
The merger pointed to the emerging competitive threat of a then up-and-comer who had signed up 3,000,000 subscribers to rent DVDs through the mail. That disruptor was, of course, Netflix. So while regulators fretted about the combined market power of two brick-and-mortar DVD rental chains, the market was busy shifting the paradigm. An increasingly widespread Internet soon disrupted traditional models of distribution once again. Netflix was adept enough to navigate that transition from the post office to telecom, and the company now finds itself more directly involved in the conversation around preserving competition in the entertainment industry.
While the details of these separate cases have changed, the lessons of regulatory restraint remain the same. Just as the Federal Trade Commission could not have anticipated the technological shifts that rendered physical DVD rentals nearly obsolete, antitrust regulators today still cannot predict what might come next. They can, however, observe current market dynamism to better understand how allocating economies of scale and vertical integration could benefit consumers. As digital streaming companies and adjacent market participants adjust to a landscape where consumers' time and attention are now the most important remaining scarcities, regulators will likely evaluate their attempts to merge, adapt, and compete. This process should follow well-established methodologies using economic evidence to determine the relevant market and possible anticompetitive effects, while equally assessing the potential pro-consumer consequences.
Determining the proper relevant market will be the first step of any antitrust litigation, but it won't be an easy task here. Government efforts to block mergers will likely attempt to establish the narrowest possible definition of the relevant market, namely subscription video on demand exclusively. But does that provide an accurate reflection of how consumers view possible substitutions? Do broadcast, cable, and satellite channels still provide ample competitive pressure to restrain prices, encourage output, or maintain quality from merged streaming services? And looking forward rather than backward, does YouTube TV or even the standard YouTube or TikTok platform sufficiently compete with streaming for consumer attention?
Social media's vast and free-to-the-company content may well constitute a sufficient competitive threat to streaming services that justifies their need to bolster their holdings of more evergreen rewatchable content libraries and the production capabilities of traditional studios. Perhaps concerns about preserving competition are less about horizontal issues between merging streaming services, and more about the ability of traditional companies to survive and compete with social media giants. Even the narrowest relevant market will prove challenging for regulators to defend in court. If opponents of a merger succeed in defining the market as confined exclusively to subscription video on demand, market shares will be difficult to establish. Muddying the waters of market share are the widespread practices of consumers maintaining many subscriptions simultaneously, known as multihoming.
Bundled subscriptions like Disney Plus that might also include ESPN and Hulu, or maybe not, third party bundles offered through mobile carriers, Internet service providers or credit cards, Amazon Prime subscriptions that might result more from ecommerce interests than from streaming entertainment interests, and different tiered offerings with or without advertising offered for different prices. Regardless of the relevant market, the market shares agreed upon, courts will then be required to evaluate the competitive effects of the merger. Proposed mergers may hold the promise of significant economic efficiency gains and commensurate benefits for consumers. But even horizontal aspects of mergers such as those involved in the Netflix Warner Brothers discovery deal may benefit consumers. Increased selection, cost savings, more accurate recommendations are all possibilities.
Regulators must recognize that traditional media companies require the flexibility to adapt to prevent meeting the same fate as the Blockbuster dinosaur. Constraining these entities from pursuing such arrangements by pretending the market is static will neither benefit consumers nor competition in the long run. Thank you for this opportunity.
Speaker 8
Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Fitzgerald, Ranking Member Adler, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. It's a true honor to be here. My name is John Yoon, and obviously, we're here to assess the potential combination of Netflix and Warner Brothers and associated assets. I see three main issues, and there are more, but these are the three that I'll focus on.
Happy to discuss more. Number one is the consumer-facing combination downstream.
Speaker 8
The streaming service market between Netflix and HBO Max? What's gonna happen to those prices and the bundles? What's the relevant market to assess that competition? Issue number two, what happens to HBO Max? Does it remain an independent streaming option, or will it be integrated?
If so, how? Number three, what about the upstream assets? The combination of Netflix production, studio, as well as Warner Brothers studios. What happens to that content library, the content creators, and that distribution? Is there an incentive to foreclose?
Others do have access to that that previously. So as I mentioned, these invoke both what we call horizontal and vertical issues in antitrust. Horizontal issues are standard issues of competition between competitors. Think Coke versus Pepsi, Samsung versus Apple. Those are the same issues that we can see both in the streaming market downstream and in the streaming production market upstream.
There's also something called a vertical issue, though, and that's the possible control of two or more levels of the supply chain. And here, I think the primary concern that I've seen is that Netflix now will control WB's studio's assets and distributions and IP properties. What does that mean for consumers? So all these questions are gonna be governed under the Clayton Act section seven, which is substantial lessening of competition or a tendency to create a monopoly. And the courts have consistently examined three markers to whether this is gonna be met or not, and that's usually prices, output, and innovation.
Other objectives have been called upon and looked at, in at times, but these are the three that almost inevitably the courts will examine. That being said, let's start with question number one, the combination possibly of Netflix and HBO Max. I think the key question, as mentioned previously, will be what is the relevant market in which these streaming services compete? Is it limited to just other streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Apple Plus, Peacock, and Paramount Plus? If so, what's the market share?
And we do have debates of whether market shares are good proxies for market power, which is what we're really interested in. But the courts have been clear. This is what they will look at. So the combination of Netflix and HBO Max will, according to some estimates, and these are just public estimates, be above 30%. And I'll mention in a moment why that matters. There are other sources that put it at below 30%.
So it'll be a key question what the real data shows. But assuming it does hit the 30% or more marker, the reason this matters is a 1963 Supreme Court case, Philadelphia National Bank, and it established a structural presumption that if you're above that 30%, there's a presumption that the deal is illegal and harmful to consumers. It doesn't mean it is. There is an opportunity by the parties to demonstrate that the pro-competitive benefits outweigh that presumption. So it's not an illegal call, but it is a strong presumption and relevant for this assessment.
It's pretty close to 30%, the sources I've seen. So that does move it a little bit closer to the party's favor, but it's still above that presumption. So it's gonna be in the incentives of the parties, and I say that not cynically, but it could be the reality that the market is broader than just the streaming services. It could include YouTube. It could include TikTok.
It could include cable, satellite, etc. So that's gonna be a key question and something that I think, I'm happy to explore further later. In terms of question number two, will HBO Max remain an independent service? It's a concern I've seen publicly and in forums, just in preparation for this hearing. And what an astounding statistic that Netflix has shared is that 75% of HBO Max subscribers are also Netflix subscribers.
That makes me sort of, based on my economic training, think that this is gonna be integrated into some type of premium tier. Happy to discuss further. That's just a prediction. It's unlikely that HBO Max will remain an independent service post-merger. Number three is the vertical concern that Netflix's control of WB's assets upstream will lead to some type of foreclosure of that.
For example, Harry Potter is available on Peacock even though that's a WB property, Ted Lasso was produced by WB Studios for Apple Plus. Will all that stop post-merger? And so that consideration, I think, will also be part of what the agencies and the courts examine. And so, with that, my time is up. So thank you very much.
Speaker 9
Chairman Fitzgerald, ranking member Raskin, ranking member Nadler, and distinguished members, thank you so much for inviting me today. This hearing is about competition and consumer choice in digital streaming, and that means we must talk about this string of mega mergers, both past and newly proposed. Runaway consolidation eliminates choice. Companies routinely break promises and evade merger conditions. And under the Trump administration, these deals pose a tremendous danger to free expression.
I must clarify something, though, before I begin because of the companies involved in these merger talks and confusion about our name. My organization is called Free Press Action, a public interest group that works on media, tech, and telecom policy. For more than 20 years, we've been analyzing these markets, opposing harmful mergers, and fighting both government censorship and undue corporate control. We are not affiliated with the free press, which is the publication Paramount Skydance purchased last year before making its founder the editor-in-chief of CBS News. I don't solely practice antitrust law, but since leaving corporate firms, I've spent much of my last 16 years opposing mergers that enrich executives, bankers, and lawyers at everyone else's expense.
While Paramount is still pursuing Warner Brothers Discovery, the winning bid for now is Netflix's 82,700,000,000 deal to buy a company that, as Mister Nather noted, is somehow always up for sale in deals that amounted to bad industry bets and huge debts. Netflix is the largest streaming service in the world with more than 300,000,000 subscribers. Warner Brothers HBO Max is well over 100,000,000, third largest in the US by most accounts. Paramount is likely the fifth largest streamer in the US, and that combo, of course, would couple two of the big five Hollywood studios impacting the market for theatrical releases, movies, and TV. Both potential mergers could severely harm the viewing public, creative industry workers, journalists, movie theaters that depend on studio content, and their surrounding main street businesses in your districts, too.
We fear that either deal would reduce competition in streaming and adjacent markets, with fewer choices for consumers and fewer opportunities for writers, actors, directors, and production technicians. Jobs will be lost. Stories will go untold. Now we still need to crunch the numbers for an array of markets and metrics. We'll listen critically to claims about supposed merger benefits, and we'll ask whether there is sufficient competition left to ensure that the billion saved and promised synergies are passed along, not pocketed.
The job for antitrust enforcers is clear. They must engage in careful product market analysis to determine if these mergers violate the law and whether they promise any real efficiencies, not just speculative assurances, as the case law says about alleged benefits to the public. Either Netflix or Paramount buying Warner Brothers could be presumptively illegal under the DOJ's merger guidelines. Members of this subcommittee and others in Congress have suggested so on a bipartisan basis. Section seven of the Clayton Act prohibits any merger that would, quote, substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce.
That is clearly a risk here. In our view, either deal likely places far too much power in too few hands over what Americans watch and where they get their news. The numbers for that news component are dwarfed by the dollars thrown at the streaming side in studio catalogs. But in addition to HBO, Warner Brothers, of course, owns CNN and other cable channels. Netflix doesn't want those.
Paramount's Ellis and family desperately do. We're all too familiar with claims that media giants need to merge to continue producing news. Their trickle-down notion is that more money for shareholders means more investment in news or content creation. But as history shows, companies merge to save money, not to spend it. Every merger obliterates jobs.
Post-merger companies will reduce output and raise prices whenever they can, and having fewer voices makes censorship easier with fewer corporate gatekeepers to lean on. Even more dangerous than the notion that mergers can save the news is the way this president has weaponized the merger review process. In conjunction with other threats made in plain sight, his agencies have used deal approvals to win favors. The FCC has blessed mergers moments after deal proponents promise to follow the president's demands to end diversity policies. They've capitulated on chilling requests to reshape their newsrooms.
The merger that spawned Paramount Skydance, as Mister Raskin detailed, was greased by an FCC investigation and a multimillion-dollar settlement of a specious lawsuit over editing choices in an interview with then Vice President Harris. Paramount installed a former Trump ambassador as a bias monitor and recently spiked that 60 minutes investigation into Trump administration wrongdoing. Now Paramount's CEO promises, as Mister Adler says, to, quote, make sweeping changes to CNN if he takes it over. Tilting a merger review process to facilitate that outcome should be unthinkable under the First Amendment. Should a president use merger reviews to gain the political outcomes he wants?
Some may think it depends on which party holds the White House, but that answer abdicates the antitrust oversight this subcommittee conducts, and the antitrust laws enforcers must apply. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. We will now proceed under the five-minute rule with questions, and I recognize the gentleman from California, Mister Isis.
Speaker 4
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, today, we're gonna speak about disproportionately the Warner Brothers acquisition. Needless to say, I could begin this by talking about the political differences that are alleged in the two buyers and the seller. I could, of course, continue to talk about the last administration that never found a merger that they could accept and blocked many, even when overthrown repeatedly by the courts. I could, but I won't because, in fact, this is an antitrust hearing, and I'd like to focus on that.
And I admonish all of our witnesses in their answers to get off the politics, and get on to the specifics of antitrust law. So I'm gonna start with Professor Jung. You mentioned the Philadelphia case, but you had some doubts even though Nielsen has said that in the streaming, you have a 37% market share, already by Netflix, an additional 6% to be acquired. Is there any reason that we shouldn't believe that that is at least in the ballpark of correct based on one of the largest and most historically significant rating organizations?
Speaker 8
Thank you, representative. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this. Yeah. I think you're hitting on the key issue, which is the reliability of the data that we're using for this presumption. And this presumption is very important.
Again, we can debate whether it should be, but it is the standing law today.
Speaker 4
Right. But it's standing law to push the scale to where there's essentially no further choice in the you more or less close the door. Even if, in fact, hypothetically, they're at 29%, and let's just say that Warner Brothers is 5%, you're still going over the 30%, and few would doubt that you're going to end up with that. Let me get into a couple of points that you hit. Since 2011, Netflix has increased price 10 times and a total of 39% increase after adjusting for inflation.
Is that per se a demonstration of market power by any reasonable definition?
Speaker 8
So, I can get in the weeds. I would say that almost every streaming service has some degree of what we in economics call market power. It's not the same as what we think in antitrust. And so, what do I mean by that? So earlier, there was a chart that was shown.
Speaker 4
Well, but let me. Oh, sure. Back you up because I have limited time. The reality is that the price and the cost of receiving a streaming service on an adjusted basis led by Netflix has gone up, but not down. So from a standpoint of a market, a market that is functional that we would normally think lowers cost as volume goes up, would you say that this market shows signs of not being functional based on Netflix's consistent lead above the rate of inflation?
Speaker 8
The reason why I have some concern about the premise that this is necessarily a problematic market is simply because I saw a chart that showed the highest price increases were from Apple Plus, Peacock, and Paramount Plus, who have the lowest share in these markets and the lowest.
Speaker 4
Price. And aren't they all still losing money? Yeah. No. Okay. So isn't there a difference between when you're making money and you increase prices beyond inflation, and when you're losing money and you try to minimize your losses?
I think that's fair. Okay. I wanna go on quickly. You talked about vertical and horizontal, and there's plenty of case law, including the Supreme Court case that broke up the relationship between the studios and the theaters being owned. Aren't we again in a situation where if Netflix post acquisition controls a massive library to the exclusion of others, that in fact we have the same situation again in which, and I'll just use my own words, if you can exclude and you are a must-have and must pay and must buy, isn't that in fact a situation in which at a minimum everyone would have to have Netflix in order to have access to not just new production, but a vast library that, in fact, by definition, every child grows up watching.
Speaker 8
I think it's a relevant concern. It's something they'll definitely look at for sure. I did look at some statistics that showed what is the percentage of Warner Brothers in terms of theater to production. And it's at about 15 to 20%, so roughly 80% is outside of that. So I think that
Speaker 4
And, of course, theater production is important. I was talking about libraries, and they are both important. Let me just close with one closing question, which is you've looked in the past at the years that this committee oversaw the potential mergers to create competition against Verizon by Sprint, AT and T, T Mobile, ultimately making a decision that a relative duopoly was better than one strong player in many weak. Aren't we, in many ways, in that same situation, if you could opine on that?
Speaker 8
I think it's gonna depend on how we define the relevant market in terms of what is really constraining Netflix's price. But, yeah, if it's fairly narrow, yeah, the consolidation is definitely gonna be something that's sufficient for probably the.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Gentleman's gentleman yields back. Now recognize the ranking member from New York, Mister Nana.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mister Wood, supporters of large media mergers often promise innovation, better services, and more content. Looking back, did those mergers deliver for the public?
Speaker 9
In a word, no. I don't think they did, Mr. Heather. I mean, you've listed the litany of deals that involved this company itself. Warner Brothers now up for sale again. I would say with respect to streaming, for example, that yes, there has been innovation.
Consumers have benefited from some of these technological changes, but it's not because of the mergers. So the merger promises that are made are often paper-thin, very hard to enforce if they're even real in the first place, and companies routinely break those promises because there's very little antitrust enforcers can do after the fact to unwind a deal. That's a pretty extraordinary remedy. So if they promise not to fire people or promise not to raise prices and they do, there's not much people can do besides wag a finger at them.
Speaker 2
Unions such as the Writers Guild are opposing acquisition by either Netflix or Paramount because of concerns that consolidation will reduce employment, compensation, and creative opportunities. What happens to independent producers and creators when the number of potential buyers for their work shrinks?
Speaker 9
Yes. Well, thank you. I mean, we've spoken to some of those writers. We've spoken to some of those independent producers. They're very concerned, and rightly so.
When a number of buyers for their work shrinks, it's not just that there are fewer open doors. There are fewer doors at all. So they have fewer places where they can take their content. They also have the loss of competition and diversification in the market. Fewer smaller independent producers or fewer scrappy competitors who are willing to take a chance on something different.
So I think it tends to homogenize content and, by design, reduce the number of outlets and number of choices they have.
Speaker 2
And what would be the effects of these consolidations on the diversity of content that we see today?
Speaker 9
Well, thank you. I mean, as I was saying, you know, I think it would be less diversity. I don't know if there's a metric we can apply to that, but we do see companies in the broadcast space, in the streaming space, in the studio space, homogenizing their content, making things more so-called mainstream, taking fewer risks, needing more money to come back in through the door in order to justify the huge budgets for the few features they put out. So it tends to reduce price, I'm sorry. It tends to reduce choice and increase prices, and just to, as you said, reduce diversity and the differentiation between the products these companies have to put out to compete and survive.
Speaker 2
And reduce the amount of conflicting information and opinions given to the public?
Speaker 9
Yeah. I mean, that's something our organization has worked on for years when it comes to the news competition there. The FCC's test for that is different from antitrust but related in many ways. They look for more competition, more diversity, and localism. And we're often told that, well, the only way we can have more competition in local news is to have fewer competitors.
The only way to have more diversity is fewer voices, and the only way to have local content is to nationalize everything. And we frankly don't believe those claims, and we've seen them harm communities time and again.
Speaker 2
Everything you just said seemed very concerning. The way to have diversity is to have fewer voices.
Speaker 9
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's as my colleagues on the panel have said, I mean, sometimes you're gonna have a situation where if a firm is failing or can't compete, then a merger might save them and preserve that voice. We just are very skeptical of those claims because in Warner Brothers' case, for example, you know, I think by last year's metrics, they were the second most successful studio. They're the third-largest streamer in the country. So the notion that a company simply has to be sold or else the shareholders won't make any money to us is very questionable.
I know that the streamers in general have not made as much money as they like, and some have lost money. So there are legitimate questions about the profitability of streaming. But as a going concern in an overall business, we just simply are very skeptical of claims that these companies need these mergers to survive or to thrive.
Speaker 2
Thank you. I understand that Netflix has made promises that would mitigate possible competition concerns. In particular, it says that it would continue to sell shows to rival streamers. How should these promises be considered in the analysis of potential anticompetitive or public policy harms?
Speaker 9
If you're asking me again, I mean, yes, it's as I said a moment ago. I think that these promises are very hard to enforce. So I could imagine a condition in a merger approval if it went through. It's just that whatever these companies agreed to, it's sometimes easy for them to lawyer their way out of, and not even technically break the promise. And then once that promise is broken, as I said, there's very little that enforcers can do to unscramble the egg and put things back together and make companies whole who aren't getting the benefits of these promises that were made.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of unanimous consent requests for the record from a series of labor groups coming out against, or raising serious concerns with the Netflix Warner Brothers merger. Very good. Go ahead.
Speaker 2
First is the IDA statement opposing a merger involving Warner Bros Discovery.
Speaker 2
The DGA statement on Warner Brothers Discovery, Netflix. Without objection. The SAG-AFTRA statement regarding the proposed Netflix Warner Brothers transaction. Without objection. Prepared statement for the record of the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild.
Speaker 2
The Hollywood Teamsters, Warner Netflix deals, another call for alarm for entertainment workers. Without objection. And finally, the Producers Guild of America.
Speaker 10
First question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses for being here. Timely hearing on at this moment in time with this snapshot of a marketplace in constant change and constant motion. We recognize that the country operates under free market principles, and businesses should be able to transact as long as they don't create clear antitrust problems.
Clarity is something that is, in the eye of the beholder. But I do think in contrast to mister Wood's opinion, general skep the standard is not general skepticism about whether a company needs a mark a merger to survive. That's really not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the definition of the relevant streaming market, and, you know, the regulators and how they're defining it. Miss Malugian, why don't you have a go at how you would define the relevant streaming market today for antitrust purposes, and what the single biggest mistake that regulators are making when defining it?
Speaker 6
So I think we had a very helpful example recently, with the decision in the Meta trial, which was seeking to unwind a merger. And, unfortunately, the judge kind of anticipated questions like this and said, this is just not a market definition that they buy. It had excluded too many entities that provided real competition to Meta. And I think that the mistake you could make here would be the same. I'm not privy to the kind of privileged information that talks about market shares or eyeball time spent on streaming, but regulators probably will be.
And it'll be their job to make a case that it's not comparing apples to apples in terms of finding out who might be a good substitute. It's about what consumers feel as a substitute. So, that would include saying, you know, it might be apples to oranges with some of these streaming services and other variants in social media. But would a consumer maybe substitute an apple for an orange if they had to? They probably will.
So I think that goes to a really, as we've all agreed, is an incredibly important piece of this is what is that market share. And if it's above that 30% threshold, it doesn't mean that it's a closed case, and it's anticompetitive. You still have a court that's going to assess what the competitive trade offs are here. I think you'd have a very difficult task if it even just is above that 30% mark to say there aren't going to be economic benefits to consumers here. But if you expanded the market definition, you might not even get to that 30% number.
It will be for the courts to decide, I suspect.
Speaker 10
Doctor Yun, how would you define the relevant streaming market today, and what's the single biggest issue facing regulators and mistake that they might be making?
Speaker 8
Yeah. Your question hits on what I think will be probably 80% of the investigation, and the debate between the parties and the courts and the agencies. And so I think it is natural to think it's a streaming market. They're probably the closest competitors. But as just mentioned, does it include other services?
And let me just share with you, sort of the lines are kind of blurred. So Netflix also offers not only on demand, but also live sports. They offer podcasts. They offer video games. YouTube TV, the linear TV that replaces cable, now has on demand.
YouTube itself will now carry the Oscars. It's the line is blurring between these, and I say that not because I think it's gonna be defined broadly. I say that simply because it's hard to cabin these platforms into specific categories that we kinda want to do. And so it will be the job of the agents. It is a data question.
No one can sit here and say what the market will be. It's gonna be based on the data.
Speaker 10
Under current antitrust law, when does vertical integration in media markets pose competitive harm rather than generate efficiencies?
Speaker 8
So that's the key issue. The key question, I think there are other vertical issues. But as I mentioned in my opening statement, I think the key vertical issue is whether Netflix's control of Warner Brothers studios, IP property, and distribution rights. Does that create the opportunity for them to foreclose third parties who previously had access to those assets? And so that question is something that is a very detailed one.
It's gonna look at margins at the various levels. What's their incentive to do so? What's their market share upstream and downstream? What are the substitutes for these IP properties? These questions have already been asked here, at this hearing, and they're gonna be asked by the agencies.
Again, we're not gonna know until we see the data. I will say this, though. Usually, this is fixed through a commitment by the parties to offer this content through arbitration going forward. Five to 10 years typically. This was Comcast, NBC Universal.
This was AT&T Time Warner. They're probably gonna do the same here. And studies have shown it has been effective in preserving competition. This is done by Dennis Carleton, etc. So these commitments are court-ordered and enforced, and I'm guessing Netflix will offer the same.
Thank you. Heal back.
Speaker 1
Gentleman yields back. Now recognize the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Raskin again.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If Paramount were to acquire Warner Brothers, it would put CNN under the same ownership as CBS. And when the Ellisons who own Skydance were seeking to acquire Paramount, they made Trump-friendly changes in the newsroom, including installing an ombudsman, which new staff refer to as a hall monitor for them. And so we can only assume the same kind of fate for CNN. Mister Wood, when there is consolidation in the news media, how does this affect the freedom of speech and expression in the marketplace for ideas generally, and specifically in the Trump period, given the very specific phenomena that have arisen in terms of the review process?
Speaker 9
Yes. Thank you for the question, Rick, member Raskin. I think your question lays it out well, and there really are two distinct threats at least. One is, just typically speaking, when you have fewer competing voices, you have fewer people working to get stories, you have fewer risk-takers. So reduction of competition reduces the number of opportunities to even tell different stories.
But in this administration, we've seen not just consolidation writ large as a problem. It's the merger process itself being used, as you detailed so well, as a carrot and basically saying, if you don't agree to change your news coverage, then we won't approve your deal. And that's the kind of thing that should be completely out of bounds, has happened very often with this administration.
Speaker 9
Well, you know, I'm not a media critic, but I can certainly see what's happening. And I know even yesterday, there were concerns about the evening news and how it was being used to praise the administration rather than to potentially criticize its actions. And so, you know, it is the litany of changes that you discussed, the pulling of the story from sixty minutes, all the changes to the evening news in the way that they are seemingly looking for administration approval of their news rather than reporting on the government, which I think any journalist would wanna do.
Speaker 3
Well, the I'm really a stranger to antitrust law. I never thought it. I never even took it. So I'm gonna be reading some books on it this year in anticipation of maybe a change in our political fortunes in the new congress. Is there anything within antitrust law which considers the specific First Amendment implications with respect to media mergers that makes it a different kind of analysis from other business antitrust analysis?
Speaker 9
I mean, I wouldn't say I would wanna look that up myself. I did take it, but it was a while ago now, I've done a lot of it. Doctor Yuan,
Speaker 8
It's a great question. I would say that, generally speaking, court con presidents would say no. They wouldn't examine that.
Speaker 8
It would be, it's output prices and innovation, and First Amendment issues would fall.
Speaker 3
Okay. I'd like to ask all of our witnesses, does everybody agree that federal antitrust agencies should be subject to intensive congressional oversight? Starting doctor Wood with you. Yes. Doctor Yoon, do you agree with that?
Speaker 3
Yeah. Okay. Alright. So, when I raised the question of whether corruption was interfering with proper antitrust law analysis. I was chided by one of my colleagues for ranging far afield from the subject.
If corruption has actually entered, and perhaps some people can never see corruption when it comes to Donald Trump, but so set him aside for a second. If corruption actually entered the antitrust review process through money, corruption, or political influence, would that be a problem? And, again, I'd like to maybe ask each of you. Yeah. Mr Wood.
I mean, it.
Speaker 9
Would definitely be a problem. I wouldn't be naive and think that political influence has never played a role before, but what we're seeing so extraordinary in this administration is the openness of it and the use of antitrust and merger review. I would say the misuse to wring out conditions from companies who want approval of their deals.
Speaker 8
Yes. I was at the agency eighteen years. I think I'm an antitrust purist. I think it should be based on the staff there and their recommendation.
Speaker 3
So it's an economic analysis. It's not a question of whether you can mobilize this lobbyist or this political force to your side. Absolutely. Miss Milligan?
Speaker 6
Yeah. I'd agree. This should be matters of traditional laws established in a bipartisan way over the last 40 years. The consumer welfare standard and economic analysis, no matter who is installed in a given administration.
Speaker 3
Alright. Mister Wood, let me come back to you. Antitrust law did start with the idea of both benefiting the consumers, but also benefiting society by having competitive forces. Would you just say a word about what consolidation means generally for a free society?
Speaker 9
Well, your question about antitrust and First Amendment concerns, I think, is obviously valid and important in the media context. And so there's a marketplace of ideas that is shrunken too. And so I agree with my colleagues. The market questions are the paramount question, although I shouldn't say paramount in this case. But, you know, that we have to be certainly cognizant of the impacts on our civic information and democracy being impacted by the loss of that source of information.
Speaker 11
Missile illusion. Consumers increasingly subscribed to multiple streaming services, and in recent years, subscription costs have gone up significantly. At the same time, most streaming services haven't been profitable despite increasing subscription cost. Hard to say those words. You struggled too.
I get it. Where do we go from here? And will subscription costs keep rising? Will they eventually run out of business due to a lack of profitability? And how does regulating the current market help things for consumers and competition?
Speaker 6
I think that's a bundle of excellent questions and observations, and I would simply say that the best way is that they're still sorting this out. It's a relatively new advance here, the streaming services, and there's going to probably need to be some amount of consolidation. There's probably gonna be some amount of failure. Failing in a market system isn't the same as a government-imposed failure on these companies or having taxpayers on the hook. It's kind of the natural part of the creative destruction that happens.
There might need to be some culling of the herd. There might need to be some consolidation for achieving economies of scale. And I think that even in the different forms of streaming services we see now, like Amazon Prime is a fascinating example of one that is tied to an ecommerce delivery package. People are trying, these companies are trying lots of different approaches to become profitable and to give consumers what they want. This latest deal that we're talking about today is a lot about combining Netflix distribution advantages and expertise and recommendations and things like that with a very valuable library content at Warner Bros.
Will that be successful for them and they'll be able to gain more market share if this deal is allowed and drop prices? I don't know. It's not about for me, my job isn't picking the winners or losers or telling these companies how to act. It's saying that these are the sound rules of the road in traditional antitrust, and we should stick to that whoever we are evaluating.
Speaker 11
Thank you, Doctor Ezralev. Forgive me if I mispronounced your name. In the current market, only Netflix has been consistently profitable, with HBO and Disney Plus only recently turning a profit. While most streaming services operate at a loss, correct me if I'm wrong, too, what impact would preventing a merger between Netflix and Warner Brothers or Paramount or any other company have on the market or any of these businesses? And will we ensure competition, or will it lead to a situation where companies end up running out of business like Blockbuster?
Speaker 5
I'll take it one by one. So I think it's important to let the market sort this out. This market has been very successful in generating growth and innovation and new content, and at the core of it is these companies are trying to create content that is appealing to consumers. At the same time, there's been growth in streaming. So, just because you are losing, earning a negative margin at current demand levels, it doesn't mean that that's gonna continue as demand grows.
And that's been the driving dynamic of this space. So it is rational for companies to create more and more content to gain more consumers for your streaming service, so that as demand grows, you'll be able to earn higher margins later on. As far as the impact of this deal, I think that this is just market trying to reallocate capital to meet demand the best it can. There, in terms of Netflix and Warner Brothers, there are complementary assets on both sides. And the way you could combine these assets in order to generate even more compelling content, stream content in a more efficient way, find consumers, and create content that is appealing to viewers.
This is how you grow the service. And, yeah, I think that's gonna be good for Netflix and Warner Brothers, I think. I don't know. The future will tell. And I think it's gonna be good for the entire industry.
We need this kind of dynamic competition to drive more innovation, better content, better ways of delivering content to viewers, and also to use data more effectively to reach viewers with content that they'll find appealing.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen's gentleman yields back. Now recognize the gentlewoman from Vermont.
Speaker 7
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanna start by just doing some level-setting. Americans don't like these mergers. They don't want a few giant companies controlling what they see and what they hear. We want choices.
We want more choices. We want artistic freedom, and we don't want a handful of companies deciding the content that we see. I hear this over again from my constituents. When these giant companies merge, things get better for the people at the top over and over again, every single time, and worse for the rest of us. And I want us to remember that two of the three companies we're talking about today exist because of at least one previous merger.
It wasn't long ago that Paramount, Skydance, Warner Brothers, and Discovery were separate companies. We need competition. We do not need more consolidation. Mister Woods, thanks so much for being here today. Why is it that our media landscape right now has become so consolidated?
Speaker 9
Oh, thanks for the question, Congressman. I mean, I think it's just decades now of lax antitrust enforcement, and that certainly started to turn a corner with the last administration. And I think even the first Trump administration, we did see efforts there to try to block AT&T from buying Time Warner. So, you know, there have been some bright spots. There have been some mergers that we've opposed that have been stopped, like AT&T buying T Mobile, Comcast buying Time Warner Cable.
But those are few and far between. There's been this sort of flood of deals that have gone through. And as you said, it always gets better for the people in the C-suite, much less often for their customers.
Speaker 7
I agree. And I agree with you too that it is lax antitrust enforcement. And, you know, you touched on this earlier. Who wins, who loses when these mega mergers happen? Let's put a finer point on it.
Speaker 9
Who wins? Yeah. I mean, it's the companies and their shareholders, although not always, because a lot of these deals have been bad bets for them as well. We've talked today about potential innovation and efficiencies and competition being improved in some sense by mergers. And I wouldn't say that's impossible.
I would just say that's a pretty high bar. So what you really need is for those efficiencies to be passed along to people rather than just pocketed by the companies, you need to have remaining competition.
Speaker 9
Sufficient incentive for them to not just pocket those savings, but to actually put them back into the business and try to keep their customers happy.
Speaker 7
I agree. And, you know, from what we've heard so far, Paramount and Netflix have submitted bids that already raise significant concerns. And we're at the start of what's going to be a very long battle about this. And our committee is not responsible at all for deciding which deal neither violates the law. That decision is in the hands of the Department of Justice.
But we know that the DOJ has not been unbiased. That is a strong concern that many of us on this committee have. At the last meeting of this subcommittee, Roger Alfred, a DOJ whistleblower, described the pay-to-play climate at the antitrust division. And President Trump recently has said he will be, quote, involved in the Warner Brothers deal. What do you think he means by that, mister Whister Wood, when he says he's gonna be involved?
What's he talking about?
Speaker 9
Well, I'm smiling because sometimes it's down to which movies he wants to see made. So it can get kind of ridiculous, but I think it's also just about the Trump family's own fates and fortunes here, then and these political choices that, again, are, you know, it's not that the political choices aren't real or somehow are completely invalid, but the government should not be imposing its will on companies. That's a violation of the First Amendment when they're dangling antitrust review and approval based on content changes. And, of course, as we're all saying, this should be a market analysis. So I agree with my fellow witnesses that the market definition is key here.
The merger proponents will always try to expand that market and say, we're not that concentrated. Opponents of the deal will try to shrink it. Those are, again, interesting questions, and they're asked in good faith. But that doesn't mean that the White House weighing in does anything to advance the analysis. It probably just impedes it and takes it off track.
Speaker 7
And our job essentially here is to be the watchdog, to be doing the oversight, to be the eyes and ears of our constituents who can't be in this committee hearing room. And I urge the chair of this committee to take the role of this committee seriously. There is strong evidence that our antitrust enforcement system is being corrupted, and we have to use our constitutional authority to investigate. Monopolies hurt all Americans, and whether it's in meatpacking, whether it is in fire truck manufacturing, whether it's in the monopoly of the seed industry, or in this case, if it's in the media landscape. We have to be effective watchdogs and not just roll over for an administration that is not doing its due diligence for the American people.
And with that, mister chair, I have two unanimous consents that I bring before the committee in relationship to whether further consolidation in the industry is going to be a threat to movie theaters and theatrical releases. Movie theaters dread any Warner Bros merger by The Hollywood Reporter.
Speaker 7
Second one, Gen Z went to movie theaters most often in 2025, according to new exhibition report. Thank you so much, and I yield back.
Speaker 1
Mister Chairman, without objection, Mister Chairman? Gentleman yields back.
Speaker 12
If I could, while we're on unanimous consent, have unanimous consent requests from the chief legal officer of Paramount Skydance Corporation for a statement.
Speaker 1
Be entered into the record. Without objection. The gentleman from North Carolina is now recognized.
Speaker 13
Thank you, mister chairman, and thank you all to the panel for your time and your expertise you've given today. Real quickly, doctor Xerleaf, as the government, if the government is going to intervene to stop these mergers, it has to prove that the merger is eliminating competition rather than creating benefits for the consumers. Now you mentioned in your written testimony a phrase that caught my attention when you talked about significant efficiencies that would counterbalance any harmful effects associated with an increase in market concentration. What potential efficiencies could you foresee arising from the mergers between Warner Bros. and Netflix or Paramount?
Speaker 5
Thank you, Congressman, for that question. So there are several sources of efficiencies. The most obvious one is that this is a vertical deal. So both that means that I'm talking about Netflix and Warner Brothers. Similarly, the same goes for Paramount and Warner Brothers.
Means that they're both creating content and distributing content. So by combining the distribution channels of both Netflix and Warner Bros, there are more efficient ways of distributing content to viewers. And sometimes you could achieve elimination of double marginalizations so that you don't charge your affiliate a margin, that you're saving costs. That's potential cost savings. Another source of efficiency may be a better use of data.
One of the things that Netflix does very well is recommending shows to people who are likely to enjoy the shows. And that requires a lot of data analysis, also creation of shows that are going to appeal to the right audience, that show that people are gonna watch. That's very risky, requires a lot of data. By combining the data of both HBO Max and Netflix, they will be able to better understand what viewers want to see. They'll be there will be better able to market the shows so that the right show, the right content is reaching the right viewer.
So those are two of the bigger ones, but they're probably others.
Speaker 13
Very good. Thank you, sir. Miss Malusian, in your written testimony, you did mention that today's calls for an antitrust intervention in digital streaming markets are similar to those of the past. How is this conversation we're having today similar to those in 2005 when you specifically talk about Blockbuster seeking to purchase its rival Hollywood Entertainment?
Speaker 6
I think it's just a big temptation for all of us as human beings and regulators, especially for whatever reason, to take kind of a snapshot of things as they are and view them as static, and then deal with those problems as they see them. But in fact, of course, we have to remember and we get reminded periodically, it's not static. It's dynamic. And while the marketplace is out making changes that no regulator should be expected to understand, you know, there's a certain amount of economic data that should and will be evaluated, whatever deal ends up happening. That's fair. There's great precedent for that.
There are considerations like efficiencies offsetting any potential competitive harms. That's great. But at some point, there has to be some amount of regulatory humility that also enters the conversation, that says, you know, we can't actually predict. To say, how will Netflix do after this deal? I don't know.
They don't know. The people who have skin in the game usually make the best case, but we've heard about mergers that weren't successful in the market as well. No one can know the future, and you just have to sort of keep a little bit of deference to market forces and interested parties in your mind, as you look at these deals.
Speaker 13
Are there any specific mistakes that you might reference that regulators made in 2005 that regulators today should avoid?
Speaker 6
I think not looking at the bigger picture in terms of, you know, what technologies are going to come online that sort of overthrow the whole system. Right? That we all used, I, sadly, I'm old enough to remember, renting DVDs at Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. And then when things got really fancy, there were those boxes at the grocery store. Amazing innovation.
Netflix came along, and we couldn't believe they were doing it through the mail. That was wild, and we love that too. You know, there's other factors outside the narrow band of the data regulators are gonna look at in this that are happening outside, but nevertheless might be impactful. I think you have to make sure that by intervening in these market deals, you're not preventing some of that beneficial innovation, unknowingly.
Speaker 14
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna welcome our speakers today, our witnesses. I represent Morch County, California, Southern California. My biggest employer in the district is Disneyland. 40,000 jobs, plus.
You can understand the multiplier effect there. Tremendous economic activity. Southern California. The entertainment industry, film industry, big sector in the fourth, fifth largest economy in the world. That's our bread and butter in California.
Entertainment. Yet, all of you know, COVID, AI, and other factors have really hurt our job picture in the entertainment industry, Hollywood especially, losing a lot of jobs. I know a lot of graduates from the local best film schools in the country, UCLA, USC, and the other schools. A lot of those graduates can't find jobs today. And you heard my colleagues today presenting letters of concern, opposition to these mergers from labor groups.
These folks are concerned about their jobs, bread, and butter. I love to hear your academics today, your analysis today. Great stuff. But back home, people are concerned about their jobs. Where are they gonna feed their families?
Tomorrow. Lot of uncertainty. So I'm gonna ask each and every one of you, however you can answer. Are these mergers going to create jobs? Are they going to stem the current loss of jobs that is happening? Mr. Woods.
Speaker 9
Thank you, Congressman. We would certainly expect them not to stem the loss of jobs and to increase it. I think recent Dr. Yoon. Have shown that.
Speaker 6
I think there's a chance that some jobs will be lost and that some jobs we can't articulate at the beginning will be created as well.
Speaker 14
So you have two of you that are uncertain. For sure, loss of jobs and possibly loss of jobs. Hollywood, best films in the world. Best entertainment in the world. Arguably, yes, maybe.
I don't know. Those blockbusters out there, a lot of my constituents worked on them. And so let me ask you again, specifically, Netflix. If Netflix wins this bidding competition, are they gonna create jobs, Mr. Wood?
Speaker 9
I mean, again, it's hard to predict the future. But when they say synergies, they mean job cuts. They mean other kinds of reductions in spending.
Speaker 5
I don't know if they'll create jobs. But if there is growth in the industry, if there is growth in streaming and more content, I think that will create jobs.
Speaker 9
I think that's a more classic horizontal merger in the studio space. And so, no, I would think.
Speaker 14
you're these jobs. I don't have a prediction on that either. Miss Milligan?
Speaker 14
So here we are as members of congress debating m and a, economic activity in this country, job creation, bread and butter, and we're still not quite sure what the effects will be of this m and a activity. Is that what I'm hearing today? Or we're hearing that it will create job losses. Is that?
Speaker 9
I mean, again, congressman can only look to the past. We can't predict the future. But mergers are designed to save the company's money, and those efficiencies might be real for shareholders. But they.
Speaker 14
Often begin to understand why we have concerns by workers in this area when we don't have answers, and it sounds like maybe this is not gonna be good. So let me turn very quickly in my last 30 seconds. Are these mergers going to lower the ticket, the amount I will pay monthly for entertainment at home? Mr. Wood.
Speaker 8
I think for some users, yes. For some users, maybe not. Miss, spell it again.
Speaker 14
So here we go. We don't know. Probably job losses. So now we understand why people on Main Street are concerned. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I yield.
Speaker 1
Mister chairman, yield back. I have three UC requests. Before, I'd like to say that I did not know that mister Korea represented Disneyland. That sounds like a future field hearing for this committee.
Speaker 2
Thank you, mister. I have I ask unanimous consent for a statement for the record of the American economic liberty liberties project. I ask unanimous consent. No objection. I ask unanimous consent for an article on Planet Money titled The Warner Brothers' Curse.
Speaker 2
And finally, I ask unanimous consent for an article on The Verge, titled There Are No Good Outcomes for the Warner Brothers sale. Oh, I have one more. No objection. And I am, finally, I offer a unanimous consent request for an article in the free press titled, a more perfect a more perfect media, saving America's fourth estate from billionaires, borough oligarchy, and Trump.
Speaker 1
Without objection. General woman from Wyoming is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Speaker 15
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Streaming's I wanna talk a little bit about some definitions before I get into my questions, just so that I could understand what your testimony is. Streaming services send video data through broadband Internet to televisions, computers, phones, tablets, and other devices. Linear streaming services deliver live channels over the Internet and are commonly considered alternatives to cable. That would be your YouTube TV, Hulu Live TV, Sling TV, etcetera.
And then on-demand streaming services generally provide a catalog of shows and movies for consumers to watch without waiting for downloads, scheduling their times, or physical copies like DVDs, and that would include Netflix, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime. Warner Brothers Discovery, the company that owns HBO Max streaming services, Warner Brothers movie and television production studios, and linear cable television networks, including CNN, is currently up for sale, and at least two companies, Netflix and Paramount, are actively competing to buy it, looking at a sale of upwards of $100,000,000,000. Professor Yu and I would like to start with you, and that is, as you noticed in your testimony, an initial challenge that antitrust officials will need to overcome is how we actually define the relevant market in this new streaming world we live in. Now can you explain for us why some parties might want this definition to more broadly include linear TV and social media platforms, and why other parties would want a narrower definition focused just on the streaming.
Speaker 8
Yeah. It's the classic struggle in antitrust cases. Narrow definitions obviously mean higher market shares for the emerging parties, and that usually is what the challengers of a merger want. So the agencies will probably challenge this merger if they find sufficient evidence that the market is just streaming, and then they'll go forward. But the party's incentive clearly is to dilute their market share, their influence based off of the competitors.
So they're gonna want to have a broader market to include, as you mentioned, YouTube, YouTube TV, cable television, satellite. The inclusion of YouTube into the market will probably destroy any opportunity for this merger to be blocked, because that will then mean that consumers have a viable option to move their attention to YouTube. If the data is there, then I don't think this will be challenged. So that is everything in terms of this debate.
Speaker 15
Okay. So do either the narrower definition or the broader definition, which would be better for the consumers?
Speaker 8
So for me, the consumers care about their options and choices. So I would hope that the market definition adopted by either the agencies or the parties map to truly what the consumers have options over. So if the data does show that consumers, when they don't, when they see a higher price from Netflix, people leave Netflix. Data consistently shows that. Where do they go?
Do they go to HBO Max? Do they go to Amazon Prime Video? Or do they move to YouTube, social media, or other platforms? If the data shows that they'd move to the latter, and that to me is a great deal of evidence that the merger does not consolidate market power because the consumers haven't given them that power.
Speaker 15
Okay. Well, then, consolidation of streaming services may appeal to consumers who are frustrated with the fragmentation of the current market across multiple apps and platforms requiring different subscriptions. Netflix is the original streaming service and still today considered one of the premium on-demand streaming services. It is also one of the few that is actually profitable so far. While other platforms are trying to grow and turn profits, what are the potential negative effects for consumers of allowing the top premium service to acquire another?
Mister Yoon.
Speaker 8
What are the potential negative consequences? I think that if I had to predict the negative consequence, it's most likely going to be those consumers who have no value for HBO Max, yet Netflix will most likely increase the price to those consumers to access the platform because it's gonna integrate that content. The winners are most likely HBO Max users today who also subscribe to Netflix. I would predict their bundle price would be lower. So that's what I meant earlier, that I think it will be a mixed bag, and it will depend on who's the bigger consumer base.
Speaker 15
Okay. Just one last question. Balance is obviously needed between preserving competition and responding to these fragmentation concerns. Does allowing the market's biggest player to acquire another major player appropriately strike this balance, or is there a better way? Mister Yoon.
Speaker 8
Oh, gosh. It's a great question. I'm just so limited to whether this deal violates the law or not, and that's kind of my focus. I think there are other counterfactuals that could possibly be better.
Speaker 1
General Women yields back. Now recognize the gentleman from Illinois for 5 minutes.
Speaker 16
Thank you, Chairman Fitzgerald. Everyone agrees that the rise in on-demand digital streaming has transformed and changed the media and entertainment industry. But while the industry has been transformed, our goal remains the same: enforce antitrust laws and ensure an open, competitive market that protects workers, consumers, allows new entrants, and promotes creativity and free speech. Mister Wood, thank you for being here today. Netflix and Warner Brothers argue that the industry has changed so much that the relevant market includes other forms of digital media, including social media.
Are you skeptical of that definition?
Speaker 9
I'm listening, but I am skeptical. Yes. As doctor Yoon was saying, I mean, that is really the entire question here and the entire ballgame. And the question is not just will people switch to a different source, but will that behavior discipline the ability of the emerging entities to raise prices or reduce output? So there's a couple of different questions.
There are lots of different metrics. I think asking about all of those metrics is valid, and that's really the job that we need the antitrust enforcers to do very carefully.
Speaker 16
Thank you. Another important goal of antitrust enforcement is protecting workers from anticompetitive and abusive practices. Of course, this deal is just the latest in a series of mega-mergers in the entertainment industry. Every time the companies promise to protect workers, every time they betray the workers. After Disney, for example, acquired Fox, 4000 jobs were lost.
In the years after the AT&T Time Warner merger, 77,000 workers were laid off. And since merging with Skydance only months ago, Paramount has already laid off 1,000 workers and promised to lay off thousands more in the coming months. Mister Wood, given this history, are you concerned that additional consolidation in this industry will harm workers through widespread layoffs, reduced compensation, and other anticompetitive practices?
Speaker 9
Yes. Thank you, Congressman. We are very concerned. And as you said, that's the track record, and I think that's the design of these deals, to reduce the headcount. And that's how companies make a lot of the money that they can, in addition to being able to raise prices when they face less competition.
I think it was suggested earlier that antitrust should not be concerned with the labor issues. I don't think that's true. I don't know that it historically has been enough, but there are courts that agree that labor issues are very much the province of antitrust law. And so we hope that the analysis will take that into account as well, as it's not exactly the same as a typical labor market maybe, but the creators, the artists who are putting these products out there, it's almost a shame to call them products. I mean, they are not employees of these companies, but they also would face reduced opportunities for places to find their work made and put on screen if these mergers go through, and if the number of films made continues to dwindle.
Speaker 16
Thank you. My criticism of the Netflix deal is not an endorsement of the offer by Paramount, a company that's controlled by right wing oligarch Larry Ellison and his son David. The Ellisons are already doing Trump's bidding at CBS by installing right-wing ideologues who are swaying the network's content in favor of this administration in a very, very clear way. And now they're telling Trump that if Paramount buys Warner Brothers, they'll turn CNN into a Trump news network. Mister Wood, are you concerned about the possibility of viewpoint discrimination at CNN if Trump blocks the Netflix deal and gives the green light to Paramount?
Speaker 9
I think you said it well, congressman. If the new owners of CBS want to install a more right-leaning newsroom and change their viewpoint, that's their prerogative. The problem is when they're doing that, not only at the president's request, but with the threat that their merger won't be approved unless they do. So that's the really chilling element here. Companies, of course, have a right to change their politics, change their coverage, and change their newsrooms.
But when it's not only at the government's request, but under threat from the government of withholding benefits or some other kind of regulatory action. We've seen this at the FCC many times. Invest investigations launched that sort of magically disappeared once companies made concessions, and that's the kind of interference, not only in the antitrust process, but with the First Amendment that gravely concerns us.
Speaker 16
And that's the warning about greater consolidation in the industry. Thank you. I yield back.
Speaker 1
Gentleman yields back. Gentleman from New York is recognized for the UC request. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mister chairman, I.
Speaker 2
Ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from the Progressive Newswire entitled "Press Freedom Groups Tell FCC Media Consolidation Poses Grave Threat to Independent News and Information."
Speaker 2
And, I offer ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the prepared statement for the record of Cinema United. Without objection. You, Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 12
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Miss Malugin, it's about the consumer. Right? I hope so. Yeah.
I mean, earlier it was said it's an economic analysis. It's a market analysis. That analysis is driven by the welfare of the consumer. And if you go to any other standard, you start running into problems. You start saying, oh, it's about the content producers.
It's about the unions. It's about the workers. It's about that biz, if you go anywhere else, you're getting problems. And here's the good thing. When you focus on the consumer in the long run, it typically benefits the workers, the businesses, it benefits everyone.
But you have to focus there. You get anywhere else. You can create a monopoly where they hire a bunch more people, pay them huge salaries, but that's not good in the long run for the consumer or, frankly, for the country, for the market, for everything else. Is that right?
Speaker 6
Yes. I'd say that antitrust can't serve more than one master. And anytime you replace any kind of worthy and understandably concerned group, it's a special interest, and that will displace protecting the interests of consumers. There's only one person, and there's only one group that it can be focused on. And the great thing about picking consumers is that at some point in the economy, we're all.
Speaker 12
We're all consumers. That's the beauty of that standard. When you deviate from that standard, start playing games, start picking things, start basing on anything else, I think you run into problems. How's this gonna shake out? I mean, that way, it's, you know, I mean, we have to predict everything.
But tell, I mean, how what's the I heard doctor Yoon talk about, you know, how the marketplace is gonna be defined and all that. How you guys give us your sense. That's what we all kinda want to know. Maybe you said that already. I there's another committee hearing on this Minnesota fraud, so I apologize.
But we'll let you up. Let you
Speaker 6
It's hardy, it's a hardy but a newie. Yeah. I think, listen. I agree with what's been said here. Getting that market definition set is going to be hugely important.
That affects what market shares we're talking about, and that kinda sets either challengers or these companies up for success, depending. I think any deal that happens is going to be reviewed. Just because of the size of it, it's going to be reviewed by US antitrust officials, regulators. And then you've heard it all here today. What are they gonna be looking at?
Speaker 12
Who do you think is gonna get the burden? I mean, and this again depends on how they define the market. But who's gonna have the burden? Is it gonna be on the companies, the merging parties, or is it gonna be on the government to show this is any competitive? Well that's sort of the fundamental step that takes place relatively early on in this process.
Speaker 6
Who knows what will happen? But since I got to testify today, I will make the prediction that, hopefully, we have a more expansive, relevant market definition that takes into consideration the behavior of consumers. And, you know, even if you didn't, you're really only kind of hitting that 30%. So, hopefully, we have a broader view of how consumers actually.
Speaker 12
Even under the narrow definition, you're close to the kind of the threshold, the 30% criteria. But under the broad definition, no problem. Doctor, I see the doctor shaking his head. Do you?
Speaker 12
Okay. Okay. Okay. I get it. And anyone else would, I mean, we're gonna let the chairman finish up here last, but anything else?
I'll even go to the Democrat witness, mister Trump.
Speaker 9
How kind of you, sir. No. I mean, I think, as you said, we wanna focus on the consumer and whether we focus on other things as well.
Speaker 12
No. You didn't say the last round of questions, said you gotta focus on the worker.
Speaker 9
Well, we've talked a lot about the markets, too. I said we can focus on the labor impacts as well, and I think that's under.
Speaker 12
Clayton Act. But that's a deviation. That's different. Right. That's changing the process.
And in the end, in the long run, I don't think that's beneficial. I mean, we I wanna focus on workers and make sure they have jobs too, but you can't do that because in the long run, it will end up skewing the market. So you said you were, you weren't wedded to the welfare of the consumer standard. I think that's the right standard.
Speaker 9
Yeah. I think not solely to that, but I certainly understand your viewpoint, too. What I was gonna say is I think an antitrust too, it's always the government's burden.
Speaker 12
All I'm saying is your viewpoint is gonna get us in trouble, I believe, going forward. The viewpoint focusing on the consumer, as Miss Malujan pointed out, because we're all consumers, is the safest, best tried and true process. Okay. I'll keep like, I said I'll let you talk. I'll let you talk.
Speaker 9
Oh, no. I was gonna say, I mean, it's the government's burden. But as doctor Yoon explained earlier, there's a presumption of illegality when the concentration levels hit a certain level. So it's and to answer your question, it's not gonna be the company's burden to get this through. It's the government's burden to make that case.
That's my read. But how they make that case will depend greatly on how we draw those market barriers. And we have concerns about competition here for sure, but that work has yet to be done.
Speaker 5
Yeah. So I think that if we focus on the narrowest market, which is the subscription video on demand market, the concentration level there, even though it's likely more than 30%, the market concentration in that market is not particularly high anyway. And the 30% Philadelphia National Bank threshold, mhmm. Has zero basis in economics. It's more seen as a necessary condition, not as a sufficient condition.
So even under that narrow market definition, I don't know if this is a slam dunk, but there are lots and lots of problems with that narrow market definition. By definition, you know, it's a relevant market. So whoever defines that market, that says that everything else is irrelevant, and that would include YouTube. And that's just and others, and just not the case.
Speaker 1
Chairman Neil's back. I just wanted to wrap up, I guess. I'll recognize myself for five minutes. But I think what it comes down to is, and what we've heard a little bit today, is let's actually think about how real people actually make the decisions on what they're going to use as their entertainment value. And I think, you know, if somebody now says it seems like one of the hotter shows right now is Landman.
So if your neighbor or your friend says, hey. Have you seen the last episode of Landman? The first thing you're gonna think is, I don't know because what is it on? What is it being streamed on? So and then the family makes a decision as to, yeah, we're gonna sign up for Paramount Plus because we don't have it right now, but I do wanna watch Landman.
Okay. Then you have the sports issue, which is you have NFL teams right now that are on 5 different streaming venues. So the level of frustration I hear from the constituents back in the 5th District is why are the Packers on Peacock three times this year? You know? So I don't know that the mergers necessarily change that because no one's shopping for the actual network.
What they're doing is they're shopping for content. Right? So it from my perspective, I think the last administration really did not look favorably on mergers. Right? I mean, every merger was suspect right out of the gate, and what we found was that that's not always a bad thing.
It depends on the market. It depends on the content. It depends how it's being delivered, and I think that was underscored again today. So, I just wanna thank the witnesses for participating today. And, yeah, we do have a couple of unanimous consents.
An article published in the Wall Street Journal authored by myself titled, a merger could bring better streaming. I think the ranking member should offer that one on my behalf. An article published in Town Hall titled Netflix Warner Brothers deal is free market, and an article published in Town Hall titled the Netflix Warner Brothers deal puts America first. So, without objection, those will be added. And, we well we thank everybody for participating today and, certainly wanna wrap up with, not only, I think, thanking everyone for being here, but just hang on one second.
Without objection, all members will have five legislative days to submit additional written questions for the witnesses and additional materials for the record. Without objection, the hearing is adjourned.
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