If the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal survives, California’s antitrust fix: The company’s board

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has so far successfully fought to block the $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.

A federal judge has already paused the deal once, with the Writers Guild of America pressing its own case on the same schedule. Bonta’s coalition of a dozen states argues forcefully that combining two of Hollywood’s five major studios and two of its five major cable programmers would hand the merged company control of roughly a third of theatrical film and basic cable programming nationwide.

I hope the state wins. But mergers this large rarely end as clean courtroom victories. Cases settle. Judges narrow the relief they grant. Companies restructure their offers. Paramount has already shown it’s willing to negotiate delay after delay to keep the deal alive.

So it’s worth asking now: What should California demand if some version of this merger goes through?

The remedies under discussion so far — divestitures, licensing conditions, content firewalls — are the standard antitrust toolkit. But they’re subject to litigation risk and can be hard to monitor. There’s a governance option that has gotten too little attention: restructuring the merged company’s board.

If this litigation ends in a settlement, a consent decree or a court order allowing some version of the deal to close, California should insist the surviving company’s board include meaningful voting blocs — not advisory seats, not observer status, but real votes. The two groups: labor and workforce representatives drawn from the unions whose members write, produce and support this content, and public-interest representatives who can speak for California viewers, readers and communities whose access to independent journalism narrows every time the industry consolidates.

Here’s the logic: A dominant firm doesn’t just raise prices. It can suppress wages, worsen work conditions and restrict viewpoints reaching the public because workers and audiences have fewer places to go. These are effects which may not show up in a textbook antitrust analysis, but which are exactly the harms the state’s lawsuit has already spotlighted. Bonta’s own filings have raised alarm about fewer journalists keeping us informed and about the deal’s implications for CNN and CBS News.

Board seats with genuine voting power would give the people most exposed to this merger’s downside an ongoing, structural check on decisions about layoffs, commissioning choices and the diversity of what gets made and reported — rather than a condition that expires the moment regulators stop watching.

It also represents a lighter touch than more traditional remedies. A full divestiture is a blunt instrument often resulting in mini-monopolies. Embedding labor and public-interest voices in governance preserves whatever legitimate efficiencies a deal might offer while making sure the people it puts at risk have a permanent voice in later decisions. And it has precedents in stakeholder board arrangements used elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad.

This is an unconventional remedy for an antitrust case, but the harms here are unconventional: A deal fusing two major news organizations and much of the remaining scripted-television market outlasts any single ruling.

Bonta has earned credibility by fighting this deal in court rather than settling for half-measures. He should keep governance reform in his toolkit for whatever comes next, whether it’s a court win, a settlement or a modified deal that comes back across his desk.