Diversity

Consolidation Threatens Multiple Types of Diversity 

Authors: Karen Petruska & Michael Reinhard

The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger would cause a reduction in diversity of ownership, of representation, of viewpoint, and of outlet upon which not only U.S. broadcasting, but also American democracy, depend. When applied to the media industries, the term “diversity” carries multiple meanings, but we have adapted an official definition from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This agency oversees broadcasting (and famously, does not regulate broadband as an “information service”), so we borrow its terminology to structure this section. All four categories of diversity—ownership, representation, viewpoint, and outlet—are threatened by this merger, reducing the forms of diversity the public depends upon in cinemas, over the airwaves, and across online platforms. The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California contends that corporate contraction (and the resulting period of uncertainty around a merger or acquisition) leads companies not only to take fewer risks, but also to resort to workplace practices that are often “exclusionary” and “discriminatory.” 

Current Media Ownership Lacks Diversity 

Alongside concerns about minority U.S. ownership of homegrown media companies, foreign minority ownership would grow as a result of the merger. As documented in a request of the FCC to increase ownership limits currently in place that prevent foreign owners from controlling too much of the US media market, more than one-quarter of the combined Paramount -Warner Bros. would be owned by business interests in the Middle East. Since the deregulatory environment of the 1980s and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the increasing consolidation of the media industry has posed barriers to female and minority ownership of commercial broadcast stations, while also continuing to present challenges for new white male owners. In its 2025 reporting, the FCC stated that women majority ownership stayed relatively even from 9% to 10% of commercial broadcast stations between 2021 and 2023, while racial minorities continued from 4% to 5% of majority owners in the ensuing years after the Disney-Fox merger. As minority owners are underrepresented relative to their proportion of the U.S. population—women represent 50.5% and the non-white population between 25.2% to 45.2%, depending on Hispanic racial identification—post-merger ownership conditions threaten to exacerbate an economic environment that lacks representativeness for the country as a whole.

Mergers Worsen Diversity of Representation

The potential merger would pose significant concerns for the health of diversity of representation in commercial Hollywood film and television production. Recent mergers under the purview of the second Trump Administration’s FCC have been part and parcel of a public-private partnership attacking diversity efforts. In February 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery began removing the language of diversity and equity from its corporate offices by renaming its DEI program simply to “Inclusion.” To gain approval from the Department of Justice for its merger with Skydance, Paramount promised Trump’s FCC the elimination of its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Following the merger, CBS News gutted its Race and Culture Unit and many journalists of color were also laid off. 

The speed of these mergers also highlights the ways that diverse representation may be sacrificed in Hollywood. Clear risks include the maintenance of unequal conditions where minority creators receive inadequate budgets, fewer opportunities, and a lack of creative risks due to the economic realities of servicing such a large debt-load. Elsewhere, academic studies have observed that mergers can increase stereotyped forms of representation. Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race found that despite modest increases in Latino representation after the Comcast NBCUniversal merger, stereotyped representation of Latinos rose from 34.1% to 52.5% of available TV roles between 2008 to 2014. For these reasons, the adverse effects on diverse representation highlight the larger economic problem of this merger: the ensuing lack of diversity would challenge Hollywood’s competitiveness in providing authentic representation for an increasingly global media economy.

Hollywood has long practiced windowing, distributing movies in a phased process across platforms, including movie theaters, pay home video (premium VOD), subscription home video (SVOD), subscription TV, free TV, etc., with each window forming a distinct marketplace. With a merger on the scale of Paramount-Warner Bros., each window narrows as formerly distinct markets converge. When viewed through the lens of diversity, sellers operate in a market with fewer buyers, and the corporations that control windowing decisions (such as at the combined Paramount+ and HBO Max streamer) would accrue greater control over which movies hit streamers. Current failures in diverse representation can intensify as a result. 

One example of this risk is the recent history of the BET network, which operated its own streamer called BET+ that featured content made by, featuring, and addressing black audiences. As Skydance was finalizing its deal to purchase Paramount Global in June 2025, the CEO of BET announced layoffs as part of the parent company’s “steps to streamline Paramount to ensure it is positioned for continued success.” After concluding the purchase, the merged Paramount Skydance incorporated BET+ into its larger streamer in March 2026, reducing the separate platform to a “hub” featured on the larger site, minimizing its impact and visibility. 

Some in the documentary film community have also expressed concern about the reduced marketplace for specialty content. Laura Poitras explained her opposition in blunt language: “We already have seen consolidation, we already have seen broadcasters and streamers moving away from political content, and this would just mean fewer voices, less diversity, less content. It’s awful for the communities, it’s awful for filmmakers and creatives and it’s terrible for the public.”

Diversity in terms of identity represented on screen may refer to gender, ethnicity, age, orientation, ability, language, faith, and even political identity, and scholars have explored inequities in the representations of different identities on screen. USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative has been tracking diversity data since 2016. In 2025, the report found, for the first time, gender equality in top-grossing films with 54% of girls and women as protagonists. The same report also found a decline in underrepresented leads in those same films. Still, just a few months later, a report with a wider scope (accounting for orientation and ability, for example), reported that “DEI was DOA,” reflecting the broader retraction from inclusion initiatives by a range of companies. As part of its effort to gain approval for its previous merger, Skydance promised in a letter to FCC Chair Carr that it would end all DEI efforts at the combined Paramount Skydance. This promise included hiring efforts, a factor that promised to exacerbate Hollywood's lack of diversity. As Chart 1 from the August 2025 report documents, women not only dominate casting in Hollywood, but they also largely represent one ethnic identity. The chart suggests that diversity lags when the gatekeepers responsible for hiring themselves lack diverse identities. 

Viewpoint Diversity is Essential to Democracy and Would Decline 

The concept of “viewpoint diversity” may be applied to multiple sectors, but it is also “a foundational antitrust principle.” Because the phrase tends to travel with “the marketplace of ideas” metaphor, it has been championed by both conservatives and liberals. While some proponents of greater viewpoint diversity have argued for restoring the Fairness Doctrine to enforce a sense of balance in the media, others are concerned about news overload. This merger, however, has raised fears of a reduction in viewpoint diversity due to the consolidation of news outlets under one corporate banner.

As the News and Political Discourse sections explain, a merged Paramount-Warner Bros. would control not only CBS News (including 60 Minutes) but also CNN worldwide. Journalists fear that Paramount Skydance would shift the ideological focus of CNN from the center towards the right, reducing the viewpoint diversity among the big three of cable news outlets: Fox News, MS Now, and CNN. Five citizens have sued over the merger, citing a reduction of viewpoint diversity as part of their argument. Among cited evidence,, they contend that the Supreme Court has upheld the blocking of mergers that reduced an “independent competitor” and “advanced a consolidation trend” 

Accusations of partisan bias guiding editorial decisionmaking at CBS are becoming louder, and the possible implications for CNN are becoming clearer as well. Partisan bias in news delivery weakens television news as a place for viewpoint diversity. As editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has been re-shaping CBS News, she has also let go of reporters who are now speaking out about the conflict behind the scenes. For example, ousted journalist Sharyn Alfonsi accused the network of delaying her reporting on the CECOT prison in El Salvador for “political” reasons. An article in The Atlantic explored Weiss’s explanation for the CECOT story delay, and found that her reasoning—a debate over the report’s use of the term “migrant” rather than “illegal immigrant”—actually called for MORE reporting, not less. One critical element necessary for viewpoint diversity, according to the FCC, is an environment that allows for “diverse and antagonistic” perspectives. Objectively, the incorporation of CBS and CNN under the corporate control of Paramount Skydance reduces the number of news companies in the US, and concerns about editorial control of viewpoint heightens the perception of a less diverse news environment.

The Range of Platforms Diminishes Further

Scholar Philip Napoli defines “exposure diversity” as the public’s vertical and horizontal access to varied media content within and across various outlets (e.g., channels, stations). Today, that access largely occurs online. Media scholars have long examined the consumer harms resulting from both vertical integration and horizontal integration. Exposure diversity adds a useful additional layer to conversations that might otherwise focus on market share, given the number of competing markets. One can look at possible redundancies not only across the physical geography of studio lots in LA, the production realm of film, television, gaming, and animation studios, cable channels, sports rights, all the C-suite duplications, but also the online realm of streaming media platforms. 

Chart 3: Media Universe map by Evan Shapiro

As the merger would reduce outlets in an already limited video distribution marketplace, the under-representation of minority groups would only intensify, reducing Hollywood’s ability to accurately reflect the world we live in.