This Week’s Highlights:
Announcing the settlement that clears Paramount’s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, California attorney general Rob Bonta said, “I don’t think these two companies should merge.” The terms: a five-year production pledge, studio lots kept in Los Angeles, separate editorial boards for CNN and CBS News, and no divestitures unless Paramount breaks its promises (The Hollywood Reporter). Proving it broke them would rely on Paramount’s own data (The Wall Street Journal). The states’ lawsuit never mentioned television, though Warner Bros. TV and CBS Studios together produce about 140 series (Variety). On Thursday a federal judge let Free Press and other opponents file briefs, likely delaying the close as a $7-million-a-day fee to Warner shareholders looms October 1 (Deadline).
Reach, publisher of the Daily Mirror, is cutting 220 more editorial jobs after its Google traffic fell 46% in a year to AI summaries (The Guardian). And Russian strikes have damaged more than 40 Ukrainian publishing houses since summer and destroyed 13 million books, a third of the country’s annual print run (AP).
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Met will give away 70,000 seats this season by lottery, open only to New Yorkers who haven’t bought a Met ticket since before Covid (The New York Times). And the Cleveland Orchestra, whose players say their pay trails the rest of the Big Five, went on strike Friday in Franz Welser-Möst’s final season as music director (Ideastream).
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.