Paramount must maintain Pluto TV — or another free, ad-supported streaming service — for five years under a settlement with 12 state attorneys general over its proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
The FAST-service commitment is one of the more unexpected television provisions in the agreement. The settlement places sharper conditions on basic cable, identifying BET, VH1 and Comedy Central among the networks Paramount could be required to sell if it fails to keep Paramount and Warner Bros. cable-package negotiations separate.
At the same time, several major assets remain outside those divestiture terms. MTV and Nickelodeon are not on the list, while premium channels, streaming services and broadcast offerings are expressly excluded from the requirement for separate carriage talks. The agreement also does not address a possible consolidation of Warner Bros. Television, Paramount TV Studios and CBS Studios.
The Cable Networks Facing Potential Sale
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Paramount and Warner Bros. must continue handling their cable packages separately, preserving the competition that currently exists between the companies.
“It will mimic them being separate companies, even post-merger,” Bonta said Monday.
Compliance will be overseen through a monitor and a state committee that can assess complaints, although the settlement offers limited detail about how that process will operate.
If Paramount is found to have committed a “material violation,” the company would receive a six-month period to “come into compliance.” A failure to remedy the issue would require the sale of one or more specified linear networks.
Those possible divestiture targets are BET — including BET, BET Gospel, BET Her, BET Hip-Hop, BET Jams and BET Soul — along with VH1, Comedy Central, Smithsonian, Destination America and Science.
BET and VH1 had already been put up for sale twice. Their inclusion alongside Comedy Central is notable because Paramount’s leadership, following Skydance’s acquisition of the company, had expressed an intention to revitalize legacy cable brands including BET, Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon.
MTV and Nickelodeon, however, are not subject to the potential-sale remedy. Paramount has also secured Comedy Central’s biggest program, South Park, in a Paramount+ streaming deal for the foreseeable future and recently folded BET+ into Paramount+.
Premium Cable and Studios Are Left Out
The settlement’s cable restrictions are narrowly drawn. Its language specifies: “For the avoidance of doubt, this paragraph does not apply to other Combined Entity offerings (e.g., premium cable channels, streaming services, or broadcast).”
That exclusion leaves Showtime outside the separate-negotiation requirement, even though it also negotiates carriage agreements. As a result, the terms would not prevent Paramount from bundling Showtime with Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO in negotiations with operators.
There are also no provisions preventing Paramount from combining Warner Bros. Television, Paramount TV Studios and CBS Studios after the merger. The agreement does not establish guidelines for the number of positions that could be eliminated through such consolidation or through Paramount’s stated plan to merge Paramount+ with HBO Max.
Movies and basic cable were the primary focus of the antitrust case. Although a combined HBO Max and Paramount+ would be a major subscription-streaming operation, it would not dominate that market.
Television received comparatively limited attention during Bonta’s Monday morning press conference. He spent more than six minutes describing the agreed film-production terms, then devoted two lines to TV: one covering a news editorial independence board supporting the continued editorial independence of CBS News and CNN, and another confirming the separate cable-package negotiations.
Why Pluto TV Received Protection
The five-year FAST requirement arrives as Paramount has been publicly emphasizing Pluto TV’s place in its strategy. Chairman and CEO David Ellison said during the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call, “I am a big believer in the FAST space.”
Paramount also presented Pluto TV to advertisers in May as a central part of its advertising plans, with platform upgrades in progress and more planned. Over the previous year, the company backed the service with library-content acquisitions and included it in a lengthy backend technology convergence with Paramount+, a process that has largely been completed.
In its second-quarter 2026 investor letter, Paramount said that “Paramount+ and Pluto TV remain at the center of how audiences discover and engage with our programming as we build an entertainment platform for the future.” Executives added on the accompanying earnings call that they expected Pluto to return to growth in the second half of the year.
Pluto was founded in 2014 and was an early FAST service, but later lost ground in the market-share race as Tubi and Roku became more popular. Co-founder Tom Ryan and other core staff members subsequently left the company. Paramount’s current leadership has nevertheless remained optimistic about the platform after a period in which it had been largely neglected.
What Happens Next?
If the merger proceeds, the monitor and state committee will be responsible for reviewing complaints concerning the companies’ basic-cable negotiations. Only a material violation that remains unresolved after the six-month cure period would trigger the requirement to divest one or more networks from the settlement’s list.
Whatever happens with those cable brands, Paramount will also be obligated to operate Pluto TV or another free, ad-supported streaming service for the next five years.