• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Spinoff cable TV network group company Versant Media, which is yet to launch, could be a potential suitor for a possible Warner Bros. Discovery sale.

Possible good news going forward in getting a deal like this approved is that no Federal Communications Commission regulatory approval is necessary.

This would be different, of course, than the heavy overreach the FCC has seemingly had recently when it came to Skydance Media needing approval for $8 billion to buy Paramount Global.

That deal mattered because the company needed FCC approval of the transfers of ownership of broadcast licenses of CBS stations.

And what about Walt Disney and Jimmy Kimmel? No specific threat there -- or was there? In response to Kimmel's monologue remarks, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said, with little reference: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Sounds threatening to me.

But for a possible Versant-WBD deal there is no broadcast license to consider. It’s just about cable TV networks, not over-the-air TV stations.

That said, there can be a whole host of business roadblocks that could surround that deal from other federal regulatory agencies -- especially if Versant continues as a publicly stock market traded company -- to say, nothing of the now typical approach of the massive, out-of-the-box lawsuit activity by the Trump Administration.

And we know how Trump feels about those companies' news networks -- WBD’s CNN and Versant’s MSNBC.

“The antitrust analysis would be different if it turned out to be [Comcast Corp.],” says Blair Levin, policy analyst of NewStreet Research, “but the bottom line would be similar in that it is unlikely for the Trump Administration to allow Comcast or Versant to purchase WBD, with the more important variable being what the courts will do.”

So if the FCC couldn’t put its thumb on the scale to stop the deal, who could? Levin, a former chief of staff at the FCC, said: “While either the DOJ [Department of Justice] or FTC [Federal Trade Commission] could review the deal, we believe it will be the DOJ, given its prior review of such media deals.”

The buck starts and stops somewhere, however.

Guess who? "The most significant player in the review will be the President."