• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Paramount Skydance may seem to have the better chance of acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, but Netflix is now talking up some strong points as well.

Netflix hosted an expert on all things anti-trust issues -- Steve Sunshine, head of global antitrust/competition group, for law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Netflix's merger with WBD would be considered to be more “horizontal” than Paramount Skydance.

On the other hand, putting Paramount together with WBD would give the new company more anticompetitive leverage in terms of a bigger cable TV network group, and a large, dominant movie and TV studio company.

Netflix also pointed out -- with regard to its proposed deal -- that there is no current "monopolization" investigation in effect by any Federal regulatory agencies.

In addition, an estimate from Netflix projects that there could be up to $16 billion in job cuts with a Paramount-WBD combination.

Surely the continued declines of cable TV networks -- for both Paramount and WBD respective groups -- would likely put those businesses under pressure for such financial cutbacks.

On March 20, WBD will hold a special shareholder meeting to vote on merger proposals -- as well as voting on the previous WBD plan of spinning the company into two publicly traded units -- studios and streaming (Warner Bros, and the other its cable TV networks (Discovery Global).

A strict nonpartisan approach may make sense. But this isn’t where things are currently.

The wild card, of course, is the Trump Administration taking a heavy hand with things.

Don’t think only about this deal to get clues. Think about other proposed deals like the attempt by the largest U.S. TV station company, Nexstar Media Group, to buy Tegna -- a significant mid-sized TV station company -- for $6.2 billion.

President Trump voiced his approval in a social media post -- reversing previous criticism -- that the deal would "help knock out the fake news."

All this would also require the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to change the 39% national TV ownership cap.

Netflix seems to feel straight ahead business operations and ownership issues are the real, honest issues to examine.

Is that enough?