​​​​​​​FTC and Justice Department Listening Forum on Firsthand Effects of Mergers and Acquisitions: Media and Entertainment

The Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice will host a series of listening forums to hear from those who have experienced firsthand the effects of mergers and acquisitions beyond antitrust experts, including consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, start-ups, farmers, investors, and independent businesses. The four forums will be held virtually over the next three months and helmed by FTC Chair Lina M. Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Antitrust Division. The link to each webcast will be made public on the day of the event.

The four forums will focus on industries and labor markets that are commonly impacted by mergers that may reduce competition. The dates are as follows:

• Monday, March 28 at 3pm ET – Food and Agriculture
• Thursday, April 14 at 2pm ET – Health Care
• Wednesday, April 27 at 1:30pm ET – Media and Entertainment
• Thursday, May 12 at 2pm ET – Technology

The listening forums will be open to the public, webcast on the FTC’s website, transcribed, posted online, and included as part of the public record.

FTC Chair Lina M. Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter will attend each event with staff from both agencies. At each event, Chair Khan and Assistant Attorney General Kanter will provide a brief introduction followed by remarks from each speaker.

Speakers will include independent business owners, entrepreneurs, farmers, workers, and other market participants. At the conclusion of the speakers’ remarks, members of the public will have up to two minutes to comment. Those who wish to participate may register to speak virtually at one of the events.  Due to challenges related to the ongoing COVID-19 public health crisis, these forums will be held virtually.

The forums will supplement the agencies’ recent request for comments on merger enforcement guidelines to ensure that the agencies hear from affected groups who might not otherwise participate in the process. For more information please read theFederal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division joint public inquiryaimed at strengthening enforcement against illegal mergers.

Speaker Bios

Introductory Remarks

Lina M. Khan was sworn in as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission on June 15, 2021. Prior to becoming head of the FTC, Khan was an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She also previously served as counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, legal adviser to FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, and legal director at the Open Markets Institute. Khan’s scholarship on antitrust and competition policy has been published in the Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. She is a graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School.

Speakers

Adam Conover is a comedian, television host, and television showrunner. He is the creator and host of the truTV series Adam Ruins Everything, an informational comedy show that dispels common misconceptions, and The G Word, a Netflix docu-comedy series about the United States government. He is a Board Member of the Writers Guild of America, West.

Marshall Moran is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working in music, performance, computer-generative systems, and visual-manipulation. His practice focuses on emergent systems, and the ongoing conversation surrounding class, identity, and social justice. When not performing his own work under the name Murmoons or teaching Acoustics, he works as an audio engineer, which he has proudly done for the last two decades.

Damon Krukowski is a musician with the indie rock duo Damon & Naomi, and before that the band Galaxie 500. He has been a professional musician since the late 1980s. He is also a writer and has published two books about sound with MIT Press, and hosted a podcast series called Ways of Hearing for Radiotopia.

Russell D’Souza is the Co-Founder and Head of Business Partnerships at SeatGeek. He leads SeatGeek’s growth initiatives, including business development and was integral in spearheading many of SeatGeek’s key partnerships including NFL, MLS, Dallas Cowboys and Brooklyn Nets. Mr. D’Souza is a two-time winner of Sports Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 award and prior to founding SeatGeek, he worked as a management consultant at Monitor Group in Boston.

Julie Reynolds is an investigative journalist who has been researching and reporting on the impact of hedge funds on local newspapers since 2016. Her work has been published by Newsweek, The Nation, PBS, NPR and many other news outlets. She's the recipient of numerous awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors and others, and she is a co-founder of the nonprofit, bilingual news site, Voices of Monterey Bay.

Brooke Binkowski is a veteran multimedia journalist and reporter who now works in the counterdisinformation and debunking field. She also covered the U.S.-Mexico border for many years. Ms. Binkowski is a California native and a third-generation journalist.

Todd Achillesis Co-Founder and CEO of Evoca, an innovative Nextgen TV provider based in Boise, Idaho. A former Army tank officer, Todd has spent his civilian career in product, engineering and marketing roles within the tech and telecom sectors, holding executive roles at T-Mobile and Hewlett-Packard. He currently serves on the boards of the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, the Frank Church Institute at Boise State University, Boise State Public Radio and the Atlantic Council.

Closing Remarks

Jonathan Kanter was confirmed on November 17, 2021, as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. Throughout his career, Mr. Kanter has been a leading advocate for strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy. Mr. Kanter has been a partner in the Washington, D.C. offices of two national law firms and was the founder of a boutique antitrust law firm dedicated to promoting antitrust enforcement. Mr. Kanter began his career as an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition. He earned his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and his B.A. from State University of New York at Albany.