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Los Angeles Controller Ron Galperin sent a letter to LA Sanitation and Environment on Tuesday, July 20, demanding answers about the cause and impact of a 17 million-gallon sewage spill early last week that temporarily closed beaches from El Segundo to the southern end of Playa del Rey.

This catastrophic accident not only did great damage to our local beaches and water, but also undermined the publics trust in their governments ability to serve them and keep them safe, Galperin said. Residents have the right to know exactly why the sewage spill happened, its impact on the area, the cost to taxpayers and what steps will be taken to prevent another similar incident in the future.

The Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant, near El Segundo, discharged 17 million gallons of untreated sewage through a one-mile outfall beginning the evening of July 11 and into the morning of July 12, prompting the beach closures.

The plant became inundated with overwhelming quantities of debris, causing backup of the headworks facilities, Hyperion Executive Plant Manager Timeyin Dafeta said in a statement later that week. The plants relief system was triggered and sewage flows were controlled through use of the plants one-mile outfall and discharge of untreated sewage into Santa Monica Bay.

LA Sanitation and Environment operates the plant.

Dafeta said the sewage about 6% of a daily load was discharged as an emergency measure through the one-mile outfall to prevent the plant from going offline and discharging more raw sewage. Normally, treated sewage is discharged through the five-mile outfall.

Beaches were closed the next day in the following areas:

They reopened three days later, on Thursday, July 15.

But the delay in closing the beaches and alerting the public has drawn criticism from residents and local officials, including Galperin and LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who requested an investigation and a corrective plan.

Dafeta, in an interview last week, said Hyperion officials were investigating and would comply with Hahns request.

Two El Segundo mothers were so infuriated the public wasnt notified sooner that they have organized a protest, planned for 3 p.m. Thursday, July 22, outside the plants main entrance.

Nikia Gonzales said her daughter swam in the ocean near the Hyperion plant the morning after the spill as part of a summer beach camp. Authorities, Gonzales said, were negligent in not telling people about the spill earlier.

The LA County Department of Public Health did not publish its advisory closing the beaches until around 5 p.m. that day.

When I found out my daughter swam in that water, I was petrified, freaking out and angry, Gonzales said. They are not only contaminating our poor ocean, but they allowed our residents to swim in it for hours and hours. I know they are saying its the city of LAs responsibility and they followed protocol but at what point do you use your common human sense to notify the residents.

Galperin, meanwhile, wrote in his letter that the spill was an environmental disaster and imminent threat to the health and safety of millions of residents in and around the city.

He noted that it took almost 24 hours to notify the public via social media about the spill. In his letter, Galperin asked:

The controller, who serves as a watchdog on public spending, also asked which regulatory agencies will investigate the incident, what the spills impact was on environmental and public health, what repairs are needed at the plant and how much it will cost taxpayers.

The beaches reopened on Thursday after ocean water samples collected over two days met state standards for acceptable water quality, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said.

El Segundo city officials said in a press release Tuesday that a review of the incident by federal and state regulatory agencies could take two to three months.

In the meantime, the plant will undergo repairs until August, resulting in construction noise, odor, smoke and flaring, the city said. Gonzales said the smell is unbearable at times.

Hyperion and Los Angeles officials plan to address residents at the August 17 City Council meeting.

But Gonzales said thats not soon enough.

I did this because over the past several days I am seeing kids posting on Facebook about people feeling sick and going to the hospital, having nausea and headaches and waking up in the middle of the night because the smell is so intoxicating, Gonzales said. August 17 is planned but this is making us sick now.

The Public Health Department, however, did note in a Friday press release that water samples had continued to meet state standards the day after beaches reopened.

Bacteria levels in the water, however, often exceed state standards for various reasons not related to the Hyperion sewage spill, the department said in a separate press release issued the day before.

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LA Control demands answers to sewage spill that closed down South Bay beaches - The Daily Breeze

Suspended ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule. (Photo: Gallo Images / Frikkie Kapp) | Former president Jacob Zuma. (Photo: Leila Dougan) | Former special ops boss Thulani Silence' Dlomo. (Photo: http://www.min-on.org)

More than 70 people have died, at least 1,354 people have been arrested and 12 ringleaders are being investigated for a political campaign that has spiralled out of the control of its firestarters.

The first arson protests at the weekend, in which 35 trucks were torched on the N3, which links Gauteng to KwaZulu-Natal and is South Africas food and fuel route, started the darkest week of anarchy in the countrys recent history. Information has now emerged that this was planned by intelligence operatives and other cadres loyal to Jacob Zuma. The former president is jailed at the Estcourt Correctional Centre for contempt of court and his loyalists want him out.

These are people with experience of running operations, said Deputy State Security Minister Zizi Kodwa at a briefing on Wednesday. News24 reported that Zumas leading spymaster and the former ambassador to Japan, Thulani Dlomo, is one of 12 ringleaders being investigated by the polices Crime Intelligence and by state intelligence as being the architects of a political campaign of which they have lost control.

The SA National Defence Force contingent deployed to end the violence was on Wednesday increased to 25,000 soldiers as the government battled to bring the situation under control: overnight, 208 more incidents of looting were reported 52 in Gauteng and 156 in KwaZulu-Natal.

While Gauteng appears to be coming under control, the looting in Durban is being live-streamed as police prove either unable or unwilling to control the mayhem, which Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda said had already cost the port city R15-billion in the week following Zumas jailing.

The insurrection was organised on social media once the 12 masterminds had crafted the strategy of chaos, according to senior ANC and intelligence sources who were interviewed by Daily Maverick on condition of anonymity. The chat messages in the graphic below have been filtered off social media and reportedly come from groups on WhatsApp and Telegram where the insurrectionists organised.

The common theory now is that the truck burnings were relatively easy to organise because of the long tail of renegade MK groups (organised in new movements) active in the sector. They have been campaigning against foreign truck drivers and are regarded as being behind arson attacks on truckers for at least the past three years. Police have promised to clamp down but have not substantially dealt with the killings of more than 200 truckers since 2018.

In November 2020, two truckers died and 30 trucks were set alight in anti-foreign driver campaigns allegedly by the All Truck Drivers Forum.

From the N3 campaign, the plan was to attack symbols of White Monopoly Capital, which explains the looting of warehouses and more than 200 malls. Specific chains were targeted.

Social media messages (such as these above) reveal what was discussed at the ANC National Executive Committee meeting at the weekend and which sources in intelligence have confirmed are part of the data pile being analysed to find the ringleaders.

We issue a stern warning to those circulating inflammatory messages on various social media platforms which are aimed at inciting violence and disregard of the law, said the Cabinet security cluster in a statement on Tuesday. The Cabinet has asked the platform companies to track these messages and to take them down. The police cyber-crimes unit is also investigating the use of social media in incitement and as a key facet of the insurrection.

These social posters aboveharvested from Twitter and other platforms show the political genesis of the looting and protest campaign and its insurrectionary characteristics. They reveal that shutdowns were initially organised in ANC colours and that the release of Zuma is still a key demand. One of the messages tells organisers not to wear ANC colours.

While the looting campaign has appeared to be organic and leaderless, an intelligence document seen by Daily Maverick says the organisers may have worked through disgruntled ward councillors and other local ANC leaders. KwaZulu-Natal is the most divided of the ANC provinces. Neither KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala nor Mayor Kaunda have been able to condemn the mayhem without adding the rider that they do not agree with Zumas jailing and support a presidential pardon for him.

Social media accounts used by the so-called Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction of the ANC are high-fiving the worst violence and keep appending posts demanding Zumas release to these. One of the social cards shows the early advertisement of a Rampahosa must fall march on July 30, which seems to be the ultimate outcome of the protests: to displace the current establishment of the ANC with the RET grouping. Daily Maverick was unable to confirm whether or not this march will go ahead.

This grouping has revealed its desperation with the campaign of violence that knee-capped South Africa. A reformed National Prosecuting Authority has put key players like suspended Secretary-General Ace Magashule on the defensive as he faces Free State-related corruption charges in court in August. The ANC itself has put its own reform into top gear. In the past week, it has suspended RET spokesperson Carl Niehaus, Mpumalanga leader Michael Ngrayi Ngwenya and on Wednesday suspended the Eastern Cape renegade politician, Andile Lungisa.

The RET feeder and funder networks have been disabled by the revelations at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture the institution whose work has turned up the heat so much that it has catalysed what some are calling an attempted coup this week. The insurgency or riots reveal the potency of social media as an organising tool. For a population of 59.67-million people, South Africa has 100.6 million mobile connections people have multiple SIM cards.

There are now 38.19 million internet users in the country, according to the Ornico SA Social Media Landscape Report released in June, and 25 million of those are active social media users.

So, its no surprise that the protests and looting are likely to have been organised on WhatsApp (or Telegram, which is preferred by political cadres) and then amplified on Facebook and Twitter. But social media is also being used to stage a counter-rebellion of the good.

Communities are organising themselves into watch-patrols and clean-up teams to seize the upper hand from the organisers of a campaign that has halted the optimistic momentum of South Africas vaccine drive and which threatens the green shoots of economic recovery from the devastating Covid-19 campaign. DM

See this interactive map below you can click on the red hot spots for specific details of the areas, and can zoom in using your mouse.

These hotspots have been collated from reports of violence between Friday, 9 July, and Wednesday, 14 July 2021, and represent key areas of violence rather than all instances. They are not exhaustive and instances of violence continue to be reported. On Wednesday, 14 July, at 4.30pm, Acting Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said 52 incidents of violence in Gauteng and 156 incidents in KwaZulu-Natal had been reported overnight. (Collated by Greg Nicolson and Karabo Mafolo in collaboration with data from the Institute for Security Studies)

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Under investigation: Twelve masterminds planned and executed insurrection on social media, then lost control after looting spree - Daily Maverick

Levels of social distancing needed to see a drop off in case numbers over time. Credit: Professor Mikhail Prokopenko.

As of July 2021, there is a continuing outbreak of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in Sydney. The outbreak is of major concern as the Delta variant is estimated to have twice the reproductive number of previous variants that circulated in Australia in 2020, which is also worsened by low levels of acquired immunity in the population, said Professor Prokopenko, from the Faculty of Engineering.

Using a re-calibrated agent-basedmodel, we explored a feasible range of non-pharmaceutical interventions, in terms of both mitigation (case isolation, home quarantine) and suppression (school closures, social distancing).

Our modelling indicates that the level of social distancing currently attained in Sydney is inadequate for the outbreak control.

Our analysis suggests if, however, 80 percent of the population comply with social distancing, then at least one month will be needed for the new daily cases to reduce from their peak to below ten. A small reduction in social distancing compliance to 70 percent lengthens this period to over two months.

Continue reading here:
Far more social distancing needed to control Sydney outbreak - News - The University of Sydney

The Nazis practiced the politics of gleichschaltung, or the complete ideological packaging of political, social and lived experience.

So while, on the one hand, mores of social behaviour, including sterilisation, were forcibly prescribed by the end of Third Reich in 1945 an estimated 360,000 had been sterilised, among whom were those deemed genetically inferior or regarded as political enemies of the state on the other, there was a concerted purging of unwanted ideas, as reflected in censorship protocols and even the mass book burnings that took place shortly after the Nazis came to power in May 1933, and which was reported by the newspapers of the day as action against the un-German spirit.

The politics of gleischschailtung continues to surface in countries ruled by leaders with fascist characteristics. Indias emergency of 1975 is a case in point. Along with the censors in the newsroom that this period saw, were the white caravans on the street Salman Rushdies description of the nasbandi (sterilisation) camps that emerged at that point in his 1994 short story, The Free Radio.

The new book by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil, Indias First Dictatorship The Emergency, 1975-77, notes how by 1976, population control targets were set for states under the direct supervision of Sanjay Gandhi. It led to a competitive cycle of sterilisations between them, each eager to be seen as more compliant than the other. Piquant situations ensued, such as the leadership in Bihar worrying itself sick over how they were still behind their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh despite having achieved 60% more than the number assigned to it. The argument currently being raised by Chief Minister Aditya Nath on the benefits of population control that it will ostensibly usher in a veritable Ram rajya based on sustainable development was the very one used by the Union health minister of the first emergency era, Karan Singh, and his cohorts.

Under conditions of strict censorship, it was impossible to report on what was really happening and it needed the 1977 general election, which saw the Congress Party wiped out across north India, for peoples distress to get registered. Journalists John Dayal and Ajoy Bose together wrote a neat primer of that period, For Reasons of State, recalling the mass human suffering unleashed by Indira Gandhi government.

Representative image. Photo: Reuters

The Jaffrelot-Anil book quotes their observations: Sick women carpeting the floor of the ward, stitches broken, puss oozing out, the smell of antiseptic lotion, blood, and sweat.

After the emergency was lifted, there was a fair degree of newspaper exposes on it as well as some powerful fiction which should have damned the words population control forever. Rohington Mistrys A Fine Balance with its singeing word portraits, was just one example:

A nurse hurried to the policemen with new instructions. Please slow down the supply of lady patients, she said. There is a technical problem in the tubectomy tent. A middle-aged man took the opportunity to appeal to the nurse. I beg you, he wept. Do it to me, I dont mind I have fathered three children. But my son here is only sixteen! Never married! Spare him!

How effective are evocative words in keeping memory alive? This is a question that we as journalists should be asking. How is it that those horrific images from family planning camps of the earlier era were washed away into a sea of amnesia? How is it that four decades later authoritarian state governments can propose the same solutions by citing the same Malthusian justifications?

How is it that data and arguments about India having reached replacement levels and that its population growth is on a declining trajectory even in states like Uttar Pradesh, do not seem to reach policy makers in Lucknow, Guwahati and Bengaluru?

By the way, The Wire piece, India Needs Employment Generation, Not Population Control (July 14), has one of the most comprehensible explanations of the demographic dividend that I have come across in a while.

It is here we arrive at the nub of the issue which the media seem to be pussyfooting around: the targets of family planning during the first emergency were largely extremely poor people, many of whom were Muslims; the targets in the Modi era are Muslims. Period. The UP chief minister is at great pains to deny such a framing, but he did let slip that he wishes to correct the balance between communities. His Assam counterpart is openly anxious to achieve this.

In a recent interview Himanta Biswa Sarma claimed that Muslims in his state are growing at the rate of 29% and Hindus by 10%: So, we need to bring certain measures whereby the growth of the population can be slowed down.

In any case whatever the chief ministers leave unsaid, there are always trolls to fill in the gaps. An Alt Newss fact check on an image of a Burmese Muslim man with his family in a refugee camp in Bangladesh being passed off as that of an Indian Muslimtells this story eloquently.

Rohingya refugee workers carrying bags of salt this month in a processing yard in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo: Reuters

In her comprehensive documentation for The India Forum, historian Aprajita Sarcar perceptively points out that population control has become a rhetoric to restructure the Savarna Hindu family towards more eugenic ends and to stoke fears of Hindus being overtaken by other religious communities in garnering national resources. Even as the myth of large Muslim families remains as false as ever, political leaders affiliated to the RSS raise the slogan of Hindu khatre mein hain (Hindus are in danger of being wiped out).

The population control discourse is also low hanging electoral fruit. The Wire piece, Six Months Before Assembly Elections, Yogi Worries About Excessive Procreation (July 15) rightly observes that it is a trope close to the heart of Indias chattering classes; and one that may be trusted to deflect (from) a whole bunch of failures that beset the record of the BJP, both at the Centre and in the states that it rules.

Expand Parliament House, shrink the space for media coverage

If the legislature is one of the three pillars of democracy, the media has been designated as the fourth pillar. But while the Modi government is envisaging a large Parliament building to replace the present one, it appears that the space hitherto occupied by the Fourth Pillar is set to shrink rapidly.

As a recent letter of protest from media bodies and journalists addressed to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla pointed out, There appears to be a pattern of isolating Parliament and parliamentarians from media scrutiny, with accredited media personnel now being denied normal entry into Parliament in order to cover proceedings.

Also read: Monsoon Session: Opposition, Union Govt Likely to Face Off on Pandemic, Economic Issues

One freelance journalist who has been a regular visitor to the Press Gallery and the Central Hall thus far, and who suddenly finds such access blocked, observed to me, They are making the pandemic an excuse to keep Parliament from being the open space it once was.

A hint of the governments shrewd thinking on this emerged during Birlas recent briefing when he said that accredited media houses would be given access when actually access had always been given to all accredited journalists.

The press corps is angry and wants access along earlier lines restored before the Monsoon Session begins. In their letter, journalists underlined the fact that Media coverage, it has to be appreciated, involves daily news reporting as well as contact with leading political figures for insights and analysis. They expressed the hope that the Speaker will now take pro-active steps to restore full access for journalists, including restoring media passes for all categories and starting the process of renewal of applications for covering Parliament with immediate effect (Media Orgs Protest Denial of Normal Entry To Accredited Journalists for Parliament Coverage, July 14).

UP model of thrashing journalists

The extent of brute force that marked elections to the 476 posts of block panchayat chiefs in Uttar Pradesh recently would not have become widely known if it were not for brave mediapersons reporting it live. Chief Minister Adityanath quickly claimed a great victory for his party in those polls, but had no word to say about this display of brute power.

One of the images that emerged from that cauldron of violence was that of a television journalist Krishna Tiwari being thrashed by a helmet-wearing Chief Development Officer of Unnao, Divyanshu Patel (Editors Guild Condemns Attack on Unnao Journalist, Flags Threat to Media Rights in UP, July 13).

Clearly that Patel had taken recourse to wearing a helmet indicated his attempt to hide his identity while perpetrating all manner of abuse during the polls, including as it turns out thrashing journalists who had the effrontery to capture his deeds. Nobody in UPs power echelons is interested in inquiring too closely into the mystery of his helmet or behaviour, but they are more than delighted to smile and clap for the cameras when Patel turned up to apologise to Tiwari with a box of sweets in a bid to bury the fracas. No FIR was filed on the incident, but nothing surprising about that.

The Wire did well to interview senior journalist Ram Dutt Tripathi and former IPS officer, N.C. Asthana (Watch | Power Has Gone To Their Heads: When an IAS Officer Attacks a Journalist, July 14) on this sorry episode that presages dangerous times for honest journalists in Uttar Pradesh as the assembly elections draw closer.

Reporters as frontline workers

We know that journalists, having to report on the many dimensions of the pandemic, have paid a huge price in terms of their health, well-being, and sometimes even lives. The Delhi-based Institute of Perception Studies has put out an interesting map detailing this tragic story that remains largely unreported. Over 650 journalists are believed to have lost their lives to COVID-19 between 2020-2021 the highest such toll in any country in the world:

Readers write in

Anyone protecting media freedom?

Rakesh Raman, editor, RMN News Service and founder, RMN Foundation, New Delhi, has an important observation to make:

I am a journalist and founder of the humanitarian organisation RMN Foundation and have been observing the growing attacks on press freedom in India. I am also a victim of these attacks and the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India have been trying to protect me from the persecution and threats that I have been facing for my editorial work. During my struggle to protect my editorial rights, I have experienced that bodies like the Editors Guild of India (EGI) exist only as toothless outfits, repeatedly failing to protect the journalists from state repression. Their public statements are simply ignored by the authoritarian rulers who are supposed to follow them.

In fact, today there is no organisation in the world that is working effectively to protect journalists from state excesses and police brutality. Although UNESCO and other UN agencies also keep releasing loose statements and random reports about media freedom, they too have failed miserably to protect journalists in different countries. Similarly, the organisations such as RSF, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, associations of journalists, etc. that claim to be working for press freedom and protection of journalists operate only as secondary news outlets. They lift news from here and there about attacks on journalists and simply publish it under their own banners on their websites along with some customary statements of condemnation. They cannot influence and change the brutal decisions of the authorities that are unleashing terror on journalists.

Just as a point of interest, Editors Guild of India was one of the parties which had filed the plaint before the Supreme Court recently on the enormous misuse of the colonial era penal law on sedition.

Clarification

Aman Kumar writes back:

Thank you for acknowledging my comment in your last column.

I think my terse last email was misunderstood. The line, One thing is certain: public places have become more hostile towards Muslims in the last few years; not only to those who are visibly Muslim, but even to Muslims who are working hard to somehow earn a livelihood is from the article, The Hindutva Ecosystem Has a New Anti-Muslim Narrative. This Time Street Vendors Are the Target (June 28). I thought the line just quoted was irresponsibly phrased because it conveys a false opposition between those who are visibly Muslim and Muslims who are working hard.

Fake news

Mail from New Delhi-based lawyer Shakeel Abbas:

Popular Front of India (PFI) has filed a defamation suit against news channel Zee Media Corporation Limited, its CEO, and two anchors, and sought Rs one lakh as damages for maligning their reputation. In its show, Khabron ke Khiladi, it was claimed that PFI funded Rohingyas to create fake identity cards before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The suit filed by PFIs secretary of public relations, Salim Sheikh, stated: The accusation is serious in nature and further inciting the public at large by falsely portraying the plaintiff having link with Rohingya People in funding them for creating false IDs. Civil Judge Aviral Shukla issued notice to all the defendants on July 6 and posted the matter to August 12 for further hearing.

According to the complainant, two news anchors said that PFI is shifting Rohingyas to UP before the elections so that their names can be added to the voter list with the help of fake ration and pan cards, on the basis of the statement of two arrested Rohingyas during the show on June 13.

In a press conference on June 18, Prashant Kumar ADJ (law and order), Uttar Pradesh, has said that no evidence is found so far to link PFI with Rohingyas in creating false IDs.

Besides praying for Rs 1 lakh as damages from Zee Media, its CEO, and two anchors, the suit also sought an injunction restraining them from posting any such news on their news channel and sought direction from the court to direct the National Broadcasters Standards Association (NBSA) to take action against Zee Media, its CEO, and two anchors for violating its code. It also requested for a direction to Youtube and Facebook to remove the defamatory, derogatory, obnoxious post from their social media platform.

Missing words

The Wire reader Raj Kumar has this observation to make about Prime Minister Narendra Modis recent speech from Varanasi:

Modi ji utters all the achievements in this speech, but economic matters were overlooked. It had nothing on unemployment, inflation rate, and other issues that impact the common person.

Endnote

It touched the heart, Satish Acharyas cartoon showing India weeping for Danish Siddique, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, with the words: Ive lost my eyes, Son. You showed the truth.

Siddiques career was like an Usain Bolt streak across our collective consciousness as he provided us with some of the most defining images of the times we have had to live through.

Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in

Link:
Backstory: 'Population Control' and 'Information Control' Are Part of the Same Package - The Wire

CEO of Comcast Brian Roberts arrives for the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 06, 2021 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

The prisoner's dilemma is a standard game theory situation often taught in business school. Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts and ViacomCBS chairman Shari Redstone are living it in real-time as they consider working together.

Comcast's NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS are struggling to keep up with the biggest players in streaming video.

While Netflix, Amazon and Disney all have more than 100 million subscribers to their flagship video services, NBCUniversal's Peacock has 42 million U.S. signups most of which don't pay for the service and ViacomCBS's Paramount+ has fewer than 36 million subscribers. ViacomCBS doesn't reveal the specific amount of paying Paramount+ customers, but it said earlier this year it had 36 million total streaming subscribers, including Showtime and other niche products.

AT&T's WarnerMedia and Discovery also have subscale streaming products. They announced plans to merge earlier this year. That left NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS as the largest leftover streaming players.

Roberts and Redstone have held conversations to explore ways the companies can work together, according to people familiar with the matter. Investment bankers are pumping both companies with ideas in hopes of getting what might be the last large traditional media merger fee for quite some time, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Spokespeople for Comcast, Redstone's private National Amusements and ViacomCBS declined to comment.

One of the options under consideration is to bundle Peacock and Paramount+ together in international markets, as The Information reported earlier this year. Both companies are planning global expansions, and partnering is relatively frictionless.

Another option is a merger or acquisition, but there are numerous complications on that path. Neither ViacomCBS nor NBCUniversal are actively seeking a merger at this time, according to people familiar with the matter.

While there may be no rush to merge, both companies will ultimately need more scale to compete against larger players. They could partner or merge, or they could attempt to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery when/if that deal closes in the middle of 2022. A merger with Warner Bros. Discovery may be a cleaner fit for either ViacomCBS or NBCUniversal.

But only one of the two could join Warner Bros. Discovery. That would leave the other company out in the cold possibly for years.

That's the essence of the prisoner's dilemma.

Working together may ensure both companies are better off than they started, but holding out against each other may be the best-case scenario for one company and the worst-case scenario for the other. (This isn't a perfect prisoner's dilemma example because the companies can't really betray each other, ending up in a situation where both are worse off).

Regulators probably wouldn't allow a combined NBCUniversal-ViacomCBS to own both broadcast stations NBC and CBS. It's likely any merger will have to include a divestiture of one of the broadcast networks along with all local NBC or CBS television affiliates that overlap in the same markets.

That immediately diminishes the value of both companies. If CBS is divested, NBCUniversal would get Paramount+ without CBS programming, including live National Football League games and NCAA's March Madness. If the companies decide to divest NBC, ViacomCBS wouldn't get "Sunday Night Football" and other popular NBC broadcast shows.

While it's possible the companies could attempt to argue broadcast networks are like cable networks and don't need separate ownership, regulators may not view that as a reasonable argument. About 40% of Americans own a digital antenna to get free over-the-air programming along with streaming video, according to Horowitz Research. Broadcast networks have historically battled each other for valuable programming. Putting two under one roof would stifle those competitive bidding situations.

The second obstacle is structure. Comcast could simply acquire ViacomCBS, buying out Redstone's voting shares in a deal. But ViacomCBS has an enterprise value of about $40 billion and would ask for a decent-size premium to sell, two of the people said. Even with major divestitures, a deal would be pricey.

Shari Redstone, president of National Amusements and Vice Chairman, CBS and Viacom, speaks at the WSJTECH live conference in Laguna Beach, California, October 21, 2019.

Mike Blake | Reuters

Comcast shareholders, who MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said are more likely to cheer a separation between NBCUniversal and Comcast, may not like a decision to buy ViacomCBS and divest one of the networks.

Roberts could spin out NBCUniversal and merge with it ViacomCBS similar to the WarnerMedia-Discovery deal. That might require him to give up control of NBCUniversal. If Redstone ends up owning more economic control of a merged NBCUniversal-ViacomCBS, she may want to run the company or choose who's in charge, for at least a number of years. Roberts and Redstone would have to reach an agreement on economic and voting control if this option is pursued.

A bundled offering through a commercial partnership skirts the merger and acquisition issues and is ultimately the most likely "step one" scenario but it gives less flexibility to the companies on offerings than a merger would. It also might not move the needle enough for either firm.

Either NBCUniversal or ViacomCBS could theoretically fit with Warner Bros. Discovery because David Zaslav's future company won't own a broadcast network. That would eliminate the need for divestiture. Combining with HBO Max and Discovery+ would also arguably be a more robust streaming offering, in terms of content, than simply pushing together the assets of NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS.

But the size of Warner Bros. Discovery combined with either ViacomCBS or NBCUniversal could pose regulatory issues, depending on how Biden administration regulators view the entertainment market. Even WarnerMedia's deal with Discovery isn't assured approval.

A choice to hold for a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery forces both NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS to wait two or three more years, given the length of time it would take to merge to gain regulatory approval first for WarnerMedia and Discovery and then for the second merger. There would also be integration costs and issues from two large deals happening so quickly.

For the company that didn't merge with Warner Bros. Discovery, the likely path forward would be rolling up some of the smaller streaming players. like Lionsgate and AMC Networks, or pushing for an acquisition of Sony Pictures.

Merging or waiting both present headaches. This is why investment bankers get paid the big bucks.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

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Comcast and ViacomCBS face prisoner's dilemma as they consider ways to work together - CNBC