Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia clears antitrust scrutiny.

Discovery and AT&T cleared a significant regulatory hurdle on Wednesday that put the two companies on a glide path to close a deal to combine Discovery and WarnerMedia in the next two or three months.

The merger “satisfied the closing condition” as part of an antitrust review by the Department of Justice, Discovery said in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

When closed, the deal will create one of the biggest media companies in the country, combining the assets of HBO, Warner Bros. television and film studios and the sports-heavy TNT and TBS networks with Discovery’s enormous library of nonfiction programming, which includes Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, HGTV, the Food Network and Animal Planet.

The announcement on Wednesday also means that Discovery and WarnerMedia executives should be able to more deeply engage with one another and conduct more intimate business reviews, which they could not do before clearing the regulatory review.

With the antitrust clearance, AT&T will not face the same level of government scrutiny it had received when it purchased Time Warner in October 2016. That deal was fiercely contested by the Justice Department and in limbo for 20 months before finally closing in June 2018.

By comparison, Discovery and AT&T announced their plans to merge assets nine months ago.

In the coming weeks, Discovery will have a shareholder vote, which is widely expected to pass, and will have to begin raising more than $30 billion in debt for the deal.

The Discovery chief executive, David Zaslav, will take over the combined company when the merger is complete, potentially as soon as April.

In the meantime, both companies are still moving independently of one another. Discovery, the owner of Eurosport, is in advanced negotiations to expand its sports business in Britain. And last week, CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, was forced to resign.