Ellisons to Take Over CNN/HBO along with CBS; Warner Bros. along with Paramount
from press reports
The Ellison family is poised to control one of the world’s largest media conglomerates following a legal settlement with statecleared a significant hurdle to the sale of Warner Bros. AGs. It Discovery to Paramount Skydance. [The news was greeted with a protest at the gates of Paramount’s Hollywood studios. A judge must still sign off on the settlement.]
An antitrust lawsuit brought by 12 state attorneys general could have blocked the $111 billion deal for Warner — or required significant divestment of key assets. But Paramount — which is led by David Ellison, the son of right-wing centibillionaire Larry Ellison — settled the complaint without making any meaningful concessions.
The younger Ellison will now command two major news networks in CNN and CBS. He runs two of the largest film studios in Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. The merger includes two of the most popular streaming platforms in HBO Max and Paramount+. It also combines an assortment of vestigial cable television properties. His media mega-corporation will also own the full or partial rights to many of Hollywood’s most valuable properties. These include Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Mission: Impossible, Dune, Porky Pig, and Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
California AG Rob Bonta, who led the states’ antitrust case, was pressured to settle by Governor Gavin Newsom. According to the New York Times, Newsom feared that Ellison would follow through with his threat to pull Paramount out of California.
As part of the settlement, Paramount agreed to release 30 theatrical movies a year. But Paramount and Warner Bros. are already scheduled to release more films than that in 2027. The deal also requires Paramount to spend an additional $1.5 billion on movies within five years. It is unclear how or if this will be measured, since the deal does not specify a baseline spending figure.
Paramount also agreed to create a less-than-independent board to oversee editorial integrity at CNN and CBS. It will settle disagreements between journalists and management. The oversight panel will be made up of five journalists. But its members will be chosen by and answer to the board of directors, which is controlled by the Ellisons.
Shortly after taking control of CBS News last year, Ellison chose conservative commentator Bari Weiss to lead the network’s right-leaning overhaul. Weiss has since been accused of pressuring journalists to make their reporting more friendly to the Trump administration. In June, former 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley said that Weiss put a “thumb on the scale for the president’s version of events” during the editorial process.
Both Ellison men are closely allied with Donald Trump. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, donated around $45 million to support the president’s 2024 election bid. In April, David Ellison also hosted a dinner in Washington “honoring the Trump White House.”
Larry Ellison at the White House with DJ Chump.
Severe layoffs at both networks are now in the offing, given the redundancies and potential cost-saving staff cuts to deal with enormous debt load. (Paramount is on track to raise more than $44 billion of debt to buy Warner.)
To close the deal, the Ellisons could seek help from another of Trump’s favorite oligarchs. Semafor reported on Wednesday that Paramount’s leadership has explored asking Elon Musk for an equity investment. Larry Ellison previously put up $1 billion for Musk’s 2022 leveraged buyout of Twitter.
Change Links note: The deal also required Trump’s subservient FCC to sign off on allowing the “sovereign wealth” funds of a number of Arab nations aligned with the US and Israel to provide major funding for the takeover, despite restrictions on foreign ownership of US broadcasters. The fig leaf is that their share of the equity is in non-voting stock. The Ellisons are strong backers of Israel. They put Bari Weiss, a notorious pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian propagandist in charge of CBS news when they took over Paramount. Many at CNN have voiced fears for its future under their control.
