With the Thursday morning close of Paramount Global and Skydance Media’s troubled $8.4 billion merger comes a new set of challenges: actually running the thing.
The company’s new CEO, David Ellison, acknowledged the merger’s bumpy road in an open letter addressed to the company’s employees, shareholders and customers on Thursday.
While most of the letter uses corporate-speak to look optimistically ahead, Ellison briefly broke character as he reflected on the company’s news division.
“We recognize it’s been a challenging period and we’re deeply grateful for your resilience, professionalism, and unwavering commitment to the news business,” wrote Ellison.
“We take immense pride in CBS News’ legacy of impactful journalism and look forward to continuing to foster a newsroom culture where journalists are empowered, trusted, and equipped to do their best work.”
Federal Communications Commission chair and Project 2025 author Brendan Carr signed off on the merger late last month, ominously predicting “significant changes” at the network to come.
“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change,” Carr said, signaling he expects a Trump-friendly shift in programming.
“That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network. In particular, Skydance has made written commitments to ensure that the new company’s programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.”
The first of those changes would seem to be the cancellation of “The Late Show,” where host Stephen Colbert has long delighted in skewering Trump. (CBS maintains the move was “purely a financial decision.”)
The approval itself was preceded by Paramount settling a lawsuit for $16 million that Trump filed during the 2024 presidential election over what he claimed was a deceptively edited “60 Minutes” interview.
Even though legal experts called the case meritless, the network is also said to have offered Trump an additional $16 million in free advertising for conservative PSAs as part of the settlement to sweeten the pot.
“We did a deal for about $16 million plus $16 million, or maybe more than that in advertising,” Trump bragged at the time, according to a White House press pool report from The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski. “So it’s a combination of 16 plus 16 plus. So it’s like $32 [million] to maybe $35 million.”
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have called for an investigation into the latter part of that deal, saying it “raises fresh questions about corruption.”