Paramount CEO David Ellison arrives with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., earlier than President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union within the House chamber on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP/AP
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Mark Schiefelbein/AP/AP
Warner Bros. Discovery’s blockbuster announcement Thursday that it would accept Paramount Skydance’s takeover bid should not be considered merely as looking for to unify two main Hollywood gamers, two huge streaming platforms and two main TV news divisions below one roof.
It is actually that. The almost $111 billion Paramount-Warner marriage would unite their studios — and their again catalogue of reveals and motion pictures. It would add such franchises as D.C. Comics, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones to Paramount’s Top Gun, Mission Impossible and Star Trek powerhouse. Paramount+ and HBO Max. CBS and NCS.
But there’s extra to it.
Paramount Skydance Chairman and CEO David Ellison is relying largely on the monetary backing of his father, Larry Ellison — the co-founder of software program big Oracle, the lead investor in TikTok US, and one of many richest individuals on the planet.
The Ellisons have staged what seems to be a lightning-swift ascent by means of social and legacy media relying closely on their connection to the Oval Office.
Should the Ellisons obtain a inexperienced gentle from regulators to proceed with the deal, the minnow could have swallowed the whale. Warner at the moment has greater than 5 occasions the market worth of Paramount.
That’s on high of buying Paramount itself and a significant stake in TikTok US — all in lower than a yr. And that is along with Oracle, which runs a lot of the digital spine of the nation’s commerce and authorities.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, proper, sits subsequent to media mogul Rupert Murdoch as they take heed to President Trump converse within the Oval Office on February 03, 2025.
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Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
“It’s tech giants becoming media giants,” argues Jon Klein, a former high government at NCS and CBS News.
But historical past reveals such mega-mergers typically finish in tears. The film enterprise is pricey. Cable tv is extremely worthwhile however in steep decline as viewers minimize the wire. The mixed firm will likely be saddled with debt. So why would the Ellisons spend their billions this manner?
David Ellison has sought to be a drive in Hollywood for years. He helped to provide motion pictures with Tom Cruise at his household’s firm Skydance Media. But for his father, Larry Ellison, it is about extra than simply making his son’s very costly desires come true.
“Beyond any dollars that they can derive — it’s the data about consumer habits, down to the specific identity,” Klein says.
He says the push into synthetic intelligence by Oracle creates a thirst for extra perception into how individuals view news and leisure and what merchandise they purchase on-line. The streaming channels and social media big each supply better and extra granular data.
“That’s the prism that you’ve got to look at this Paramount/WBD deal through,” says Klein, co-founder of HANG Media, a Gen Z social video engagement platform. “Oracle… wants to be one of the major players in AI. That’s what Oracle wants to get out of media.”
The deal nonetheless hinges on acceptance from antitrust regulators in Washington and Europe, who can search to dam the transaction. California’s lawyer basic made clear Thursday night time he would additionally give the acquisition powerful scrutiny.
“If a merger substantially reduces competition in any market, it’s illegal. Courts sort of take that literally,” says University of Chicago regulation professor Eric Posner, who held a senior antitrust place within the U.S. Justice Department below former President Joe Biden.
“But in practice, the Justice Department has discretion on whether to challenge these mergers,” Posner tells NPR. “And the courts have discretion on whether to block them.”
Friendly ties to Trump
President Trump’s Justice Department is a wild card. Last yr, the division’s then antitrust chief, Gail Slater, took an aggressive stance against Google in courtroom. Last month, the Justice Department sued to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of a wi-fi tech competitor. Slater resigned under duress this month, nonetheless.
The Federal Communications Commission is unlikely to intervene, as no broadcast licenses would change fingers within the Paramount takeover of Warner. But its chair, Brendan Carr, might properly advise the Justice Department and he has lauded David Ellison’s strikes at CBS.
Even earlier than sweetening its supply this week, Paramount proclaimed its “confidence in the speed and certainty of regulatory approval for its transaction.”
Publicly, it argues that such consolidation is required to tackle streaming giants, very a lot together with Netflix but additionally Amazon Prime, Apple, Disney and YouTube.
Behind the scenes — and typically in not-so-hidden methods — the Ellisons have turn into cozy with President Trump. Larry Ellison is a backer and adviser.
On Tuesday night time, David Ellison attended Trump’s State of the Union handle as a visitor of the president’s ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. Graham tweeted out a photo of the 2 males making Trump’s signature “thumbs-up” gesture forward of the speech.
The president cares deeply about TV news. He has publicly mentioned he desires new house owners for NCS — which he has blasted repeatedly as “fake news” — and has confirmed prepared to intervene in company issues in his return to the White House.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos departs the White House on Wednesday. Sarandos was there to debate Netflix’s bid for Warner Bros. simply hours earlier than Warner introduced its desire for Paramount.
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Andrew Leyden/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Netflix chief Ted Sarandos met Thursday with administration officers on the White House — although notably not with Trump, in response to an aide — in a last-gasp effort to salvage his firm’s competing bid. By the top of the night time, Netflix had given up the battle.
The shadow forged over the method by the president has impressed sharp criticism of the trail that Paramount and the Ellisons took to land the Warner deal.
“A handful of Trump-aligned billionaires are trying to seize control of what you watch and charge you whatever price they want,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts mentioned in a press release. “With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump’s Department of Justice, it’ll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law.”
“It is not just the seemingly open corruption of this entire process that leaves me shaken,” writes Jeffrey Blehar within the conservative National Review. “I am shaken by how little people will care.”
Said Seth Stern, head of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, “Ellison will readily throw the First Amendment, NCS’s reporters and HBO’s filmmakers under the bus if they stand in the way of expanding his corporate empire and fattening his pockets.”
NCS’s future hangs within the stability
The Ellisons’ acquisition of Paramount adopted an identical path.
Last summer time, the earlier house owners of Paramount introduced the top of late night time host Stephen Colbert’s CBS present as they sought federal approval to promote the corporate to David Ellison.
While they cited economics, Colbert’s was the top-rated late night time present on community tv — and he has been a lacerating satirist of the president. Colbert referred to as the cancellation a “big fat bribe.”
Ellison subsequently made extra pledges to the FCC’s Carr to win help. Among them: he promised the cessation of variety, fairness and inclusion initiatives all through Paramount and the addition of an ombudsman to area complaints of ideological bias. He named the previous head of a conservative suppose tank to that position.
Carr blessed the sale. He has since praised the shifts made at CBS News.
The query of what occurs to NCS hovers prominently over the Warner sale. The community has undergone rounds of cuts below a collection of homeowners looking for to scale back debt; Paramount would be its fourth company father or mother in below a decade.
Other parts are in play as properly.
CBS’s new editor in chief is Bari Weiss, founding father of the center-right opinion and news website The Free Press. Ellison purchased the positioning and added it to Paramount’s portfolio.
Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor in chief, interviews conservative activist Erika Kirk in a CBS city corridor occasion in December.
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CBS Photo Archive/CBS through Getty Images/CBS
Weiss has contended CBS and a lot of the remainder of the media has been too reflexively hostile to conservatives and the president, and she’s sought to revamp the newsroom.
NCS’s Anderson Cooper, who has additionally served as a correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes for twenty years, lately introduced that he would depart the present, citing the need to spend time along with his young children. Associates, talking on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to reveal inside community issues, say he was involved in regards to the strategy that Weiss has taken at CBS.
She is taken into account prone to have a task over NCS as properly, ought to the deal undergo.
NCS CEO Mark Thompson urged colleagues to give attention to their news protection. “Despite all the speculation you’ve read during this process, I’d suggest that you don’t jump to conclusions about the future until we know more,” he wrote in a memo Thursday.
Perceived worth past the underside line
The deal David Ellison struck for Warner is valued at almost $111 billion. The new firm would carry substantial money owed and have Saudi and Emirate backing. The income are at the moment comparatively modest.
Yet Klein contends bigger motives are in play. Just have a look at Google, he says, which owns what many contemplate the dominant media firm, YouTube.
“They want to know what you watch, and where you come from, and what you buy when you watch, and where you go after you buy, and what you post in the comments and what you like and love and all that,” Klein says.
“And if you can combine that with your streaming content and your studio decisions and your marketing for all the content product you’re creating,” he provides, “you’re in a very very powerful position.”