If it had been, say, only a decade in the past, cachet and energy could be conferred on Skydance founder and CEO David Ellison, the soon-to-be chief of Paramount and its once-holy grail of TV information, CBS.
Too dangerous it’s not 10 years in the past.
The names Edward R. Murrow, Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite — the individuals who constructed CBS Information into the paragon of TV journalism — would possibly come up in informal conversations amongst old-timers like yours actually, reminiscing about how community information as soon as managed the political and social agenda.
Or possibly they’d floor in a journalism class after CBS’s present administration final week settled a bizarre lawsuit, filed by President Trump, in an effort to preserve within the good graces of the White Home and get the Skydance-Paramount merger by means of his FCC regulators.
However I can assure that the 42-year-old Ellison — the son of mega-billionaire Larry Ellison of Oracle fame, who’s a MAGA supporter of the president — isn’t occupied with the CBS Information legacy as he prepares to finish his $8 billion combo.
In actual fact, from what I hear, persevering with within the grand custom of Murrow, Wallace and Cronkite shouldn’t be on the prime of Ellison’s thoughts as a result of, for one, it ain’t so grand any longer, and two (possibly most vital), he is aware of it’s a awful enterprise.
It’s not well worth the bother that it generates. We don’t even know if it’s worthwhile since Paramount doesn’t disclose the information division’s P&L statements. Plus, its product has moved up to now to the left that it angers greater than half the nation.
Full disclosure: I don’t know David Ellison personally however folks I belief do, and so they inform me he’s substantive, way more than a fortunate sperm child that being Larry’s son confers. His unbiased studio Skydance has produced such latest blockbusters as “Prime Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Not possible — The Closing Reckoning.”
He doesn’t get his information from TikTok — removed from it.
In the interim, he needs to maintain the information division but additionally transfer away from its progressive leanings. (An individual near him says search for investments in “truth-based” information.) He does respect the CBS Information legacy that he’s about to purchase — so long as the numbers are working and he believes they aren’t, I’m informed.
Sports activities as crown jewel
And that’s the place issues may get scary for the information division.
Ellison, I’m informed, equates CBS with soccer greater than he does with Cronkite. If he’s trying to develop stuff, he and his level man in operating the brand new firm, former NBCU chief Jeff Shell, are CBS Sports activities because the tip of the spear.
The whole lot else is about to get the mom of all effectivity evaluations, my sources say.
Layoffs are seemingly, as are smaller salaries and squeezed budgets.
In Ellison’s worldview, CBS Information’ legacy has cachet however when an anchor like Tony Dokoupil will get upbraided by administration — as he did final yr — for questioning the work of far left writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Coates’ rationalization of the Oct. 7 bloodbath, one thing wants to alter.
It’s been an extended street from the time Ellison first bid on Paramount, the fading media empire created by dealmaker Sumner Redstone and left to his daughter, Shari. About two years in the past David noticed a distressed property he may purchase on a budget, decimated greater than most of huge media by cord-cutting and the vicissitudes of the enterprise, however with distinguished legacy properties and a significant studio.
Initially, Shari was a reluctant vendor. She quickly got here to grasp that Paramount’s fortunes weren’t getting higher and her personal fortune was evaporating quick. Ellison has the cash (his dad’s and a accomplice in personal fairness agency RedBird Capital) to make the brand new firm work, and assist her protect a semblance of her dad’s fortune.
With Shari out of the way in which, Ellison then needed to take care of the incoming Trump administration. The president and his dad are famously buddies, Larry being a long-time political supporter. However friendship solely goes up to now in assuaging Trump’s hatred for a lot of components of the mainstream media, and CBS is on the prime of his hate record.
Conservatives have for years complained concerning the rising bias of CBS that went past the adversarial nature of Murrow, and so forth.
Trump was the primary to do one thing about it.
With the deal going through a regulatory evaluate, his Federal Communications Fee opened an investigation into bias at CBS because it operates over public airwaves (versus cable), inspecting whether or not its information meets “public curiosity” pointers, and throttled the deal.
Trump additionally personally sued the community over a “60 Minutes” interview together with his 2024 Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, saying the brand new journal deceptively edited her notorious word-salad solutions. OK, possibly it did. However Trump received the election so the place are the “damages”?
Regulatory OK coming
But, as everybody who has been following my reporting is aware of, the lawsuit was inextricably tied to getting the deal performed and Shari paid.
Now that it has been settled — for $16 million plus the expectation of way more in public service advertisements for pro-Trump causes — phrase is the regulatory nod is coming in a couple of weeks.
When that occurs, Shari pockets about $2 billion, which appears like lots till you notice she was most likely price greater than $40 billion when she inherited the property.
Paramount and CBS will then be Ellison’s downside.
If I had been within the information division, I’d be afraid, very afraid.
