If it have been, say, only a decade in the past, cachet and energy can 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 unhealthy 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 — may come up in informal conversations amongst old-timers like yours really, 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, as a way to maintain within the good graces of the White Home and get the Skydance-Paramount merger via 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 necessary), he is aware of it’s a awful enterprise.
It’s not well worth the hassle 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 individuals I belief do, and so they inform me he’s substantive, far more than a fortunate sperm child that being Larry’s son confers. His unbiased studio Skydance has produced such current blockbusters as “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
He doesn’t get his information from TikTok — removed from it.
In the interim, he desires to maintain the information division but in addition 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 instructed.
Sports activities as crown jewel
And that’s the place issues may get scary for the information division.
Ellison, I’m instructed, equates CBS with soccer greater than he does with Cronkite. If he’s trying to develop stuff, he and his level man in working the brand new firm, former NBCU chief Jeff Shell, are taking a look at CBS Sports activities because the tip of the spear.
Every little thing else is about to get the mom of all effectivity critiques, my sources say.
Layoffs are doubtless, 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 12 months — for questioning the work of far left creator Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Coates’ rationalization of the Oct. 7 bloodbath, one thing wants to alter.
It’s been a protracted 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 massive media by cord-cutting and the vicissitudes of the enterprise, however with outstanding legacy properties and a serious 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 parts of the mainstream media, and CBS is on the prime of his hate record.
Conservatives have for years complained in regards to the growing 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 assessment, 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 interest” pointers, and throttled the deal.
Trump additionally personally sued the community over a “60 Minutes” interview along 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 gained 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 far more in public service adverts for pro-Trump causes — phrase is the regulatory nod is coming in just a few weeks.
When that occurs, Shari pockets about $2 billion, which appears like lots till you notice she was most likely value greater than $40 billion when she inherited the property.
Paramount and CBS will then be Ellison’s downside.
If I have been within the information division, I might be afraid, very afraid.
