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One of the largest and most contentious acquisitions in the history of the modern media industry was finalized on Oct. 6 when Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The buyout creates “one of the largest media conglomerates in history,” as CNBC puts it. Among the Warner Bros. assets – if that is the right word – are the HBO Max streaming service, the iconic film studio, and TV networks including CNN.
Thus, the cable news network that has, to put it perhaps crudely but accurately, spewed anti-Trump propaganda since 2016 is now in the house of Paramount CEO David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Both men are known to have a warm relationship with none other than President Donald J. Trump.
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Several reports price the deal at $81 billion, though according to CNBC, this was a $110 billion takeover, factoring in the Warner Bros. debt that will be taken on by Paramount Skydance. This newly created infotainment behemoth will be known as Skydance.
The Winding Road to Skydance
This deal has been anything but smooth in the crafting. In 2025, as struggling Warner Bros. Discovery was contemplating a major restructuring of its business, Paramount completed its long-anticipated merger with Skydance. The younger Ellison, David, founded Skydance and was then installed as CEO of Paramount Skydance after the merger.
Ellison's quest to acquire WBD was a tough one. Warner Bros. turned down his first three offers. Reportedly, Paramount Skydance was in competition with Netflix and Comcast. Perhaps the reason the Paramount bid was successful, ultimately, is that Netflix and Comcast both only wanted to strip away the WBD movie studio and the Max streaming business, while probably spinning off the remaining WBD products.
Paramount, which had sought the whole company from the start, finally defeated a WBD-Netflix deal announced at the end of 2025.Then in July of 2026, 12 state attorneys general sued to block the Paramount-WBD deal.
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They claimed this was an antitrust issue that would negatively affect consumers. Was it just as much or perhaps more about Ellison's association with the 45th and 47th president? The 12 attorneys general were all Democrats. And then there's the Hollywood set. Reportedly, thousands of people working at all levels within the Hollywood entertainment industry signed a letter opposing the deal.
Two of Tinseltown’s most vocal detractors of President Trump, “Hulk” actor Mark Ruffalo and “Hanoi Jane” Fonda publicly spoke out against the deal. Ruffalo went as far as calling on regulators to kill it.
CNN on the Road to Damascus
Was this effort to prevent the acquisition about monopolies, jobs, and consumer choice – or Donald Trump? It is not possible to divine with certainty the underlying motives of the AGs, Hollywood royalty, and others who wanted this deal nixed. One can only speculate.
Paramount Skydance had to make several concessions and agree to certain conditions to get the approval of European regulators, as well as those 12 Democrat attorneys general. They include establishing an oversight committee, of sorts, that would maintain editorial independence for CBS – already owned by Paramount - and CNN.
Many might argue that CNN and editorial independence do not belong in the same sentence – and have not for at least a couple of decades. The network's overwhelming political bias towards the left is not something anybody can reasonably dispute.
For the president and his supporters, no doubt, there’s a sense of delicious irony derived from the knowledge that CNN is now ultimately answerable to someone who is on friendly terms with him. It almost feels like karma, one could say – or perhaps the network’s road to Damascus. But if Paramount were to indeed ensure that CNN returned to what it used to do – too long ago – which is report news without the unsubtly heavy political slant, that might perhaps staunch the flow of public trust bleeding from the news media.
