{"id":398364,"date":"2025-11-23T04:16:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T04:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/398364\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T04:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T04:16:13","slug":"paramount-skydance-is-currently-winning-the-war-to-acquire-warner-bros-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/398364\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Skydance is currently winning the war to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paramount Skydance<\/a> has the inside track to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a>, according to well-placed media executives \u2014 and it\u2019s all about a cable network that has a troubled relationship with Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As first reported by The Post, the battle for control of WBD officially kicked off on Thursday at noon, as Paramount Skydance, Comcast<\/a> and Netflix<\/a> submitted bids for WBD, which owns the No. 1 Hollywood studio and the No. 3 streaming service in addition to HBO<\/a> and CNN.<\/p>\n

In a twist that is in some respects surprising, it is CNN<\/a> that is seen as key to giving Paramount Skydance a leg up on other bidders, I am told. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s because PSKY\u2019s owners \u2014 tech titan Larry Ellison<\/a> and his Hollywood mogul son, David Ellison<\/a> \u2014 appear to be the only bidders that so far are interested in buying the WBD cable-news subsidiary as part of the deal.<\/p>\n

They see CNN, warts and all, as a very profitable business worth saving. <\/p>\n

Trump, meanwhile, desperately wants CNN \u2014 whose correspondents regularly spar with him at the White House<\/a> and on Air Force One \u2014 \u201cneutralized\u201d out of its anti-MAGA coverage, one top broadcast executive recently told.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Gasparino<\/p>\n

And in his thinking, Larry Ellison, the billionaire Trump donor who is co-founder of software giant Oracle<\/a>, is the perfect vehicle to set CNN straight. <\/p>\n

Specifically, Trump wants the Ellisons to do to CNN what they are doing with their CBS subsidiary after hiring Bari Weiss<\/a>, the right-of-center columnist who is under orders to squeeze left-wing bias out of its news programming.<\/p>\n

If Paramount Skydance wins the bidding battle, Weiss\u2019s portfolio is expected to expand to also include oversight of CNN\u2019s editorial, according to sources.<\/p>\n

\u2018White-glove treatment\u2019<\/p>\n

Given all of the above, the Ellisons\u2019 bid is seen gliding through the Trump regulatory gauntlet. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Brian Roberts\u2019 Comcast and streaming giant Netflix are poised to get the mother-of-all regulatory reviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ellisons will get the white-glove treatment and an easy 6 months before approval,\u201d one telecom lawyer who served in government told me. <\/p>\n

\u201cBrian Roberts gets a proctology exam that could last two years. Same with Netflix. The Warner board might just say it\u2019s not worth the wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ellisons, it should be underscored, aren\u2019t looking to take control of CNN just to make nice with The Donald. <\/p>\n

Sources at the company say they actually like CNN\u2019s business despite the broad decline in linear TV viewership and its lowish ratings particularly compared to my employer, Fox News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People at Paramount Skydance point to CNN\u2019s global news reach with reporters in just about every country. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s in every airport, it seems, and every hotel. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

They believe the network \u2014 which still churns out an estimated $500 million in yearly profits \u2014 can be made more profitable by combining it with CBS\u2019s news infrastructure and continuing its migration to digital platforms away from traditional cable.<\/p>\n

Larry Ellison can easily afford to make that happen.<\/p>\n

Since The Post first broke the news of a looming WBD auction back in September, its CEO, David Zaslav<\/a>, a shrewd media dealmaker, has said he wants a deal that \u201cstarts with a 3\u201d \u2014 namely a deal valued at $30 a share, or $70 billion.<\/p>\n

He only gets that with a real-live bidding war, and media insiders are increasingly dubious. <\/p>\n

First, neither Comcast nor Netflix will likely shell out that much because they are only bidding for chunks of WBD as opposed to the whole company. <\/p>\n

In selling pieces of the company, WBD could be hit with a tax bill known as tax leakage that is common in such M&A transactions, depressing its valuation.<\/p>\n

Regulatory pressure<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the regulatory mountain which both Comcast and Netflix have to climb \u2014 and which Paramount doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Brian Roberts<\/a> is set to spin off his Trump-hating cable channel, MSNBC, nullifying some of the antitrust issues on media consolidation. <\/p>\n

But Trump isn\u2019t about to forgive him for years of abuse at the hands of Rachel Maddow<\/a> & Co.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, the thinking among lawyers who work on such deals is that if Comcast wins the bidding war, his antitrust chief Gail Slater<\/a> will sue to stop the deal, focusing a lengthy probe on the fact that Comcast will be merging its Universal Studios<\/a> with Warner Bros<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Roberts can go to court to plead his case \u2014 and it\u2019s worth noting that the government has a horrible record on such lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Still, we\u2019re talking nearly two years of legal wrangling that the WBD board might think isn\u2019t worth the trouble.<\/p>\n

Netflix faces similar hurdles because it would combine its No. 1 streaming service with WBD\u2019s No. 3. <\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not forget its political baggage. <\/p>\n

While Roberts has the MSNBC albatross, Netflix is run by Reed Hastings<\/a> and Ted Sarandos<\/a>, who have spent years supporting progressive causes from the Left Coast.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the Ellisons believe they can get away with paying no more than $27 a share for WBD \u2014 significantly below Zas\u2019 $30 a share bogey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paramount Skydance has the inside track to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, according to well-placed media executives \u2014 and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":398365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[26469,127560,67688,64,15328,26871,10755,18422,32129,47781,69,171,654,5560,92329,27771,4659,20858,15329,138364,86623,161221,173,67,132,17814,68,27281,1021,5223],"class_list":{"0":"post-398364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-air-force-one","9":"tag-bari-weiss","10":"tag-brian-roberts","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-cbs","13":"tag-cbs-news","14":"tag-cnn","15":"tag-comcast","16":"tag-david-ellison","17":"tag-david-zaslav","18":"tag-donald-trump","19":"tag-entertainment","20":"tag-fox-news","21":"tag-hbo","22":"tag-larry-ellison","23":"tag-msnbc","24":"tag-netflix","25":"tag-oracle","26":"tag-paramount","27":"tag-rachel-maddow","28":"tag-reed-hastings","29":"tag-ted-sarandos","30":"tag-tv","31":"tag-united-states","32":"tag-unitedstates","33":"tag-universal-studios","34":"tag-us","35":"tag-warner-bros-discovery","36":"tag-warner-bros","37":"tag-white-house"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115597081675104242","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}