Who is buying CNN and CBS and how does that change the media landscape? Will it affect the mid terms ?
The answer to both questions is the same person: David Ellison, whose company Paramount Skydance is in the final stages of absorbing both CBS and CNN into a single media empire, and yes, the timing could not be more consequential for the midterms.
Here's the answer from Mary's digital twin. The gray check mark turns green once Mary has confirmed it.
David Ellison, the 43-year-old CEO of Paramount Skydance and son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is the man behind what is shaping up to be the biggest media consolidation in a generation. Here is how it happened and what it means.
How both networks ended up in the same hands
Paramount Skydance already owned CBS when it acquired Skydance Media in 2025, making CBS its flagship broadcast network. CBS is now the flagship television division of Paramount Skydance Corporation, formed in 2025 after Skydance Media acquired CBS's former parent, Paramount Global.
CNN came into the picture through a separate, fiercely contested takeover. CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, or WBD, the cable and streaming giant. After a series of hostile bids by Paramount that disrupted what seemed like a done deal between Netflix and WBD, Netflix abruptly pulled out of the struggle for ownership, stating it would not match Paramount's higher offer. The merger blends together two historic film studios, two popular streaming platforms in Paramount+ and HBO Max, and two news organizations, CBS News and CNN, under Ellison's leadership.
As of yesterday, the last legal obstacle cleared. Paramount Skydance's $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery will move forward after the company settled with a group of state attorneys general that sought to block the deal on antitrust grounds. The states opposing the deal, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, had sued to block the merger, arguing in a 38-page complaint that it would "extinguish competition" in Hollywood. The deal is now cleared to close.
What changes in the media landscape
The concentration here is significant. When factoring in CBS and the additional audience that comes with CNN, the scope of Ellison-owned media widens considerably. CBS and CNN attracted 905 million and 4 billion views respectively in a recent annual period. One owner, one editorial direction, across two of the most watched news brands in America.
The editorial direction is already visible at CBS. Since Paramount's takeover of CBS News, the network has taken steps to appeal to more conservative viewers with the installation of Free Press founder Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. CBS has a new owner with a cozy relationship with President Donald Trump, and the news division is being run by someone who had no meaningful TV news experience before she was hired.
At CNN, Ellison has pledged editorial independence, but the Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he would make sweeping changes to CNN, and that Trump told people close to him that he wants new ownership of CNN as well as changes to CNN programming.
Will it affect the midterms?
The honest answer is: it already is. The midterms, meaning the 2026 congressional elections that will determine control of the House and Senate, are weeks away. Voters watching CBS News are getting a network whose new editorial chief, Weiss, was installed by ownership that is, by all accounts, friendly to the current administration. CNN journalists, as NPR reported, are bracing for what comes next.
Media consolidation of this scale does not change what people believe overnight. But it shapes which stories get framed as urgent, which politicians get tough questions and which get softballs, and which narratives run wall to wall. When two of the largest news brands in the country share an owner who has a documented relationship with one side of the political aisle, and that consolidation completes in the final stretch of a midterm campaign, the effect on the information environment is real, even if it is hard to measure on election night.
The deal closing this week is not the end of the story. As part of its settlement, the Writers' Guild of America said Paramount agreed to prohibit writer layoffs at CBS News Broadcast for five years. That is a small guardrail. The larger question of whether CNN moves rightward under Ellison remains open, and we will likely know the answer by how it covers the next few months.
Follow-ups
How did David Ellison fund a $110 billion merger and where did that money come from?
David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, assembled the $110 billion purchase price through four distinct pools of money, with his father Larry Ellison's personal fortune serving as the foundation and the ultimate guarantee that the whole structure would hold.
The deal closed at roughly $111 billion, paid in cash at $31 per share to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders. That is an enormous sum for a company whose flagship prior asset, the original Skydance-Paramount merger, cost around $8 billion. So where did it actually come from?
The Ellison family backstop
The engine of the financing is Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder and David's father, who controls roughly 40% of Oracle shares and has been described by Forbes as the second person ever to cross $400 billion in net worth. The Ellison Family Trust provided a $45.7 billion equity backstop for the deal, and Larry personally issued an irrevocable guarantee covering $40.4 billion of the equity financing on top of that. An irrevocable guarantee means that if the equity falls short, he is on the hook personally, no walking it back.
Warner Bros. Discovery's board had initially rejected Paramount's bid, arguing that the equity backing was not solid enough. In a securities filing, Paramount Skydance said the elder Ellison had agreed to backstop the deal's financing to address concerns from Warner Bros. Discovery's board. The board had demanded exactly that, and once the personal guarantee was on paper, the bid could no longer be dismissed as undercapitalized.
The irony is that Oracle's share price fell sharply after that guarantee was made. The Ellison Family Trust holds about 1.16 billion Oracle shares, now worth roughly half their value when the guarantee was first issued. A guarantee made from a position of strength became a much weightier commitment as the stock declined.
Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds
Paramount Skydance secured a $24 billion investment from three Middle Eastern countries to fund the acquisition. Of that, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund supplied $10 billion, and the remaining $14 billion came from the state-controlled funds of Abu Dhabi and Qatar. A sovereign wealth fund is a government-owned investment pool, essentially a country's savings deployed into global assets. Those funds will indirectly own just under a 50% equity stake in the merged Paramount-WBD. That is a significant ownership position in what will become one of the largest media companies on earth.
Wall Street debt
The remaining financing came from $57.5 billion in debt arranged by Bank of America, Citi, and Apollo. Debt financing at this scale works the same way a mortgage does: the merged company borrows the money now, then pays it back over time from its revenues. The difference is that at $57.5 billion, the interest payments alone will be enormous, which is why analysts expect significant cost-cutting across both studios.
The political dimension
Both the purchase of Paramount and the deal to acquire Warner rely on the fortunes of Larry Ellison, a Donald Trump financial backer and adviser. That relationship has attracted scrutiny. The deal has been politically fraught in part because Larry is a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, and David Ellison has cultivated close ties to the Trump White House as he has pursued opportunities to turn Skydance into a global media giant. Critics, including a coalition of 12 state attorneys general who sued to block the deal, raised concerns about what that relationship means for editorial independence at CBS News and CNN now that both sit under the same roof.
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