\n<\/p>\n
Netflix\u2019s decision to walk away from its $83bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) has left some staffers working at CBS News and CNN panicking about the future as the two top-tier news operations come under the same roof.<\/p>\n
With Paramount Skydance emerging as the winning bidder, a deal that still requires the approval of WBD shareholders and government regulators, they fear the merging of the two networks \u2013 and, with it, the potential for a significant amount of job cuts. Some CNN employees are also nervous about Paramount\u2019s Trump-friendly ownership and leadership enacting ideologically driven programming changes at the network, with particular concern about the specter of the CBS News editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, possibly getting a significant role.<\/p>\n
Weiss, a conservative commentator turned media entrepreneur with no previous television industry experience, has had an uneven tenure at CBS since she was appointed editor-in-chief last October. Her path to the job was paved by concessions that David Ellison and his Skydance Media made to gain the support of Trump-picked regulators to acquire Paramount.<\/p>\n
\u201cA Paramount-WBD merger is a disaster for the people who work at both companies, and if Bari Weiss takes control of CNN, it will be the end of the global network Ted Turner founded,\u201d one concerned CNN producer \u2013\u00a0who was not authorized to comment \u2013 told the Guardian. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s hyperbolic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turner, a billionaire media entrepreneur, revolutionized TV news when he founded the 24-hour, all-news channel in 1980.<\/p>\n
A second CNN staffer had a more measured reaction, saying that \u201cbecause CNN is so big and makes so much money, it was always going to attract the Ellisons\u201d.<\/p>\n
Multiple CBS News staffers who were not authorized to speak to the media resorted to curse words after reading the news. \u201cFuck, fuck, fuck,\u201d said one producer at the network. \u201cWell, fuck,\u201d said another CBS News staffer.<\/p>\n
A third CBS News staffer said they expected their department to be axed if the network is merged with CNN and duplicative services are cut, as is standard for media mergers.<\/p>\n
Paramount\u2019s victory would add not just CNN but also Warner\u2019s prestigious HBO network to its portfolio. As well as for its hit shows including Succession and Game of Thrones, HBO is known for its award-winning documentaries.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Paramount Skydance chief executive David] Ellison will readily throw the first amendment, CNN\u2019s reporters and HBO\u2019s film-makers under the bus if they stand in the way of expanding his corporate empire and fattening his pockets,\u201d predicted Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. \u201cBut censorship is bad for business. WBD executives and shareholders should recognize that selling companies that depend on the first amendment to a censorial White House puppet is not only morally wrong but harmful to their bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n
WBD\u2019s chief executive, David Zaslav, took a more positive tone, saying in a statement that the merger \u201cwill create tremendous value for our shareholders\u201d.<\/p>\n
WBD is scheduled to hold a global town hall for employees late on Friday morning. In a Thursday-evening memo to CNN employees obtained by the Guardian, chief executive Mark Thompson urged them to not jump to conclusions about what the acquisition would mean for the network.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite all the speculation you\u2019ve read during this process, I\u2019d suggest that you don\u2019t jump to conclusions about the future until we know more,\u201d Thompson wrote. \u201cAnd secondly, let\u2019s not forget our duty to our audience. We\u2019re still near the start of what is already an incredibly newsy year at home and abroad, one that will culminate with critical US midterm elections and who knows what else.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s continue to focus on delivering the best possible journalism to the millions of people who rely on us all around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald Trump, a longtime critic of CNN, said in December that the cable network should be part of any sale of WBD \u2013 and that the winning bidder should oust the network\u2019s leadership. Netflix had secured a deal to acquire only the studio and streaming assets of the company; if the streamer\u2019s deal had gone through, CNN and WBD\u2019s other television networks would have been spun off into a new entity called Global Networks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the people that are running that company right now, and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don\u2019t think that should be allowed to continue,\u201d Trump said at the time, adding that the network\u2019s ownership has \u201crun CNN into the ground\u201d.<\/p>\n
CNN staffers expressed concern after the Guardian reported in November that Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount Skydance and a friend of the president, had spoken with a White House official about potential changes that could be made at the network if it fell under his family\u2019s ownership. Ellison discussed the possibility of axing some of the CNN hosts that have attracted Trump\u2019s ire, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, according to people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
During an interview on CNBC in December, David Ellison acknowledged having recent conversations with Trump that touched on CNN. \u201cWe\u2019ve had great conversations with the president about this \u2026 but I don\u2019t want to speak for him in any way, shape or form,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n
But, while officials in the Trump White House have long preferred Paramount Skydance to Netflix as owner of WBD, the merger will still have to go through a regulatory process led by the antitrust division of the Department of Justice. There could also be legal challenges from state attorneys general, meaning that a potential merger of the two networks \u2013 and the foreshadowed changes at CNN \u2013\u00a0could still be a long way off.<\/p>\n
In a post on X, Alvaro Bedoya, a former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, expressed concern about the vast portfolio of assets that will be controlled by the Ellison family. \u201cBlock this rotten deal,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Netflix\u2019s decision to walk away from its $83bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) has left some staffers working at CBS News and CNN panicking about the future as the two top-tier news operations come under the same roof. With Paramount Skydance emerging as the winning bidder, a deal that still requires the approval of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[820,2036,4699,1075,596,1518,1545,150,4849,281,1779,2035,1975],"class_list":{"0":"post-45479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-battle","9":"tag-bros","10":"tag-cbs","11":"tag-cnn","12":"tag-disaster","13":"tag-fear","14":"tag-industry","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-paramount","17":"tag-staffers","18":"tag-television","19":"tag-warner","20":"tag-wins"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}