Trillionaires Lording: [with] Create an Ultra-Giant Mainstream Media
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) shareholders finally have a growth stock on their hands - for today, anyway.
Amid a Wall Street Journal report that Paramount Skydance is preparing a mostly cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, shares in WBD have jumped nearly 36 percent. The bid is said to be backed by the Ellison family. David Ellison, the son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, recently purchased Paramount Global to merge with his own Skydance company. The deal closed just last month.
At their peak, WBD shares today topped $17 apiece. They opened under $13.
Paramount Skydance Corporation, as it is now officially known, is one of a small handful of American media conglomerates, with Paramount Pictures, cable networks such as Comedy Central and MTV, and CBS all under its umbrella. CBS, in turn, runs one of the major US news operations, with nightly news viewership in the millions and 60 Minutes still being the most watched news program on network television.
The implications of the merger are far-reaching and were already being felt ahead of its final approval. In July, Paramount agreed to pay Donald Trump $16m to settle a lawsuit over a 60 Minutes segment the president disapproved of, and a few weeks later, CBS controversially cancelled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which many observers speculated was at least partly about jettisoning an outspoken critic of Trump in anticipation of the deal.
But one of the most buzzed-about aspects is Paramount’s possible acquisition of the Free Press, the digital media company founded by Bari Weiss as a Substack newsletter in 2021, and Weiss’s potential new role steering CBS’s editorial slant. In July, the Financial Times reported that Weiss was seeking at least $200m for her website – more than double its valuation a year earlier and more than the site’s admittedly impressive 155,000 paid subscribers (roughly a 10th of total subscribers) would seem to justify.
That same week, the media newsletter Puck published an anonymously sourced report that Weiss would possibly be advising David Rhodes, a former CBS and Fox News executive and the current chair of Sky News, in the event that Rhodes resumes running CBS. Last week, Puck reported that the deal was all but finalized, with the Free Press to be acquired for somewhere in the $100m to $200m range (less than Weiss sought but nothing to sneeze at) and with Weiss tasked with “guiding the editorial direction of the [CBS news] division”.
If all this comes to pass, it will cement Weiss as a key figure in shaping the national news environment, just five years after her much-publicized resignation from the New York Times over what she characterized as a censorious and hostile workplace. This came in the wake of the resignation of the editorial page editor, James Bennet, after a staff uproar over the publication of Senator Tom Cotton’s opinion piece calling for military intervention against Black Lives Matter protesters.
Weiss, 41, is no stranger to publicity; since 2019, she has been the subject of mostly fawning profiles. Bari Weiss’ publication, The Free Press, has often been the Trump [friend of Ellison] administration's de facto ally in its war against liberal institutions.
However, her “limitless energy” and “laser focus” can sometimes come across as “controlling” or “difficult,” sources told The Post.
[David Ellison is in talks with Weiss to take on a major role influencing the editorial voice of the left-leaning news division]
“It would be like dropping a grenade” in the newsroom, one former CBS News veteran said, of Weiss’ addition to the network.
Should Weiss come aboard, sources said she would likely lock horns with the network’s “dug in culture” at programs like “60 Minutes,” which recently elevated longtime assistant Tanya Simon to executive producer.
“They are used to doing things their way,” another source said.
Sources had speculated that the ambitious Weiss would be loathe to report to CBS News president Tom Cibrowski after running her own company. Insiders said she could be a strong counterpart to Cibrowski, a former “Good Morning America” executive, who is regarded more as a production wizard than a journalist by those who have worked with him.
CBS News staff said Weiss’ addition to the network would be like “dropping a grenade.”
Either way, it appears clear that Weiss is likely to take a major role steering the editorial coverage of the network. It is unclear whether Weiss — who has a podcast, “Honestly with Bari Weiss” and a column in The Free Press — will take on an additional journalistic presence at CBS News.
Staffers, meanwhile, are reportedly “apoplectic” and “not happy at all” about the prospect of Weiss joining the network in any capacity and changing the tenor of its coverage on subjects like the war in Gaza.
It has been a heck of a week for the elder Ellison. On Wednesday, Larry Ellison's net worth increased by about $100 billion. A huge jump in the value of Oracle allowed him to temporarily surpass Elon Musk for the title of world's richest person.
Per the WSJ report, the Paramount Skydance bid will be for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery. That's important, as David Zaslav is currently in the process of splitting his company into two entities, which he just said yesterday is now expected to close in April 2026. The plan in place there is for Zaslav to run "Warner Bros.," which will consist of the studios, HBO and HBO Max, and his current (and longtime) chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels to take the reins as CEO of the legacy basic cable channels (and Discovery+).
Warner Bros. Discovery was formed in April 2022 by a merger between Zaslav's Discovery, Inc. and AT&T's WarnerMedia. The combination came with a huge debt load, a good portion of which has since been paid down. The lion's share of what remains is going to be spun off with the cable business.
It is easy to see the regulatory hurdles that an attempted combination of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery could bring about. The good news for Ellison is that such a mega-deal would not require him to sell off a broadcast network; he has CBS, Warner Bros. Discovery only deals in streaming and cable (and movies, of course).
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If you feel powerless to help Gaza, you still has a choice: donate. When so much of what exists is false, authenticity is a powerful weapon we can wield that the state never could. So if you feel lost, hopeless, depressed, angry and afraid, I implore you to return - again and again - to the feeling of love that exists within you that brought you here in the first place. It is only through this that we can remake the world. To redress Gaza's famine, displacement, and destruction, independent and impartial humanitarian organizations - UN agencies, international and national NGOs - must be allowed to deliver relief at scale. To salvage Gaza's people from the devastation inflicted by Israel, it must be unified with the West Bank to form an independent and sovereign Palestinian State, not to be parceled and colonized by the former.
Please keep donate Gaza especially if you, as reader, has [background] International Relation [whatever universities]. IR Graduate means [you must, at least] get some semester [about] studying Middle East [in macro, not specifically Gaza].
We need more people to share fundraisers instead of only talking about Gaza. Some people think that those in Gaza don't need money but that's wrong. Almost everyone lost their source of income while essentials, food & medicine get sold for astronomical prices. So I put my attempt in all social media as I can, in twitter / X, in substack [since October 2023 I put link donation], in bluesky or bsky, in threads, in instagram.
Link to donate World Food Programme - Palestine appeal: click here
[Daniel Brühl]
Most campaign shared or circulated in social media are for REAL people in Gaza. They're legit. There are a lot of small campaigns for struggling families. This is their only lifeline. By donating & sharing, you are literally making history and alleviating part of their pain
Please do not rely on me alone for sharing your campaign. I'm only 1 person and sometimes I'm not online which is unreliable. I never ignore anybody on purpose but I have a very limited capacity & very little energy and time.
[Refaat Alareer IF I MUST DIE] Refaat Alareer was extremely hungry, November 2023, days before killed by Israel airstrike. If November 2023 already [one-by-one Gazan] extremely hungry, imagine August 2025.
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