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Thursday, October 23, 2025 |
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Good morning. Here's the latest on President Trump, TIME, Christiane Amanpour, Sean Parnell, Brendan Carr, Seth Meyers, "No Other Land," and more... |
Awaiting the next Paramount bid... |
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is "undeterred" after Warner Bros Discovery rebuffed his first three offers to buy the media giant.
That's according to a person who has been advising Ellison, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Ellison's next move is unknown. But both Ellison and WBD CEO David Zaslav are playing their parts in this M&A struggle perfectly right now.
Ellison is publicly remaining quiet but is privately exuding the kind of confidence that comes from having tens of billions in cash. The Paramount team is arguing that Ellison is the only buyer who'd pass muster with the Trump administration. "That's the Trump card," the adviser added, enjoying the double entendre.
Zaslav is insisting that WBD is worth more than the $23.50 per share that Ellison most recently offered. And the WBD board agrees, having unanimously voted to reject that bid. Zaslav is talking internally about how HBO Max and the Warner Bros. movie studio would fit well with Amazon or Netflix, according to a person involved in the conversations.
This week's announcement that the WBD board is pursuing a formal M&A process signaled that many outcomes are possible: A full-blown sale, a sale of the streaming and studios assets to another company, or the already-planned split.
But lest there is any doubt, Ellison does want to buy all the WBD assets, even though Warner is newly willing to sell pieces. Ellison wants CNN, TNT Sports and all the rest, one of the sources confirmed. His recent acquisition of The Free Press and installation of Bari Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief evinces a deep interest in news — in ways that worry some and excite others.
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Paramount's pursuit of WBD raises big questions about billionaire control of major media conglomerates. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for one, has been raising her voice about potential consumer harms if Paramount prevails in buying WBD.
As you already know, David Ellison's ambitions are bolstered by his father Larry, who currently ranks as the second richest man in the world. Together they are "building an unprecedented media empire," as The Washington Post put it earlier this month.
And Trump is cheering them on. "They're friends of mine. They're big supporters of mine," the president said recently.
Paramount is leveraging this relationship in its pursuit of WBD. "Trump's implicit support for the deal is their number one talking point," the person involved in the negotiations said. Paramount insiders refute that, noting that Ellison made many pro-deal arguments in a letter to WBD's board that the NYT obtained and described yesterday.
"We are confident that we are the best partner for WBD," Ellison wrote, "with a combination of our two companies creating a scaled Hollywood champion to the benefit of both our companies' shareholders, consumers and the entertainment industry at large."
But it's impossible to ignore the Trump factor here. Ellison has "got Donald Trump in his corner," the NY Post's Charlie Gasparino wrote yesterday. When veteran media reporter Tim Baysinger wrote with chagrin that "M&A is now solely based on whether or not the President likes you," Gasparino replied on X, "this is funny and kinda true."
Wall Street analysts have cast doubt on Comcast as a suitor for WBD for a similar reason. "The problem is regulatory. Or, if you prefer, political. Leaving aside any legitimate concerns about further consolidation of, say, the studio business, the real issue here is that Comcast is badly disfavored by the current administration," Craig Moffett said in a note to clients earlier this week.
But just to complicate this story further, keep in mind that US regulators are not the only ones to consider. Paramount would face regulatory scrutiny in the UK, EU and some countries in Latin America. The perception that Trump is clearing the way for the Ellisons in the US could hurt them in other markets.
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Recognizing the biz rationale |
Putting aside political alignment for a moment, Moffett's colleague Robert Fishman said in the same note that Paramount's bid "makes a lot of strategic sense by owning a much stronger slate of I.P. at Warner Bros. and seeking scale with the combined HBO Max and Paramount+ platforms."
Fishman said that "combining the linear network portfolios would also likely yield significant cost synergies, while unlocking strategic benefits from pairing CBS News with CNN and leveraging the long-standing CBS-Turner partnership for NCAA's March Madness Final Four plus other overlapping sports rights portfolios."
No doubt there will be further leaks and developments today...
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Sending well wishes to Christiane |
This morning, CNN's chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour revealed that she is battling ovarian cancer again, after undergoing surgery and treatment for the first time back in 2021. "I have it again, but it's being very well managed," Amanpour told former CNN presenter Hannah Vaughan Jones on the "Changing the Ovarian Cancer Story" podcast. Amanpour was joined by her consultant oncologist, Dr. Angela George, and you can watch/hear the candid conversation here. We're all wishing her the best.
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'White House Down' vibes? |
Movie critic Richard Roeper shared a photo of a demolished White House wall the other day and imagined it was a scene from one of Roland Emmerich's disaster movies.
"Hold on," he quipped, "I'm being told this is an actual photo from today. 🙄 🙁"
Trump is "plowing" past concerns over the East Wing demolition — even as the videos and photos of the teardown horrify people in DC and beyond. I think the reactions are partly due to disaster-film iconography.
Seth Meyers brought it up in his monologue last night: "This is the first thing aliens do in movies to announce they're evil. They blow up the White House. Trump is just cutting out the middleman of invading aliens..."
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Pentagon courts MAGA influencers |
This is what Pete Hegseth wanted all along. His press shop has announced "the next generation of the Pentagon press corps," consisting of "new media outlets and independent journalists," almost entirely right-wing and better known for pro-Trump commentary than straight news coverage.
In addition to the likes of OAN and The Federalist, who already signed on to the new rules, WaPo’s Scott Nover and Drew Harwell report that this "new media" corps includes Mike Lindell's outlet Lindell TV, The Gateway Pundit, The Post Millennial, Human Events, Turning Point USA’s media brand Frontlines, and Tim Pool's Timcast. But as Pool himself admitted to the Post, "we are not investigative reporters," and that's not what this group will be doing. I think everyone sees what this really is.
>> Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell snarked that the reporters who rejected Hegseth's new restrictions had opted to "self-deport." But, of course, they continue to report day in and day out, even though they're no longer at the Pentagon. (The latest example: CBS reporter Eleanor Watson scooped that the US military struck another alleged drug vessel, this time in the Pacific.)
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Trump back on the cover of TIME |
Maybe the Trump family will lay off the "fake news NYT" smears for a day or two. (Then again, the president is actively suing The Times.) Eric Trump's book, "Under Siege," debuted at #1 on the NYT bestseller list last night. Eric called it "the most prestigious award in the publishing industry" on his X feed. It's not an award, but I digress. Andrew Ross Sorkin's "1929" debuted at #2...
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Carr's back with broadcast license talk |
FCC chair Brendan Carr has been uncharacteristically quiet since "Kimmelgate." But he recently sat down with David Bozell on the NewsBusters Podcast (from conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center) and said, "Broadcast licenses are not sacred cows." Key quote via Ted Hearn's recap: "I'm very open to the idea that there’s broadcasters out there that may very well end up losing their licenses. Now, of course, there's a whole process that has to be run there that people don't really focus on." As I reported last year, the process would be so time-consuming that it would stretch past Trump's four years in office...
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Talking all about media trust |
The newest print cover of Harper's features a discussion with Jelani Cobb, Taylor Lorenz, Jack Shafer, and Max Tani under the heading, "Why Don't We Trust the Media?" Arguably, that's the wrong question, but here are some of the most illuminating quotes:
>> Lorenz: "I do think that the corporate media — having worked in it myself — has done things to erode trust, whether it's kowtowing to power or simply failing to represent the truth."
>> Cobb: "When the Associated Press was banned from the White House press pool, no other news organization should have shown up for press briefings." There should be "unified action that would demonstrate how seriously we take the issue of press freedom."
>> Shafer: “The incumbent media is not always the best vehicle to propel journalism into the future. The future is going to require... people finding the ability to attract audiences, hold on to them, and give them some value that they didn't have before."
>> Tani: "The challenge going forward is: Where are young journalists going to learn the craft that they can then take and use to invent something new on YouTube or on TikTok?"
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>> WaPo's head of visuals, Greg Manifold, a Post lifer, is exiting the newspaper. "Another gut punch for the organization," Natalie Korach reports. (Status)
>> TelevisaUnivision reported Q3 earnings this morning. (THR)
>> EA and the NFL have extended their exclusive Madden deal. (NBC)
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>> WaPo ran tests "on eight major social platforms" and "found that only one of them added a warning to an uploaded AI video," Kevin Schaul reports. The sole disclosure, on Google's YouTube, "was hidden from view inside a description attached to the clip." (WaPo)
>> YouTube "has added a new Shorts feature... aiming to help viewers better manage their time instead of endlessly scrolling." (The Verge)
>> Google has dropped "a key program for boosting women in tech." Hadas Gold calls it "another sign the search giant is unwinding its diversity programs as such initiatives face increasing political pressure." (CNN)
>> "Some Sora users are finding ways to circumvent content policies and create deepfakes" of public figures recreating a racist meme. (Copyleaks)
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Self-releasing 'No Other Land' |
Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham, who won the Best Documentary Oscar for "No Other Land," still haven't landed a US distribution deal. "I think they are politically trying to block us from reaching the American audience," Adra told the aforementioned Christiane Amanpour earlier this week. So, he said, "we're releasing it by our own," pushing out the film through social media accounts that will be amplified by activists. Here's the clip from Amanpour...
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NFL commish backs Bad Bunny |
Dan Heching writes: Roger Goodell says the NFL stands by its decision to enlist Bad Bunny to headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show, despite the backlash that resulted. "He's one of the leading and most popular entertainers in the world — that’s what we try to achieve," Goodell said on the sidelines of the fall NFL owners meeting. |
The Broadway League and the union representing roughly 1,200 musicians "reached a tentative labor agreement overnight, according to sources familiar with the talks," NY1 reports. "The deal, which must still be ratified by members, averts a potential strike that could have darkened Broadway theaters."
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