Don’t Let the Merger Distract From the Takeover
It is easy to forget that not too long ago, Hollywood commentators were up in arms over Netflix’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Back then, the dread of the demise of theatrical movie-going filled the town.
Overnight, the conversation flipped. Paramount-Skydance (the latter part of the name refers to David Ellison’s not-so-successful production company, bankrolled by his father) won the bidding war over Warner Bros. and its vast library of classics and valuable IP.
Now, the debate became political, and not for nothing. When Ellison, whose father is a prominent Trump supporter, bought Paramount in 2025, he installed anti-woke warrior Bari Weiss as head of CBS News. Many on the left were justifiably enraged, fearing a conservative takeover. Adding insult to injury, the new regime got rid of Stephen Colbert, a vocal critic of the president, and cancelled his late-night show altogether. Even worse, Weiss seems to be tarnishing the crown jewel of broadcast news – 60 Minutes.
To a lesser extent, some of the outrage points to Weiss’s astronomic rise in the media landscape. Following her protest-driven departure as an opinion columnist and editor at The New York Times, Weiss founded The Free Press, an independent journalism Substack known for its critical view of progressive culture-war issues and its pro-Israel stance. In an unprecedented move, The Free Press was purchased by Ellison for $150 million, an unheard-of figure for a Substack. Subsequently, she became Ellison’s confidant and head of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in a TV newsroom.
Post-Warner acquisition, it is reported, Weiss will take over CNN as well.
Many on the left, as seen frequently in social media posts by Senator Elizabeth Warren, warn of a complete takeover of the media and the press by billionaires who, with and for Trump, will curtail free speech and honest journalism. Here lies the issue. I understand this is a mobilizing sentiment in an era where the left is only successful in its anti-billionaire populist rhetoric (re Mamdani, AOC, Sanders, etc.). However, it of course lacks nuance and is inaccurate. My qualms on this topic are as follows:
First, and probably the least significant, is that late-night shows are archaic and, despite the nostalgic urge to keep them on air, have no place in the current media landscape. But because the president (really) cares about this topic, it is worth addressing.
A late-night show on a cable network costs tens of millions of dollars a year, in addition to a hefty contract for the talent (aka the host), for a product that is essentially a monologue and celebrity interviews. With declining ratings on cable (due to the transition to streaming services and the death of linear television), late-night content is mostly consumed on YouTube the following day. Ergo, this content is more similar to a morning show or, more likely, to a video podcast. Not only has the dominance of podcasts in the new media landscape overtaken the centrality and monoculture of late-night, but the networks have also stood idly by, failing to look for ways to optimize how their talk shows are now consumed. While very popular and zeitgeisty on YouTube, the revenue from the talk show’s content on YouTube (from advertising) cannot possibly cover the cost of these shows. So yes, there were probably political motives in the cancellation of Colbert’s show, but the reality is that these shows would not have lasted for very long anyway. To the defenders of late-night shows, I ask: When was the last time you actually watched a talk show on TV rather than on your phone? I suspect the last remaining viewer of late-night talk shows on linear television is the president of the United States.
Now to the actual deal on the table: should Paramount merge with Warner Bros.? One fear is that of job loss. Indeed, consolidation in the industry leads to massive layoffs that severely affect the artisans and professionals who work on Hollywood productions. In the current climate, with fears of AI job loss, post-pandemic, post-union strikes, post-LA fires, and the exit of many productions from LA, these fears are warranted and real. However, it is important to note that prior to this deal, Netflix was going to buy Warner, and before that, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was frantically looking for a buyer, willing to sell the company for parts. As scary as the prospects may be, the debt-ridden company was bound to be sold one way or another. The bright side of Paramount-Skydance buying the company is that it will (likely) keep the theatrical distribution business and has bought Warner Bros. in its entirety (without spinning off the cable business).
Another fear is that of monopolization. While this will assure no one, CNN and CBS do not compete in the same market, CNN being cable news and CBS being broadcast news. Additionally, Paramount and Warner’s combined market share is still comparable to or smaller than that of competitors such as Disney and Netflix. One might argue now that an oligopoly of a few major movie studios is still bad. Well, historically, this has always been the case: the Hollywood system always ran on 5 studios, the “big five” originally being Paramount, RKO, MGM, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox. Today we have Disney, Netflix, Universal, Amazon, Apple, Warner Bros., Paramount and Sony (not including smaller studios). If anything, the entry of tech giants Apple and Amazon into the business inflated the number of studios beyond the capacity of this market. Consolidation will always be unpopular, but both Paramount and Warner, in financial trouble, needed the backing of someone like Ellison to stay afloat and keep these legacy media companies from being sold for parts to private equity firms.
Those who reject this merger forget to offer an alternative. If not Netflix or Paramount, who should buy Warner Bros.? They prefer the studio to stay independent, blissfully ignoring the financial realities.
The previous owner of Paramount, Shari Redstone; the current owner, David Ellison; his father and financial guarantor, Larry Ellison; and Bari Weiss are all publicly supportive of Israel. In parallel, the anti-trust campaign by left-wing politicians against this merger is driven by anti-billionaire rhetoric that fear-mongers about Ellison’s control over American media. These two elements of the debate, with the toxicity of the Israel-Gaza topic in American politics, lend to antisemitic tropes of Jewish ownership of the media in online commentary.
Taking all this into account, the criticism of Ellison and Weiss remains valid – and yet it is important to differentiate between the media-business aspect and the journalistic aspect. Those who try to mesh the two into a single issue that represents all that’s bad under the Trump administration undermine the criticism of the takeover of 60 Minutes and CNN.
Media ownership has always been political or corporate – Coca-Cola once owned Columbia Pictures, and nobody blinked. What can’t be political is the newsroom. Conflating the two doesn’t just confuse the debate – It hands ammunition to the ugliest version of the argument.
