Trump lawsuit, DEI cuts, ombudsman; what's changing after $8.4 billion Paramount‑Skydance merger
Synopsis The FCC has approved the $8.4 billion merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media, transferring CBS station licenses and ending the Redstone family's control. David Ellison will lead the new Paramount, with Skydance promising editorial fairness and appointing an ombudsman. The deal includes ending DEI programs, a move praised by some but criticized by others for press freedom concerns. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved an $8.4 billion merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media, ending months of uncertainty. The decision clears the way for CBS, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures to come under new ownership.
ADVERTISEMENT It will be the start of a new family dynasty at Paramount, historically run by the Redstone family. When the deal closes, David Ellison, son of billionaire Larry Ellison, will take control.
As part of the approval, the FCC agreed to transfer licences for 28 CBS-owned television stations to Skydance. The move followed a $16 million settlement by Paramount to resolve a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump over a 2024 "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The FCC's approval came despite criticism from within the agency.
To secure the green light, Skydance and RedBird Capital promised to maintain journalistic integrity. The company will appoint an ombudsman to review complaints of editorial bias and ensure coverage reflects a range of political and ideological views.FCC Chairman Brendan Carr praised the move, saying, 'It is time for a change. Skydance's commitment to make significant changes at the once-storied CBS broadcast network is welcomed.'
ADVERTISEMENT As part of the agreement, Paramount will end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The move aligns with the Trump administration's view that such initiatives are discriminatory. Carr called the decision a step toward ending "invidious forms of DEI discrimination."
ADVERTISEMENT Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez opposed the merger, calling it harmful to press freedom. She criticised the agency for using its power to push Paramount into a legal settlement and accused it of enabling political influence over newsroom decisions.'Even more alarming, it is now imposing never-before-seen controls over editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment,' she said as quoted by India Today.
ADVERTISEMENT David Ellison, CEO of Skydance and son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is expected to lead the new Paramount. Former NBCUniversal head Jeff Shell will become president. The merger also puts the future of several current Paramount executives in doubt, with reports of upcoming cost cuts.
ADVERTISEMENT The deal, first announced in July 2024, faced delays and scrutiny but eventually moved forward after no higher bids emerged.
The merger officially ends the Redstone family's decades-long influence over Paramount, once shaped by Sumner Redstone and later led by his daughter, Shari Redstone.
(You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)
(Catch all the US News, UK News, Canada News, International Breaking News Events, and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.)
Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily International News Updates.
NEXT STORY
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Judges Continue to Block Trump Policies Following Supreme Court Ruling
WASHINGTON—When the Supreme Court issued a blockbuster decision in June limiting the authority of federal judges to halt Trump administration policies nationwide, the president was quick to pronounce the universal injunction all but dead. One month later, states, organizations and individuals challenging government actions are finding a number of ways to notch wins against the White House, with judges in a growing list of cases making clear that sweeping relief remains available when they find the government has overstepped its authority. In at least nine cases, judges have explicitly grappled with the Supreme Court's opinion and granted nationwide relief anyway. That includes rulings that continue to halt the policy at the center of the high court case: President Trump's effort to pare back birthright citizenship. Judges have also kept in place protections against deportations for up to 500,000 Haitians, halted mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services, and prevented the government from terminating a legal-aid program for mentally ill people in immigration proceedings. To accomplish this, litigants challenging the administration have used a range of tools, defending the necessity of existing injunctions, filing class action lawsuits and invoking a law that requires government agencies to act reasonably: the Administrative Procedure Act. It is a rare point of consensus among conservative and liberal lawyers alike: The path to winning rulings with nationwide application is still wide open. 'There are a number of highly significant court orders that are protecting people as we speak,' said Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, a liberal legal group that has brought many cases against the Trump administration. 'We're continuing to get that relief.' Conservative legal advocates also continue to see nationwide injunctions as viable in some circumstances. 'We're still going to ask for nationwide injunctions when that's the only option to protect our clients,' said Dan Lennington, a lawyer at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which has challenged race and sex-based preferences in federal policies. The Supreme Court's decision was long in the making, with Democratic and Republican administrations in turn chafing against their signature policies being held up by a single district court judge. The 6-3 ruling said that when judges find that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, their injunctions against the government can't be broader than what is needed to provide complete relief to the parties who sued. Trump's birthright policy would deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. unless one of their parents was a citizen or permanent legal resident. Judges in the weeks since the high court decision have ruled that blocking the policy everywhere remains the proper solution. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston again said a ruling with nationwide application was the only way to spare the plaintiffs—a coalition of 20 Democratic-run states and local governments—from harm caused by an executive order he said was unconstitutional. The judge noted that families frequently move across state lines and that children are born in states where their parents don't reside. 'A patchwork or bifurcated approach to citizenship would generate understandable confusion among state and federal officials administering the various programs,' wrote Sorokin, 'as well as similar confusion and fear among the parents of children' who would be denied citizenship by Trump's order. In a separate decision last week involving a different group of states that sued Trump, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reached a similar conclusion. Both rulings showed that state attorneys general remain well positioned to win broad injunctions against the federal government when they can demonstrate executive overreach. 'You've got these elite litigation shops in the states,' Tennessee's Republican attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, said of offices such as his. 'You're gonna figure out a way to continue to be one of the most active participants in the judicial system.' A New Hampshire judge has also blocked Trump's birthright order after litigants in that case, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, used another pathway the Supreme Court left open: filing class-action lawsuits on behalf of a nationwide group of plaintiffs. Recent cases also underscore that the Administrative Procedure Act, long a basis for lawsuits against administrations of both parties, remains a potent tool. The law allows judges to set aside agency actions they deem arbitrary, capricious or an abuse of discretion. Judges have blocked Trump policies in a half-dozen cases in the past month under the APA, and in almost every instance have specifically said they aren't precluded in doing so by the Supreme Court. Zach Shelley, a lawyer at the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen, filed a case using the APA in which a judge this month ordered the restoration of gender-related healthcare data to government websites, which officials had taken down after an anti-transgender executive order from Trump. The act was the obvious choice to address a nationwide policy 'from the get-go,' Shelley said. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., said administration officials ignored common sense by taking down entire webpages of information instead of removing specific words or statements that ran afoul of Trump's gender order. 'This case involves government officials acting first and thinking later,' Bates wrote. Nothing in the high court's ruling prevented him from ordering the pages be put back up, the judge said. The Justice Department argued that Trump administration officials had acted lawfully and reasonably in implementing the president's order to remove material promoting gender ideology. The department is still in the early stages of attempting to use the Supreme Court's ruling to its advantage, and legal observers continue to expect the decision will help the administration in some cases. In one, a New York judge recently narrowed the scope of a ruling blocking the administration's attempts to end contracts with Job Corps centers that run career-training programs for low-income young adults. If the lawsuit had instead been filed as a class action or litigated in a different way, though, 'the result may very well be different,' Judge Andrew Carter wrote. Write to Louise Radnofsky at Mariah Timms at and Jess Bravin at
Indian Express
2 hours ago
- Indian Express
Jay Leno on steering clear of politics on The Tonight Show: ‘Don't think anybody wants to hear lecture'
Jay Leno revisited his two-decade tenure on The Tonight Show in a candid conversation with David Trulio, President & CEO of the Reagan Foundation, explaining why he consistently avoided political humour. 'I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from the things, the pressures of life, whatever it might be,' Leno said, adding, 'I love political humour, don't get me wrong, but what happens is people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.' Leno was known for walking a fine line between humour and neutrality during his run from 1992 to 2009 (and again briefly from 2010 to 2014). He told Trulio that his strategy was simple: appeal to everyone. 'Why shoot for just half an audience? Why not try to get the whole?' 'I don't understand why you would alienate one particular group,' he said. 'Or just don't do it at all. I'm not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what's funny.' According to Fox News, Leno recalled receiving conflicting hate mail over the same jokes, with one viewer accusing him of siding with Republicans, and another calling him a Democratic sympathiser. 'And I go, 'Well, that's good.' That's how you get a whole audience,' he said. Leno's philosophy on comedy is simple. 'Funny is funny,' he told Trulio. 'I don't think anybody wants to hear a lecture.' He drew a contrast with the current political climate in comedy, where many late-night hosts have embraced explicit political opinions. 'Now you have to be content with half the audience because you have to give your opinion,' Leno noted. He pointed to his long friendship with fellow comedian Rodney Dangerfield as a model for apolitical comedy. 'I knew Rodney 40 years,' Leno said. 'I have no idea if he was Democrat or Republican. We never discussed, we just discussed jokes.' The interview comes just before CBS announced the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. As reported by CNN and Fox News, the network cited financial constraints, but the decision drew speculation about political motives, given Colbert's consistent criticism of Donald Trump. Weeks before the announcement, CBS and its parent company Paramount paid Trump $16 million in a settlement related to a 60 Minutes segment. Colbert had openly criticised the deal, calling it a 'big fat bribe' on-air. The show is now set to end in May 2026. (With inputs from CNN, Fox News)
Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
Blackstone-backed Knowledge Realty Trust's ₹4,800-crore IPO to open on 5 August
Next Story Madhurima Nandy The Sattva Group and Blackstone-backed real estate investment trust will announce the price band on 30 July. Some of the marquee assets owned by Knowledge Realty Trust include One BKC and One World Center in Mumbai, Knowledge City and Knowledge Park in Hyderabad and Cessna Business Park and Sattva Softzone in Bengaluru. Gift this article BENGALURU :Knowledge Realty Trust (KRT), a real estate investment trust (Reit) sponsored by Bengaluru-based developer Sattva Group and asset manager Blackstone, is set to launch its initial public offering (IPO) on 5 August, said two persons close to the development. Knowledge Realty Trust (KRT), a real estate investment trust (Reit) sponsored by Bengaluru-based developer Sattva Group and asset manager Blackstone, is set to launch its initial public offering (IPO) on 5 August, said two persons close to the development. The proposed ₹ 4,800-crore IPO secured approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Friday. The offer will be open from 5 to 8 August. This will be Asia's second-largest Reit by size and India's largest by gross asset value (around ₹ 62,000 crore) and net operating income, owning over 46 million square feet of office space across 29 assets in six cities, mainly Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. 'The price band will be announced on 30 July. The Reit will be listed in mid-August," said one of the two persons cited above, on the condition of anonymity. In June, KRT became the first ever Reit to conclude a pre-IPO fundraising exercise. It raised ₹ 1,400 crore from investors, including JM Financial, Radhakishan Damani (promoter of DMart), and 360 One Wam Ltd, in a pre-IPO placement. The round was fully subscribed by domestic high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) and family offices, signalling investor confidence ahead of the public issue. 'A substantial amount of the total ₹ 6,200 crore primary raise will be used for debt repayment. There will be no secondary sale," said the second person. A KRT spokesperson didn't respond to Mint's queries. The KRT IPO KRT filed its IPO draft papers with Sebi in March. Blackstone—sponsor of three of the four listed Reits in India—will own 55% of the Reit, while the Sattva Group will hold the rest. The KRT Reit has a 'brand neutral' strategy. It aims to acquire assets inorganically and give opportunities to other developers to contribute their assets to the Reit while maintaining their brand identity. Shirish Godbole, former managing director of Morgan Stanley Real Estate Funds in India, is the trust's chief executive officer; Quaiser Parvez, former CEO of Blackstone-owned Nucleus Office Parks, is its chief operating officer. Reits have faced their share of challenges in recent years, many of them pandemic-induced. But with the office market turning around, they are gaining more acceptance. Around 90% of the Sattva-Blackstone Reit is leased to marquee tenants, split between multi-national corporations and global capability centres (GCCs). Also Read | KKR-backed Leap India appoints bankers for IPO Some of the marquee assets owned by the Trust include One BKC and One World Center in Mumbai, Knowledge City and Knowledge Park in Hyderabad and Cessna Business Park and Sattva Softzone in Bengaluru. Topics You May Be Interested In Catch all the Business News , Market News , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
