Expect CBS News to undergo a major overhaul under Skydance boss David Ellison
Too bad it's not 10 years ago.
The names Edward R. Murrow, Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite — the people who built CBS News into the paragon of TV journalism — might come up in casual conversations among old-timers like yours truly, reminiscing about how network news once controlled the political and social agenda.
Or maybe they would surface in a journalism class after CBS's current management last week settled a weird lawsuit, filed by President Trump, in order to keep in the good graces of the White House and get the Skydance-Paramount merger through his FCC regulators.
But I can guarantee that the 42-year-old Ellison — the son of mega-billionaire Larry Ellison of Oracle fame, who is a MAGA supporter of the president — isn't thinking about the CBS News legacy as he prepares to complete his $8 billion combo.
In fact, from what I hear, continuing in the grand tradition of Murrow, Wallace and Cronkite is not at the top of Ellison's mind because, for one, it ain't so grand any longer, and two (maybe most important), he knows it's a lousy business.
It's not worth the trouble that it generates. We don't even know if it's profitable since Paramount doesn't disclose the news division's P&L statements. Plus, its product has moved so far to the left that it angers more than half the country.
Full disclosure: I don't know David Ellison personally but people I trust do, and they tell me he's substantive, much more than a lucky sperm kid that being Larry's son confers. His independent studio Skydance has produced such recent blockbusters as 'Top Gun: Maverick' and 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.'
He doesn't get his news from TikTok — far from it.
For the time being, he wants to keep the news division but also move away from its progressive leanings. (A person close to him says look for investments in 'truth-based' news.) He does appreciate the CBS News legacy that he is about to buy — as long as the numbers are working and he believes they aren't, I am told.
Sports as crown jewel
And that's where things could get scary for the news division.
Ellison, I am told, equates CBS with football more than he does with Cronkite. If he's looking to grow stuff, he and his point man in running the new company, former NBCU chief Jeff Shell, are looking at CBS Sports as the tip of the spear.
Everything else is about to get the mother of all efficiency reviews, my sources say.
Layoffs are likely, as are smaller salaries and squeezed budgets.
In Ellison's worldview, CBS News' legacy has cachet but when an anchor like Tony Dokoupil gets upbraided by management — as he did last year — for questioning the work of far left author Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Coates' rationalization of the Oct. 7 massacre, something needs to change.
It's been a long road from the time Ellison first bid on Paramount, the fading media empire created by dealmaker Sumner Redstone and left to his daughter, Shari. About two years ago David saw a distressed property he could buy on the cheap, decimated more than most of big media by cord-cutting and the vicissitudes of the business, but with prominent legacy properties and a major studio.
Initially, Shari was a reluctant seller. She soon came to understand that Paramount's fortunes weren't getting better and her own fortune was evaporating fast. Ellison has the money (his dad's and a partner in private equity firm RedBird Capital) to make the new company work, and help her preserve a semblance of her dad's fortune.
With Shari out of the way, Ellison then had to deal with the incoming Trump administration. The president and his dad are famously pals, Larry being a long-time political supporter. But friendship only goes so far in assuaging Trump's hatred for many elements of the mainstream media, and CBS is at the top of his hate list.
Conservatives have for years complained about the increasing bias of CBS that went beyond the adversarial nature of Murrow, etc.
Trump was the first to do something about it.
With the deal facing a regulatory review, his Federal Communications Commission opened an investigation into bias at CBS since it operates over public airwaves (as opposed to cable), examining whether its news meets 'public interest' guidelines, and throttled the deal.
Trump also personally sued the network over a '60 Minutes' interview with his 2024 Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, saying the new magazine deceptively edited her infamous word-salad answers. OK, maybe it did. But Trump won the election so where are the 'damages'?
Regulatory OK coming
Yet, as everyone who has been following my reporting knows, the lawsuit was inextricably tied to getting the deal done and Shari paid.
Now that it has been settled — for $16 million plus the expectation of much more in public service ads for pro-Trump causes — word is the regulatory nod is coming in a few weeks.
When that happens, Shari pockets about $2 billion, which sounds like a lot until you realize she was probably worth more than $40 billion when she inherited the property.
Paramount and CBS will then be Ellison's problem.
If I were in the news division, I would be afraid, very afraid.
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