CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash talking to members of the viewers earlier than the beginning of the CNN Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 10, 2024.
Andrew Harnik/AP/AP
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Andrew Harnik/AP/AP
After Netflix made a giant play to purchase most of CNN’s guardian firm, journalists and executives on the information community thought that they had dodged a bullet. One week later, it is fairly clear they hadn’t.
Two questions stay: Why did they assume that within the first place? And what’s forward?
Netflix, which is already the nation’s main streamer, had struck a deal to accumulate the film studios, archives, mental property and streaming providers of CNN’s guardian firm, Warner Bros. Discovery.
However Netflix didn’t wish to turn out to be Newsflix. CNN and its sister cable channels have been to be spun off in a separate firm. Inside CNN, that appeared like excellent news.
“It’ll allow us to proceed to roll out our technique to safe an amazing future for CNN by efficiently navigating our digital transition,” Mark Thompson, the chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, wrote in a memo to workers shortly after Warner mentioned it could settle for the Netflix provide.
Mark Thompson, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, speaks onstage throughout Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront 2024 on Might 15, 2024 in New York Metropolis.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Pictures for Warner Bros. Di/Getty Pictures North America
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Pictures for Warner Bros. Di/Getty Pictures North America
Staffers recalled the mass layoffs prompted when new company house owners at Warner canceled the community’s streaming service CNN+ in April 2022, only a month after it launched. They are saying that they had been heartened to assume their new efforts may really get off the bottom.
However within the new plan, as a part of a company household of fading cable channels loaded with debt from the merger that created Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s destiny would stay totally up for grabs.
And President Trump, who has lengthy referred to as networks reminiscent of CNN pretend information and lengthy sought to taunt or toss out CNN’s reporters, now desires a deciding position within the community’s future.
“I feel the those who have run CNN for the final lengthy time period are a shame,” Trump mentioned Wednesday on the White Home in response to a query from a Day by day Mail reporter. “I feel it is crucial that CNN be bought.”
This account relies on interviews with seven present and former CNN staffers, together with journalists and executives. They spoke on situation they not be named as a result of uncertainty surrounding the community’s future and, for these nonetheless at CNN, their jobs.
CNN put in play by company maneuvers
CNN’s standing was put in play this previous summer time, when Warner CEO David Zaslav introduced the corporate would break up in two. Unsolicited, David Ellison, backed by his billionaire father Larry, bid for the complete firm. Zaslav turned them down. They stored at it. He lastly put the corporate up for public sale.
Larry Ellison is the co-founder of Oracle, one of many richest folks on the planet, and an ally of President Trump. David is the top of Skydance, a Hollywood manufacturing firm. Since final summer time, he is additionally the top of Paramount International, which incorporates CBS, Paramount Studios and different properties.
Billionaire and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison shares amusing with President Trump as Ellison stands on a stool at a information convention on the White Home on Jan. 21, 2025. Ellison’s son David is making a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Pictures/Getty Pictures North America
To get that acquisition to the end line, Paramount’s prior possession paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed towards CBS’s 60 Minutes – a lawsuit that exterior authorized observers thought-about flimsy. The corporate additionally introduced the tip of the late evening present of longtime Trump critic and satirist Stephen Colbert.
The Federal Communications Fee accredited the Ellisons’ takeover of Paramount, required as a result of the corporate owns 28 native tv stations and wanted authorities signoff to permit the switch of their broadcast licenses.
With David Ellison now on the helm of CBS, there have been extra modifications that look like geared toward responding to Trump’s criticism of the community and to attraction to conservatives, in line with 4 folks at CBS. (They spoke on situation of anonymity to characterize delicate company issues.)
Ellison named Kenneth Weinstein, a former head of a conservative assume tank, as ombudsman at CBS Information and he additionally chosen Bari Weiss, the founding father of the right-of-center Free Press, because the community’s editor in chief. Ellison additionally fulfilled pledges to scrap DEI initiatives on the community.
Regardless of feeling of reduction, CNN nonetheless weak
Therefore the sigh of reduction inside CNN when information broke of Netflix and Warner’s deal: a lot of CNN’s journalists did not need the political implications of getting Paramount as proprietor. Nor did they wish to merge with CBS, which might entail large job losses.
But the Netflix deal, assuming it’s consummated, would depart CNN and its sister channels uncovered, weak to buy by another person. Possibly a neighborhood TV big like Nexstar or Sinclair Broadcast Group, which have a center-right and a tough proper orientation, respectively, would wish to purchase it. Possibly an funding fund would.
It’s simply as possible Paramount itself would give it one other go – and choose up the previous Warner channels on a budget. Ellison had prompt they have been price $1 a share. (He’s at the moment providing $30 a share for the entire firm.) And now, amongst some staffers at CNN, there is a sense of rising dread.
Trump’s feedback Wednesday in regards to the community’s management have been “extraordinarily unprecedented, maybe not stunning, coming from President Trump, given his lengthy dislike for any journalism that holds him accountable,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper mentioned on his present Wednesday in a clip he reposted on social media. “He made it so clear that the destiny of CNN is what’s driving his view and his potential involvement [in] this potential transaction in the case of who buys Warner Bros. Discovery.”
Tapper’s on-air visitor was former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, founding father of the media publication Standing. He instructed Tapper that Trump was “a thin-skinned aspiring autocrat who desires to grab management of the media. And he desires an obedient press.”
David Ellison has mounted a hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Right here, the Paramount Skydance CEO speaks throughout the Bloomberg Screentime convention in Los Angeles on Oct. 9, 2025.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP through Getty Pictures/AFP
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PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP through Getty Pictures/AFP
Paramount seeks to construct belief because it seeks to bulk up
As this week has confirmed, the Ellisons are removed from completed of their pursuit of the complete firm. They upped their provide a bit. They pledged to unify massive studios and beef up streaming, sports activities rights and cable properties to tackle the likes of Netflix. They promised to save lots of Hollywood from being swallowed by the large streamer. The Ellisons are looking for to rally the creator class on their behalf.
Having been frozen out by Warner chief Zaslav, Paramount pitched itself to Warner’s traders because the logical and extra worthwhile selection — backed by far more money up entrance than Netflix’s provide. Paramount’s new chief authorized officer is Makan Delrahim, maybe greatest generally known as the top of the U.S. Justice Division’s antitrust division throughout Trump’s first time period in workplace. Mockingly, in workplace Delrahim unsuccessfully sought to dam AT&T from buying CNN and its then-corporate guardian.
AT&T could have wished Delrahim had succeeded in courtroom; it spun off its media holdings to merge them with Discovery a number of years later, creating Warner Bros. Discovery.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is among the many lawmakers who’ve raised questions on media consolidation on bids from each Netflix and Paramount.
“We have two already big corporations, each of which have these massive streaming providers,” Warren mentioned Thursday on NPR’s Morning Version. “We’ll spend a bazillion {dollars} to do that. However we’ll make much more bazillions of {dollars}.
“And the way do they plan to do this?” she requested rhetorically. “Nicely, there’s solely two locations to go. They plan to do it by squeezing the employees. That’s, there will be fewer locations to pitch your film. There will be fewer locations to be a make-up artist or to drive vehicles for. And so they plan to squeeze the shoppers. And so they try this, in fact, by elevating costs.”
Main traders, main ties to Trump
David Ellison argues the administration will extra readily approve Paramount than Netflix. And he is not been shy about touting his household’s ties to Trump. “I am extremely grateful for the connection that I’ve with the President, and I additionally imagine he believes in competitors,” Ellison instructed CNBC earlier this week. Earlier this yr, Trump organized for Larry Ellison to obtain a major stake within the U.S. model of TikTok.
Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia holds a joint press convention with President Trump within the Oval Workplace of the White Home on Nov. 18, 2025.
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Win McNamee/Getty Pictures/Getty Pictures North America
As for the financing of the Paramount deal: Based on the small print of Paramount’s filings with federal monetary regulators, it entails the Public Funding Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, managed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, an ally of the president who was implicated within the assassination of Washington Submit columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. No less than two Republican senators mentioned after categorised briefings they believed Prince Mohammad was concerned within the hit. The Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence concluded the prince accredited an operation to seize or kill Khashoggi.
Different funding companions within the Paramount bid embody the L’imad Holding Co. PJSC of Abu Dhabi, the Qatar Funding Authority and the U.S. funding fund Affinity Companions. The final of these funds is managed by Jared Kushner — the president’s son-in-law and former White Home adviser. In its securities submitting, Paramount mentioned all agreed to foreswear any declare to a seat on the board of administrators.
In interviews, CNN staffers recoiled at the concept that the Saudi royal or the Trump in-law would have any possession stake within the community – even given the guarantees they’d maintain their distance.
“They might be in it purely for revenue,” says Kelly Shue, a finance professor on the Yale College of Administration mentioned of the traders. “However it’s also disturbing that they might management media framing and information.”
That is the attraction for Trump.
When a reporter for ABC Information questioned Prince Mohammad about Khashoggi and the Saudi involvement within the September 2001 terror strikes on the united statesin an Oval Workplace look final month, Trump attacked her for being “insubordinate” — as if she labored for him someway.
Equally, on Wednesday, when Trump was requested in regards to the launch of a video exhibiting the U.S. strikes on Venezuelan vessels that his Protection Division claims are operated by terrorists, he turned his ire on the questioner.
“I assumed that problem was lifeless. I am stunned. You have to be with CNN,” Trump mentioned to the reporter, who certainly was with CNN. ” you’re employed for the Democrats, do not you? You are mainly an arm of the Democrat celebration.”
With that, Trump shut down questions from all reporters current.
Paramount’s present provide to purchase Warner is sweet by Jan. eighth, though it might be prolonged.
On Monday, Netflix co-chief Ted Sarandos instructed traders that he foresaw a brand new bid from Paramount and that he expects Netflix’s deal to carry.
There is not any signal that this public sale is over but. And there isn’t any extra readability on who will personal — or management — CNN.
Editor’s observe: CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery is amongst NPR’s monetary supporters.
