The Paramount/WBD Merger is Done — So What’s Next for CNN?

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TOP STORY

DONE DEAL

Now that the deal is (finally) complete, the leaders of Skydance have to do the work of convincing consumers and investors that the company can succeed. The deal closed today, Oct. 6.

While there are plenty of people who will be paying attention to the money of it all (and boy, there’s a lot of money involved), there are plenty of other aspects of the merger that warrant continuous attention. Today’s stack takes a look at what might be keeping CNN’s Mark Thompson from committing to the network long-term — something it’s still not entirely clear he actually wants to do.

There are also practical concerns that will inevitably impact people who worked for Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal is great for the top of the food chain, but may not work out for everyone.

THREE TAKES

Status, Oliver Darcy — Thompson may be staying onboard, theoretically, and his name may be in David Ellison’s latest press release touting “the finalized leadership team,” but it turns out he hasn’t actually signed a new contract. His current deal “expires in the spring,” Darcy noted. “That’s because Status has learned that Thompson has yet to come to terms on such a deal, having only started engaging in talks with Skydance last week, when Ellison conveyed his desire for him to stay,” he added. But Thompson is “likely to strike a new deal with his Skydance overlords” for at least some amount of time, though he’s not the only person who still needs to commit; the list of people who haven’t signed new deals also  “includes Executive Editor Virginia Moseley, executive vice president of talent and creative development Amy Entelis, and executive vice president of U.S. programming Eric Sherling.”

Puck, Dylan Byers — CBS News editorial head Bari Weiss is “hanging over” the conversations about the future of CNN, Byers wrote today. And, he insisted, reports that Weiss will not be taking over at the network “at close” of the Skydance deal are using “modifiers” that are “doing an awful lot of work.” A source told Byers, “It would be wrong to say she won’t be involved at CNN. David loves her. The question is: How?” Byers also posited that the Weiss question “may also explain the delay in Mark’s own contract negotiations.” Ultimately, “CNN and CBS News will eventually have to merge their back-end operations in service of David’s debt-reduction efforts,” something that will require “the need for one clear leader across the entire news division.”

CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — The merger is “a stunning achievement” for Ellison & co, Stelter pointed out, and “it’s one that symbolizes Big Tech’s ascendance in Hollywood.” Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz are already “taking cues from tech companies as they seek to transform the entertainment industry,” and today “they promised that consumers will see improvements to products like HBO Max and Paramount+.” But the merger is also one that is going to come at a cost. The pair also hinted at layoffs and added, “Integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce. We are committed to handling this process thoughtfully and respectfully.” There are also other concerns: “the new company is incredibly highly leveraged, with roughly $80 billion in debt and an aggressive timeline to pay it down.”

TAKEAWAY: There’s the public-facing story that Skydance leadership wants to sell (Invest! Celebrate! Don’t worry about your streaming services, just enjoy the ride!) — and then there’s all the behind-the-scenes drama. The stack, rightfully, has been focused on the latter. Obviously, massive questions loom about the extent of Bari Weiss’s involvement with CNN. But really, all eyes should be on Thompson right now, because his next move will tell the story. It’s hard to see him agreeing to an extension — even a short-term one — without a guarantee of autonomy.

📰 TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger — Last summer, Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity was an open supporter of data centers. The Bulwark obtained audio from a December 2025 appearance at the Greene County Republicans event in which she said “that while people hold ‘mixed views’ of data centers, they are a ‘nice opportunity for rural PA, where we have a lot of space where it wouldn’t be so intrusive.’” Two months after that, Garrity “dismissed voters’ concerns about the noise generated by data centers and their impact on energy prices on the grounds that ‘there’s some misinformation out there.’” Now, her messaging is fully aligned with President Donald Trump, even though her spokesperson insisted to The Bulwark that Garrity is giving “the same answer to a question that the Governor [Josh Shapiro] has sliced and diced for his advertising purposes.”

SCOOP Punchbowl News AM, Laura Weiss — Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) is the latest member of the GOP “willing to publicly break with Trump,” something he made evident when he called “out the president’s son over a ProPublica report that a Russian oligarch paid for some of his wedding-related expenses.”  Curtis told Punchbowl, “Watching what was happening in the Trump administration, it’s really hard to draw a line and say, ‘Okay, you’ve crossed it.’” Curtis also said that a “number” of Republican senators have privately expressed “situations involving Trump” have felt ““uncomfortable” or “unclear.”

SCOOP  CJR’s Near and Far, Liz Skalka — Twenty-five-year-old Evan Newton just bought The Monticello News, the same Georgia outlet he interned for, and he’s already increased print and digital subscriptions by 30%. Newton old Skalka that success is in part due to “summaries of the print paper he’d been posting on TikTok.” Thanks to an “almost overnight bump in ad sales,” he also “already has more pages to fill with local news, of which there’s plenty.” He told Skalka, “I would just tell people, if they had any interest, either in local journalism or if they wanted to go out and buy their local paper, just do it. I mean, it’s a lot of hard work, but just go out and do it. Be a part of what’s going on.”

ANALYSIS Awful Announcing’s The A Block, Sam Neumann — ESPN has finally figured out how to play to Jason Kelce’s strengths, two years after he signed a 3-year, $24 million deal. Kelce made his debut as a play-by-play analyst calling the Colts-Commanders game in London, and “took control of the booth from the opening kickoff and broke down nearly everything happening at the line of scrimmage, offering instant reactions on big plays and, at times, digging into the intricacies of quarterback play more thoroughly than the Hall of Fame quarterback sitting next to him.” Despite the fact that Kelce is new to the realm of calling games, “he sounded like he belonged, and the broadcast as a whole sounded like a legitimate NFL telecast, no small feat for a booth that didn’t come together until late summer.”

ANALYSIS The Federalist, Jordan Boyd — Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) “thinks he’s the most important man in American” despite having “accomplished nothing,” Boyd charged today. She added that Tillis “insulted his voters by supporting bills that rewrote the definition of marriage, gave Democrats some of their gun control wants, allowed trans-identifying individuals in the military, mad women eligible for the draft, and threw taxpayer money at Ukraine.” The senator is promoting a new book in which he “pretends his ire is directed at ‘presidents,’ but that is “refuted by his cover alone, which features pictures of several Trump admin officials and allies, but no Trump.”

ANALYSIS Barrett Media’s Morning Edition, Jason Barrett — YouTube is changing rules for broadcasters and brands, and that means it’s time to pay attention. The changes, which include that “its Shorts recommendation system will now favor original content,” are superficially “positive for many working across the broadcasting business,” but “the easy path is about to get harder,” he warned. Barrett explained, “YouTube’s systems are placing more weight on original videos that offer insight and creativity. Channels that mostly aggregate or re-upload other creators’ work will see less distribution in the Shorts feed.”

ANALYSIS The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — In what might be the “least surprising” media news of the year, former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will be joining Fox News as a contributor in November. Leavitt “was known for her combative relationship with the press — at least in press briefings” and “was, perhaps, the most visible person in the Trump administration other than Trump himself,” Jones pointed out. She will now be a “‘vocal advocate’ on the most-watched cable news network.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

ADWEEK Daily, Rebecca Stewart & Robert Klara — Two years into his “Back to Starbucks” plan, CEO Brian Niccol says that treating the coffee chain’s’ slump as a brand problem rather than an operational one drove a 7.9% bump in comparable sales and a 30% stock surge, even as rivals—Dunkin’! Dutch Bros! 7Brew! Luckin!—compete for the market Starbucks created. QUOTE  “On arrival, the former marketer treated Starbucks’ slump as a brand problem and has been willing to let margins take the hit to fix it. Now, the question is whether his bet on hospitality can scale across more than 40,000 coffeehouses while keeping investors happy, too.”

Digiday Daily, Jim Cooper & Sara Jerde — Advertising Week New York appointed viral video creator Dhar Mann as its first-ever Chief Creator Officer, tasking him with driving a $100 million deal target to bypass traditional agency bureaucracy and connect creators directly with brand CMOs. If you’re not familiar with his videos, we do recommend falling into the rabbit hole for some cheap, quick entertainment. QUOTE  “The goal with Dhar Mann as AWNY’s chief creator officer is to make it easier to make connections that are often held up by corporate red tape and too many layers between creator and CMO.”

Page Six Hollywood, Ian Mohr — Blockbuster maestro Michael Bay is in final negotiations to return to the Transformers franchise and direct its eighth installment for Skydance, aiming to reignite an action movie series that grossed $4.38 billion during his initial five-film run. QUOTE  “Bay is making the deal to return to the ‘Transformers’ movies via his reps at Range Media Partners, we hear. (Bay split from super-agent Ari Emanuel and his longtime reps at WME in 2022.) Just this week, Robert Pattinson said that Bay’s 2007 ‘Transformers’ is the ‘definitive movie of the 2000s,’ in an A24 and Letterboxd video.”

The Publisher Newsletter, Esther Kezia Thorpe — The Publisher Newsletter released newsletter guidelines from heavy-hitting newsletter producers—and now it’s getting a nod in the newsletter of newsletters! POLITICO Europe Senior Executive Editor Kate Day, The Guardian’s Toby Moses, and beehiiv’s Jake MccGwire explained why publishers are less interested in raw subscriber scale than in engagement from highly influential, niche audiences. POLITICO manually hand-selected 200 key policymakers to target before launching its Playbook newsletter. QUOTE  “Since launching in 2017, the London Playbook newsletter has now amassed 95,000+ subscribers. But Day emphasised that although subscriber milestones are a boost for the team, what really makes it work as a product is who’s reading and how often.”

The Ankler’s The Wakeup, Sean McNulty — Amazon Prime Video locked in a six-year global rights deal for the Emmy Awards starting in 2027, paying $20 million to $25 million annually to double the TV Academy’s domestic broadcast fees while making the show free to stream. QUOTE  “The price tag is somewhere between $20M and $25M per year for the TV Academy (roughly doubling its current fee from the networks for U.S.-only rights) . . . as TV gets a 2-year jump on the movie business in the awards show streaming migration (joining The Actor Awards on NETFLIX) come September 2027.”

Morning Brew, Abigail Rubenstein & Matty Merritt — Morning Brew Inc. expanded its publishing ecosystem by acquiring CPG trends newsletter Express Checkout. QUOTE  “So get ready to have Nate Rosen and Jenna Movsowitz fill you in on the latest trends in consumer packaged goods and the why and how behind what we’ll all be buying next.”

Status, Oliver Darcy — The White House stopped POLITICO from joining Air Force One as the designated traveling print pool reporter for President Trump’s trip to Nebraska. Like the ban a few weeks ago, this prompted every other news org to refuse the pool slot in solidarity, leaving the president without a print pool reporter. QUOTE  “Of course, the move comes after Trump banned POLITICO, CNN and MS NOW from the White House last month, prompting a judge to temporarily restore their access at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It also comes despite Axel Springer boss Mathias Döpfner’s very best efforts to ingratiate himself with the MAGA movement. Sad!”

OTHER COOL STUFF

Page Six Hollywood — Yes, we included an OCS entry from Michael Douglas’ forthcoming memoir, One Helluva Ride, yesterday. Yes, we’re doing it again because it produced another great one: In the latest tidbit uncovered by P6H, Douglas recalls celebrating his 1988 Golden Globe win for Wall Street when George Harrison and Bob Dylan randomly showed up at his hotel room with a giant dog that started eating $100-a-lick caviar off the room service table as Dylan remarked, “Far out, dog loves caviar!”

Morning Brew — Following an executive order directing federal agencies to refer to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” (SI), web domain flippers triggered a gold rush for Slovenia’s country-code domain (.si), driving registrations up 2,199% in a single month.

POLITICO Playbook — Luca Guadagnino’s new Sam Altman biopic Artificial premiered at the New York Film Festival. It’s a dark comedy about AI anxieties that early reviews described as so frightening it’s hard to laugh. Good joke by the authors: “Playbook reached out to Neon, the film’s distributor, to ask if it had considered changing the film’s name to ‘Super.’ We haven’t heard back.”

👀 WHAT GOT MISSED? 👀

The Washington Sun, Evan McMorris-Santoro, Jasmine Wright, and Manuela Silva — Democrats are trying to reach out to young men, The Sun reported today. “Trump made huge gains among young men in 2024, and Sam found a couple of Democrats trying to win them back — Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona — among the speakers at the conference. Sam spoke to them, and writes about the various efforts others Democrats have made to connect with the young guys in recent years.”

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

Morning Brew — Today’s newsletter began with newsletter news, as mentioned above: Express Checkout is joining the team, which means Nate Rosen and Jenna Movsowitz will be on hand to inform readers about “the latest trends in consumer packaged goods and the why and how behind what we’ll all be buying next.” But in addition to that, today’s newsletter takes a look at the return of SCOTUS from break and the justices’ current case: “Boulder, CO’s lawsuit against Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy for damages it claims they contributed to via climate change.” The lawsuit also “claims the energy companies contributed to climate disasters, including fires, that impacted the city,” and “it could go a lot of ways.”

Elsewhere, Morning Brew hit all the big headlines: Skydance, the potential plague outbreak in Russia, and the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine, which went to American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel. The group developed “a technique that uses light to control individual nerve cells in the brain called optogenetics.” Those certainly aren’t words we read every day!

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.