On Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders are set to vote on a merger that could dramatically reshape the United States media landscape — combining the company with Paramount Skydance.
The deal, which still needs to be approved by federal regulators, would put the country’s two largest news organizations — CBS News and CNN — under one roof.
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Earlier this month, independent proxy investor advisor Glass Lewis had urged investors to vote in favor of the merger.
Paramount Skydance is led by David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is a key ally of US President Donald Trump. Critics say that under Ellison’s leadership, the network has already taken steps to appease Trump.
Those moves include appointing conservative opinion writer Bari Weiss, who has no prior television experience, to lead the prestigious broadcast network; installing former Trump administration appointee Ken Weinstein as an ombudsman tasked with policing bias; and delaying or tossing stories critical of the administration — including a delay in publishing a story on the notorious El Salvadorian megaprison CECOT, where the Trump administration deported Venezuelan immigrants. Reporter Sharyn Alfonsi, who covered the story, called the move a “political” choice.
But the deal has faced continued regulatory scrutiny. Last month, Democratic US Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey called on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to investigate foreign investment in the merger, which includes the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as investment from China.
Across the pond, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Britain’s antitrust watchdog, is set to launch an investigation into the impending deal, Reuters news agency reported.
Even before the merger, some longtime reporters, including Justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane, had become “disillusioned with the overall direction” at CBS under the direction of Ellison and Weiss and moved on, industry trade publication Status reported.
Among other major changes at the network, CBS announced last month that it would cease operations for CBS News Radio, which represents 6 percent of its workforce.
If the merger moves forward, CNN will come under the same corporate umbrella. CNN, which Trump views as highly critical, has often been the target of his attacks. Ellison reportedly promised Trump that there would be “sweeping changes” to the network if the deal was completed.
CNN has long been the network in the middle, with MS Now, formerly known as MSNBC, on the left and Fox News on the right.
Internally at CNN, the impending merger is raising concerns about what the future of the network will hold, with reports that staffers were “shaken” by the prospect of Ellison running the cable network.
Last month, Paramount’s Ellison appeared on CNBC to calm concerns that CNN’s editorial stance would change under him, saying that editorial independence “needs to be maintained”, adding in the interview that “it is maintained at CBS”, a claim refuted by press freedom experts.
“Ellison has already shown his cards when it comes to editorial independence and his credibility on this issue is zero,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
“Ellison may not turn CNN into Fox News overnight and may occasionally let CNN journalists criticize Trump. But it is a virtual certainty that when his business interests are at stake, Trump will be given a seat at the editor’s desk.”
emerging partisan bias
These concerns are underlined by comparable mergers taking place in the local news ecosystem, where partisan bias is generally less manifest.
The merger under consideration is between the two largest US local affiliate operators – Nexstar and Tegna. Reflecting concerns about a potential merger between the parent companies of CNN and CBS News, a combined Tegna and Nexstar could consolidate and limit access to the different viewpoints, especially since that merger would reach 80 percent of TV households in major U.S. markets.
While individual networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, have their own editorial stances, local news stations affiliated with them do not necessarily share them.
There are approximately 250 ABC-affiliated news stations in the US, but only eight of them are actually operated by ABC’s parent company, Disney. This is comparable to other networks. CBS only operates 17 of its own stations. Fox operates 29, NBC operates 11, but they all have affiliate stations in over 200 markets.
Companies that operate affiliate stations that are not owned and operated by the network include Sinclair, Tegna, and Nexstar, as well as their competitors, including Gray Media, Scripps, Hearst TV, Allen Media Group, and Graham Media.
Under this model, a TV station tailors its content, including news programming, to its local audience. It then licenses national network content to fill out the remainder of its schedule, such as national newscasts, talk shows, sitcoms, sports, and other programming. The station and network share advertising revenue.
For networks, this arrangement allows them to reach audiences across the country without having broadcast infrastructure in every market. For local affiliates, it provides access to high-profile programming that attracts large audiences and supports strong advertising revenues.
Historically, local news operators have not participated in a partisan media ecosystem. But that is beginning to change, starting with the right-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns stations in 85 different markets, including an ABC station in Washington, D.C., and an NBC station in Providence, Rhode Island.
In 2018, the company gained notoriety for forcing anchors in all of its markets to read scripts that further Trump’s point about his right-wing stances and on the state of the American media, using the same scripts on nearly 200 stations.
Now Nexstar, which operates its own cable network called NewsNation, and which was originally positioned as unbiased, is staffed with former Fox personalities and trending right, Status reported.
Limited news options for local consumers
Mergers of local news operators have faced antitrust investigations in the past. In 2018, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively blocked a potential merger between Tribune Media and Sinclair – the largest affiliate operator in the US at the time – by sending it into a lengthy regulatory review, and called on the companies to divest of the stations they owned.
Instead, Tribune pulled out of the deal, and later merged with Nexstar to create the largest operator, bypassing Sinclair.
The $6.2 billion Tegna-Nexstar merger was approved by shareholders in November and has the blessing of the US President.
“We need more competition against the enemy, the Fake News National TV Network,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social in February.
In March, eight state attorneys general, including New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, and Virginia, filed suit to block the merger. The next day, the FCC approved the merger. In response, a coalition of state AGs filed an emergency motion to block it.
Carr, the FCC chair, who would otherwise have been involved in regulatory scrutiny of such a deal, reposted Trump’s true social post on x.
The deal is currently on hold as a federal judge in California has issued a temporary restraining order to block the merger while he considers the antitrust lawsuit.
