FCC approves Paramount-Skydance merger following Trump settlement, Colbert cancellation
"Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change. That is why I welcome Skydance's commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday. "In particular, Skydance has made written commitments to ensure that the new company's programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum. Skydance will also adopt measures that can root out the bias that has undermined trust in the national news media."
"These commitments, if implemented, would enable CBS to operate in the public interest and focus on fair, unbiased, and fact-based coverage. Doing so would begin the process of earning back Americans' trust. Today's decision also marks another step forward in the FCC's efforts to eliminate invidious forms of DEI discrimination. And Skydance's commitment to enhancing local news and reporting—coverage valued by the public—will also inure to the benefit of the American people," Carr continued.
The merger comes just days after Paramount settled President Donald Trump's lawsuit for multi-million dollars and its network CBS canceled "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."
The newly formed Paramount Skydance Corp. is led by CEO David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, who will serve as president.
Paramount's controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, who controlled more than three-quarters of Paramount's Class A voting shares, will exit the company.
Industry insiders believe Ellison, who was spotted sitting with President Donald Trump at UFC event in April, will aim to eliminate the perceived liberal slant at CBS News.
Redstone was Paramount's controlling shareholder through National Amusements Inc., the company she took control of in 2016 when her media mogul father, Sumner Redstone, was deemed too incapacitated to run the company. He died in 2020.
The merger comes after years of interest from various potential bidders. When it was first announced last year, Paramount said the Skydance Investor Group would pay $2.4 billion for National Amusements Inc.
The 2024 announcement also said the Ellison family and a RedBird Capital Partners-led group would invest a maximum of $6 billion in cash or shares to non-NAI stockholders and in "additional capital to paydown debt and re-capitalize the balance sheet" of the new company.
Redstone is set for a significant windfall as a result of the deal with Ellison. Bloomberg reported last year that she would receive $180 million in severance on top of the roughly $350 million she would pocket from the merger.
Before the merger became official, Paramount and CBS agreed to settle President Trump's "election interference" lawsuit" in July for a sum that could reach north of $30 million, including $16 million upfront.
A source familiar with Paramount's Redstone-era leadership told Fox News Digital that only the initial $16 million was sanctioned by the official mediator and they had no knowledge of any deal Trump made with incoming ownership. However, the remaining allocation will be paid by incoming ownership.
Redstone, who recused herself from discussions related to the Trump's "election interference" lawsuit in February, wasn't thrilled with being tied up in litigation with the sitting president and signed off on a settlement. It is widely believed that she wanted to settle in hopes of preventing potential retribution by Trump's FCC, which had the authority to halt the merger with Skydance.
A source familiar with Paramount's Redstone-era leadership told Fox News Digital that only the initial $16 million was sanctioned by the official mediator and they had no knowledge of any deal Trump made with incoming ownership.
Longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft called the settlement a "shakedown," Comedy Central's Jon Stewart criticized the pact on Paramount's airwaves, CNN's Brian Stetler called it a "disturbing development" and current CBS News staffers were in disbelief.
"This settlement is a cowardly capitulation by the corporate leaders of Paramount, and a fundamental betrayal of '60 Minutes' and CBS News," veteran "60 Minutes" producer Rome Hartman told Fox News Digital at the time.
Ellison and Shell are tasked with enhancing Paramount and CBS brands and have said the newly formed company will aim to be a creative-driven destination for storytellers.
This is a developing story, more to come…
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
13 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump freezes $200 million in UCLA science, medical research funding, citing antisemitism
The Trump administration has frozen hundreds of science, medical and other federal grants to UCLA worth nearly $200 million, citing the university's alleged 'discrimination' in admissions and failure to 'promote a research environment free of antisemitism.' The decision to pull funding comes after Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department said this week that UCLA would pay a 'heavy price' for acting with 'deliberate indifference' to the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who complained of antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Israel's ensuing war in Gaza and campus protests the events spurred last year. The cancellation of grants is the first large-scale targeted funding claw-back against UCLA under the Trump administration. Until now, the White House has largely focused its attempts to remake higher education on elite East Coast schools such as Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania. Each has reached deals with the government in recent weeks over issues including admissions, Jewish student life, student discipline, antisemitism training and gender identity in sports. In a letter to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk dated Wednesday, the National Science Foundation wrote that it was terminating grants because 'the University of California – Los Angeles continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life.' An estimated 300 NSF grants totaling $180 million have been canceled. About half of the funds were already distributed. Before the letter was released Thursday, researchers were expecting the other half to follow. In a letter to the university community Thursday, Frenk wrote that the canceled grants are from NSF, NIH and other federal agencies, but he did not give a dollar amount or list the other agencies. A partial list of terminated grants reviewed by The Times added up to roughly $200 million. The list was provided by a source who was not authorized to share the information. Frenk called the government's decision 'deeply disappointing' and 'a loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do.' 'In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons,' Frenk wrote. 'This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.' Spokespeople for the NSF and NIH did not immediately reply to requests for comment Thursday. The federal government's decision to cut UCLA off from significant federal funds follows a similar playbook to its dealings with Ivy League institutions. The Trump administration this spring canceled billions of dollars in federal grants to Harvard, which has sued in federal court to reverse the terminations and stop a Trump move to rescind its ability to host international students. Harvard is separately in negotiations with the White House to end the legal fight. Columbia University this month agreed to pay more than $200 million to the federal government to resolve investigations over alleged antisemitism amid its response to 2024 pro-Palestinian protests. On Wednesday, Brown University also came to a $50 million agreement with the White House. The Brown payment will go toward Rhode Island workforce development programs. The Department of Justice said this week that it had found UCLA guilty of violating the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students. The department also indicated that it wanted to the university to enter into negotiations to avoid a federal lawsuit. The department gave UCLA a Tuesday deadline to communicate its desire to negotiate. If not, the DOJ said, it was ready to sue by Sept. 2. The University of California, in a statement, was unclear on whether it would settle or go to court. 'UCLA has addressed and will continue to address the issues raised in [the] Department of Justice notice,' Stett Holbrook, Associate Director, Strategic and Critical Communications, wrote in a statement Wednesday. He cited a $6.45 million settlement the university reached with Jewish students who had sued over claims that the 2024 encampment had discriminated against them. 'We have cooperated fully with the Department of Justice's investigation and are reviewing its findings closely,' Holbrook wrote. In his Thursday letter, Frenk shot back against the cuts. 'Let me be clear: Federal research grants are not handouts. Our researchers compete fiercely for these grants, proposing work that the government itself deems vital to the country's health, safety and economic future,' he wrote. 'Grants lead to medical breakthroughs, economic advancement, improved national security and global competitiveness — these are national priorities,' Frenk wrote, adding that 'we are actively evaluating our best course of action. We will be in constant communication as decisions move forward.'
UPI
14 minutes ago
- UPI
Trump announces new tariffs on dozens of trading partners
July 31 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump formalized his reciprocal tariffs policy on Thursday, imposing stiff levies on dozens of nations while making good on his promise to use the economic measure to try and balance what he sees as negative trade deficits with U.S. trading partners. The American president signed an executive order putting a 10% tariff on most trading partners, aside from a handful with whom recent deals have either been made with or are pending. Trump has long turned to economic tariffs as a bargaining tool, both as a negotiation tactic and as an attempt to spur the domestic manufacturing industry. Since returning to the White House in January, the New York real estate mogul has railed against trade deficits, often framing them as examples of trading partners taking advantage of the United States. The executive order was signed hours before a White House-imposed deadline for other countries to finalize deals with the United States, while delaying the imposition of the tariffs until Aug. 7. It also permits goods loaded onto shipping vessels prior to Aug. 7 that arrive in the United States before Oct. 5 to be exempt from the levies. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a press conference held Thursday, before the executive order was announced, that the sweeping tariffs apply to all trading partners who have not fashioned "bespoke" deals with the president. "We promised that the president would negotiate with countries all around the world to cut tailor-made trade deals depending on those countries' challenges, how badly they've ripped off the United States of America and our manufacturing industry and our workforce in the past," she said. Countries facing the highest levies under the executive order are Syria at 41%, Myanmar and Laos at 40% and Switzerland at 39%. Earlier Thursday, Trump announced he was pausing plans to place tariffs on Mexico for 90 days to allow negotiations to progress. On Wednesday night, he threatened ongoing trade negotiations with Canada over Ottawa's decision to recognize a Palestinian state. Canada is set to see its tariff go from 25% to 35%. Recent deals have also been reached with South Korea, the European Union, Britain, Japan and others. It also comes on the heels of Trump slapping a 40% tariff on Brazilian goods over its prosecution of his ally, former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, for a total of 50%. "We have never had a president who wields the full power of the United States to negotiate good deals for our country and its people like President Trump," Leavitt said. "This is what maximum leverage looks like."
CNN
14 minutes ago
- CNN
Biden warns ‘these are dark days' under Trump administration
Joe Biden Donald TrumpFacebookTweetLink Follow Former President Joe Biden warned on Thursday that the country is facing 'dark days' under President Donald Trump's watch, saying the executive branch 'seems to be doing its best to dismantle the Constitution.' 'They're doing it all too often with the help of a Congress that's just sitting in the sidelines and enabled by the highest court in the nation. The rulings they've made, my God,' Biden said as he spoke at the National Bar Association's annual gala in Chicago. 'Folks, in our lives, the life of our nation, there are moments so stark that they divide all that came before from everything that followed. Moments that forced us to confront hard truth about ourselves, our institutions and democracy itself,' he continued. 'We are, in my view, at such a moment in American history, reflected in every cruel executive outreach, every rollback of basic freedoms, every erosion of long-standing established precedent.' Biden never mentioned Trump by name, instead referring to him as 'this guy,' and argued the American people are beginning to realize the need for judicial checks on the executive branch. 'Judges matter. Courts matter. The law matters and the Constitution matters. I think a lot of Americans are starting to realize that under the pressure we're under now with this guy we have as president,' he said. 'Oh, get ready, folks, this is just starting.' Biden called out 'law firms bowing to pressure, bending to bullies, instead of staying rooted in justice and the law,' along with some of the biggest news outlets in the country. He also scorned 'the apparent glee some of our politicians express' at the administration's aggressive approach to immigration enforcement. Biden said the current administration is intent on working to 'ease all the gains we've made in my administration, to erase history, rather than make it, to erase fairness, equality, to erase justice itself.' 'Folks, we can't sugarcoat this. These are dark days, but you're all here for the same reason,' he said. 'It's because our future is literally on the line. We must, we must be unapologetic of fighting for the future.' Biden's latest speech comes the same week two senior aides appeared for interviews before the House Oversight Committee as part of the Republican-led panel's intensifying investigation into the former president's cognitive decline and possible efforts to conceal it from the public. In his speech in Chicago, the former president joked about his age. 'I have the dubious distinction of being elected the youngest senator in American history and the oldest president in American history,' he said. 'It's hell turning 40 twice.' The former president, who continues to undergo treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer, has kept a relatively low profile since leaving the White House, giving only a handful of speeches. He spends most of his time at his homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and is working on a forthcoming book. As he closed out his speech, Biden encouraged Americans to 'summon the courage' to stand up for what's right. 'It means take the client who can't write a big check, but needs protecting their basic fundamental rights. It means signing onto that brief that may draw the ire of people in power, but you know it's the right thing to do,' he said. 'It means standing firm against unconstitutional actions, designed to intimidate you. It means write the article, give the speech, lead the protest, defend the ideas your country is founded on, to protect your institutions, to fight for the soul of the nation.'
