The nearly $111 billion Paramount-Warner marriage would unite their studios and their back catalogue of shows and movies. It would add such franchises as D.C. Comics, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones to Paramount's Top Gun, Mission Impossible and Star Trek powerhouse. Paramount+ and HBO Max. CBS and CNN.
The entertainment conglomerate, formed three years ago when Warner Media spun off from AT&T and merged with Discovery, Inc., announced plans this past summer to split back into two separate companies. Its functional studio and streaming arm, the source of the publicly traded company's value as a security, would thus be unshackled from its network TV business, which still generates a ton of cash but is a declining in value (as evinced by WBD's $9 billion write-down of its TV properties).
The White House released audio of Trump's press gaggle on Sunday, during which he praised Larry and David Ellison, the father-son duo that now owns Paramount, CBS's parent company. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, is a close ally of Trump and is taking part in the U.S.-backed takeover of TikTok, a deal brokered by the Trump administration. He's doing pretty well, huh? So who's going to be the head anchor at CBS? Trump quipped at one point during the gaggle.