After acquiring Paramount and pledging to address bias at subsidiary CBS News, Skydance CEO David Ellison is reportedly preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of another left-leaning outlet, CNN.
The planned offer is for the whole company—including CNN, other cable networks, and its movie studio—the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation. The news comes as Warner has already announced plans to spin off CNN from the company’s more profitable streaming business.
“By preparing a play for the company before Warner’s planned split, [Skydance] is attempting to pre-empt a potential bidding war” with large technology companies, the Journal reported.
CNN has struggled with cratering finances and ratings in recent years amid scrutiny of its left-wing bias. The network’s revenue tanked around $400 million in three years, according to financial metrics revealed at a defamation trial in January. Primetime ratings have plunged 62 percent since 2020, while total-day viewership has dropped 58 percent overall and 71 percent among the key 25–54 demographic.
A takeover by Ellison’s Skydance could usher in major changes to CNN. This summer, Ellison vowed to crack down on ideological bias at CBS as part of a deal to secure the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of Skydance’s merger with CBS parent company Paramount. There’s now a “very real possibility,” Dylan Byers of Puck reported, that Ellison could unite CBS News and CNN before expanding “Bari Weiss’s purview as ‘editor-in-chief’ or ‘co-president’ to include both.”
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Though CNN reporters and anchors may not be happy to hear that news, Warner shareholders are. The company’s stock soared nearly 30 percent following the Journal‘s Skydance report.
In a July meeting with FCC chairman Brendan Carr, Ellison emphasized his “commitment to unbiased journalism” and pledged to reflect “the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers” at CBS, according to a letter describing the meeting.
Ellison fulfilled one of his commitments to the FCC on Monday, when Paramount announced that it has hired a former president of the conservative-leaning Hudson Institute to serve as CBS’s ombudsman investigating any complaints about bias from employees and viewers.
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