Paramount closes deal to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery

Paramount officially closed its multi-billion-dollar deal to acquire fellow media giant Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) on Tuesday, creating the largest provider in news, sports and entertainment offerings in the world.

The deal hands control of WBD’s sprawling movie and television studios, as well as its cable channels and news outlet CNN to billionaire media mogul David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who is also an ally of President Trump.

Tuesday’s close is the culmination of months of tension around the massive merger , which was initially agreed to late last year after Netflix, one of Paramount’s top rivals in the media sector, pulled out of a bid to acquire Warner Bros. following pushback from federal lawmakers and Trump.

Ellison’s moves at Paramount have roiled some at the company since he took the reins last month, including at CBS News where he implemented controversial journalist Bari Weiss as the outlet’s top editor and has overseen an overhaul of its flagship news program “60 Minutes.”

The latest deal also sparked a lawsuit brought by a dozen state attorneys general on antitrust grounds before the two sides reached an agreement this summer to settle the complaint after Paramount made a number of concessions it says will protect both competition and consumers.

Upon the merger’s close, Ellison said in a statement his focus “now turns to the future: building a company that empowers creatives, entertains audiences and rewards shareholders.”

But questions remain about the acquisition’s long-term impact on the media business, most acutely at CNN and CBS.

CNN has frequently served as a foil for Trump and his allies and was already facing doubts around its ability to retain an audience amid a push by consumers toward streaming services and social media for news and information.

The president has sought to ban the outlet from certain White House spaces, attacked its reporters by name and said he wishes to see the company operate under new ownership.

Ellison, in an op-ed for the New York Times published earlier this year, vowed to keep CNN editorially independent of his business and political interests.

“I believe that anyone who oversees a news organization — I am chief executive of Paramount, which owns CBS — shouldn’t put a finger on the scale, especially on matters involving his own company,” Ellison wrote.

“Great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle. That requires newsrooms that reflect the whole world, not one side of it,” he continued in the piece. “And it requires independence.”