FCC Chair Sees Paramount-Skydance Merger ‘Reshaping’ Media Landscape

Skydance Media’s $8.4 billion merger with Paramount Global — a deal that’s finally set to close next week, after a protracted regulatory review and behind-the-scenes wrangling — will go down as one of the blockbuster business stories of the year. But to frame it exclusively as such, as merely a big-dollar business transaction, is to also miss the larger forces at play once the deal is done that will indirectly touch millions of Americans. Specifically, millions of news and media consumers.

In remarks to CNBC, for example, the Trump-appointed FCC chairman made clear that the Paramount-Skydance deal is about so much more than two companies consolidating assets. “President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape,” the FCC’s Brendan Carr told the channel on Friday, by way of contextualizing how the Trump administration actually views this merger. “The media industry across this country needs a course correction.”

Paramount–Skydance merger: Trump’s influence and FCC approval

In other words, the transaction is at least partly about using corporate power to realign how one of the nation’s most influential newsrooms operates — and by extension, how millions of Americans get their news – while President Trump, from the wings, calls at least some of the shots. “The new owners of CBS came in and said, ‘It’s time for a change,” Carr added. “‘We’re going to reorient it towards getting rid of bias.’ At the end of the day, that’s what made the difference for us.”

The merger officially closes August 7. By then, CBS News journalists (CBS being one of the most important assets under the Paramount name) will be working under a new regime led by Skydance CEO David Ellison, a chief who’s pledged that CBS editorial decisions will “reflect the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers.” And many both inside and outside the network, no surprise, view those words as a warning, not a promise.

“I fear the end of CBS as I knew it,” former CBS anchor Connie Chung told CNN Friday. “CBS was always a standalone network. It was autonomous. The news division was autonomous, and it was always unencumbered by pressures from politicians, including presidents, and unencumbered by bean counters. But now? I can see very clearly that the days that I remembered are long gone.”

Anxiety has only deepened in the wake of recent events — from Paramount’s settlement of a lawsuit brought by President Trump over the editing of 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris to the abrupt cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert just two days after the host called the 60 Minutes settlement a “big fat bribe” on air.

Dan Rather minced no words about it all in an interview with Variety. “What really gets me about this is that Paramount didn’t have to settle,” he said. “You settle a lawsuit when you’ve done something wrong. 60 Minutes did nothing wrong. It followed accepted journalistic practices. Lawyers almost unanimously said the case wouldn’t stand up in court.

“Trump is now forcing a whole news organization to pay millions of dollars for doing something protected by the Constitution — which is, of course, free and independent reporting. Now, you take today’s sell-out. And that’s what it was: It was a sell-out to extortion by the President. Who can now say where all this ends?”

Journalism and CBS News under the microscope in Paramount-Skydance deal

Carr’s praise for Skydance’s Trump-friendly promises — like gutting the network’s diversity programs — make clear the degree to which political considerations shaped the FCC’s approval. Trump, for his part, has also claimed the $16 million settlement over his 60 Minutes lawsuit includes an additional $20 million in ads and public service announcements tied to causes he supports. Paramount denies any such deal, but many inside CBS see it as a “Trump tax” — a price paid to secure favor.

The timing of that payout, followed by Colbert’s cancellation, has only fueled fears that political pressure is driving editorial and related decisions. Ellison, who’s looking to slash $2 billion in expenses, has reportedly met with Bari Weiss, the Free Press founder known for her critiques of “woke” culture – and bringing her on in some sort of advisory capacity, as has been rumored, would definitely tilt CBS News toward a more conservative editorial stance.

That said, even as CBS wrestles with an ideological tug-of-war, not all voices under the Paramount banner are falling into lockstep. South Park returned to Comedy Central in recent days, with a premiere mocking Trump, the merger, and the controversial settlement — a reminder that, for now, some creators still have license to not just bite but devour the hand that feeds them.

At its core, the Skydance-Paramount merger is the sort of business deal that regularly plays out in the press; this one, specifically, has teased cost savings along with a more competitive streaming strategy for Paramount. For CBS News, it’s also kicking off a moment of crisis: Can the network maintain its reputation for independent journalism, when its new owners are pledging ideological recalibration to satisfy Trump’s regulators? That answer will unfold in the fullness of time, but one thing is clear for now: This merger reshapes the balance of power in American media at a time when the line between politics and journalism has never been as thin.