Goodbye Colbert, hello Bari Weiss? Paramount is held in Fork on the road after finally winning the FCC approval
With this week’s FCC approval, the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media should be completed in the coming weeks at a value of $ 8 billion. The question for the new company is whether the mental cost is much higher.
This was particularly difficult at a few months at the CBS belonging to Paramount, where the regulation of a trial concerning “60 minutes” and announced the end of the end of the evening of Stephen Colbert led the criticisms to suggest that business leaders bowed to President Donald Trump.
Following the approval of the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday, one of the triumvirate of current primordial leaders, Chris McCarthy, said that he would leave the company. McCarthy was in charge of discoloving the properties of cables like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, which should bear the weight of an estimated drop at $ 2 billion in cost reductions identified by Skydance leaders.
Skydance chief David Ellison should lead the new company, and he identified the former universal framework of NBC Jeff Shell as an incoming president.
CBS News trajectory will be examined
After the closing date of August 7 of the merger, the new leaders will be closely monitored for the way they deal with CBS News, in particular given the $ 16 million paid in a Trump complaint that the “60 -minute” interview of last fall was published to make the opponent Kamala Harris well. Two news leaders – News Wendy McMahon CEO and the “60 -minute” executive producer Bill Owens – resigned because of their opposition to the agreement.
The appointment of the initiate respected Tanya Simon to replace Owens this week was considered a positive sign of people at “60 minutes”.
A few days before the FCC vote, Paramount agreed to hire a mediator at CBS News with the mission of investigating the complaints of political bias. “In all respects, Skydance will guarantee that CBS reports are fair, impartial and based on facts,” Skydance said in a letter to the president of the FCC, Brendan Carr.
The role of a mediator, or public editor, who examines the work of a media is often positive – if they have independence, said Kelly McBride, an ethical expert who has played this role at NPR for five years. “You really want the person to have a loyalty only to their own judgment and to the journalistic mission of the organization,” she said.
However, having the only mission to examine biases could be problematic. To be fair, the work of a journalist should be studied closely before taking this determination, not judged on the basis of a report or a passage, she said.
Carr, in an interview with CNBC on Friday, said that the role “should greatly contribute to restoring America’s confidence in the media.” Anna Gomez, an FCC commissioner who voted to reject the agreement on Thursday, interpreted the arrangement as a means for the government to control journalists.
“They want the media to report them in a positive light or in the light they want,” Gomez told MSNBC. “They therefore do not want the media to do their job, which is to keep the government to account without fear or favor.”
How fusion could collapse through the primordial properties
According to reports published, Ellison explored the purchase of the Free Press, a flourishing information site founded by Bari Weiss perhaps better known for a study by former NPR publisher on liberal prejudices in public broadcasting. A spokesperson for Ellison did not send a message asking for comments on Friday.
The dismissal to Colbert’s idle – he will work until the end of his contract next May – was described by CBS as a financial decision given to the collapse of the television economy at the end of the evening. Colbert de Trump’s relentless farfonage and his criticism of the colony of “60 minutes” led to suspect these motivations.
“Was it really financial?” Comic Jon Stewart wondered. “Or maybe the path of the slightest resistance for your merger of $ 8 billion killed a show that you know that you have stored a fragile and avenger president?”
Stewart’s profane criticism on his own show belonging to Paramount could provide his own test for Skydance. “The Daily Show” is one of the few original programs in Comedy Central, and its contract ends later this year.
In a strange way, the “South Park” of Comedy Central strengthens the CBS according to which Colbert’s decision was financial and non -political. The creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone delivered an episode this week which represented a naked Trump in bed with the devil. Paramount has just signed Parker and Stone to a new $ 1.5 billion agreement that Skydance leaders have certainly eliminated; It makes the “South Park” entire library available for streaming on Paramount +. A platform where Colbert’s spectacle does not do so well.
To discover what to do with others at Paramount’s Cable Networks, or even the networks as a whole, will be an early decision for Ellison, son of a multi-loving and co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison.
“There is a clear opportunity to improve Paramount’s growth profile by leaving these assets,” analyst Doug Creutz of TD Securities said on Friday. “On the other hand, we suspect that the Ellisons have not bought Paramount in order to break it for the parts.”
The merger also brings together the Paramount cinema studio with one of its most regular partners. David Ellison was one of the best investors and producers in industry since the Skydance Foundation in 2006.
Ellison also has a challenge here: years of uncertainty about her future and modest investment in her film pipeline have reduced Paramount market share to last among the main studios. The Paramount + streaming service was a monetary loser.
To revive Paramount, Ellison will seek to reorganize her streaming operations, take advantage of her franchises and try to strengthen family content.
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The film writer AP Jake Coyle contributed to this report. David Bauder writes on the intersection of the media and entertainment for the AP.
