Why did CBS settle with Trump? Media mogul Shari Redstone speaks

The biggest media story of the year, so far, has been Skydance acquiring Paramount, which owns, among other properties, CBS. The deal was completed shortly after Paramount settled a lawsuit with President Donald Trump, who sued over claims that CBS News edited a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to help her win the 2024 election.

Trump’s case stood little to no chance in court, but the general narrative was that Paramount settled with Trump to get the required approval from his administration for the merger.

At the center of all this was Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount.

Now, The New York Times’ James B. Stewart has a new major story out — “Why Did Shari Redstone Do It?” — which details the 13 months of negotiations between Paramount and Skydance, as well as the reasoning behind settling the lawsuit with Trump.

Stewart talked to Redstone throughout the process on the condition that she wouldn’t be quoted until after the deal between Paramount and Skydance reached a conclusion. The controversy, of course, was the settlement with Trump.

Why did she do it?

Why did she sell Paramount? Why did she settle with Trump?

Stewart wrote, “Although Ms. Redstone personally withdrew from settlement talks, she remained the public face of Paramount and CBS as nonexecutive chair. She was accused of greed, conflicts of interest and selling out CBS News. One all-caps headline on the widely read Drudge Report described her as the ‘Woman Who Destroyed CBS News.’”

Redstone told Stewart that others were interested in Paramount over the years, but she had always resisted. That changed when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. She told Stewart, “Once that happened, I wanted out. I wanted to support Israel, and address issues around antisemitism and racism.”

As far as the settlement with Trump, Redstone said, “I believed it was always in Paramount’s best interest to settle. We may not like the world we live in, but a board has to do what’s in the best interest of shareholders.”

That meant clearing the way for the approval from Trump’s FCC, as well as avoiding the risk of losing in court, considering Trump was suing for $10 billion. (The settlement is believed to have been for about $16 million.)

Redstone said she was “blown away” by how little it cost Paramount to settle with Trump.

Meanwhile, there have been reports that there is a side deal between Skydance and Trump — worth another $20 million in free advertising, public service announcements and other pro-Trump programming. Stewart reports that Redstone didn’t know about that and was upset about it. She told him, “I hope it isn’t true.”

Check out Stewart’s detailed profile of a fascinating time in news, and one of the most talked about media deals in history — a deal that could have ramifications for decades to come.

Although I should add this analysis from Oliver Darcy’s Status newsletter: “Stewart’s piece treated Redstone with unusual generosity. Despite having thoroughly disgraced herself in front of the entire media industry, Redstone was treated to an oddly indulgent write-up — one that bent over backward to frame the events of the last year with her side of the story. The result read like a sympathetic brief for a media heiress desperate to salvage her reputation.”

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Let’s talk late night

One of the subplots of the CBS sale was word that Stephen Colbert’s late-night show on the network would be canceled after the season ends next May. The announcement came just days after Colbert blasted Paramount for settling with Trump, calling it a “big fat bribe.”

However, there are those inside the network who claim the Trump stuff had nothing to do with Colbert’s cancellation. They claim it all came down to finances, that Colbert’s show was losing CBS $40 million a year.

But another late-night host, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, isn’t buying that.

Kimmel told Variety’s Clayton Davis, “I just want to say that the idea that Stephen Colbert‘s show was losing $40 million a year is beyond nonsensical. These alleged insiders who supposedly analyze the budgets of the shows — I don’t know who they are, but I do know they don’t know what they’re talking about. They seem to only be focused on advertising revenue and have completely forgotten about affiliate fees, which number in the hundreds of millions — probably in total billions — and you must allocate a certain percentage of those fees to late-night shows. It really is surprising how little the media seems to know about how the media works. There’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate.”

As far as late-night, Kimmel said, “Network television is declining. There’s no question about that. But more people are watching late-night television than ever before — and I include Johnny Carson in that. People may find that shocking. When Carson was at his peak, he was getting around 9 million viewers a night. That’s huge. Of course, the lead-in shows were getting 30 and 40 million, which was a big part of it. But people are still watching late-night — just in different places. Our monologues get between 2 and 5 million views, sometimes more, every night. Seth Meyers gets 2 million on YouTube alone. We’re not even talking about Instagram or the other platforms. ‘The Daily Show’ — Jon Stewart on a Monday night will get 5 million views. Then you add in the TV ratings. So the idea that late-night is dead is simply untrue. People just aren’t watching it on network television in the numbers they used to — or live, for that matter. So the advertising model may be dying, but late-night television is the opposite.”

However, former late-night host Conan O’Brien said this recently at his induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame: “Yes, late-night television as we have known it since around 1950 is going to disappear. But those voices are not going anywhere. People like Stephen Colbert are too talented and too essential to go away. It’s not gonna happen.

The state of late-night

Be sure to check out the latest episode of “The Poynter Report Podcast” as Ren LaForme, Poynter’s managing editor, and I talk about the state of late-night television.

CBS is getting out of the late-night business, but NBC’s hosts (Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers) are signed on for two more years, and Kimmel has another year left on his deal with ABC.

So what happens now?

I was a kid in the 1970s, so I grew up with Johnny Carson. Ren graduated from high school in the early 2000s, meaning he grew up watching David Letterman.

But times have changed. Few watch late-night shows live. They have become vehicles for viral moments to show up on social media the next day — such as sketches or celebrities playing games or a late-night host singing songs in a car with famous artists.

Ren told me, “Now, it's not appointment (television). I can open it up and watch it anytime I want. And in fact, it'll probably just come across my screen eventually anyway.”

As far as traditional late-night? Ren says, “ Late night — sorry, guys — it's right up there with newspapers. It's not that they're not coming back. They're not going to necessarily go away, but they continue to be an ever-niche product. …  So, yeah, if I'm a network executive, this is a time to find some interesting, bold people (to) set up a side company and let them go nuts, even if it starts hammering away at your core late-night business, because we need to find something new.”

So check out the podcast. Aside from watching on YouTube, you can also find the show on Apple, Spotify, and most places where you find podcasts.

Nexstar’s takeover of Tegna

Well, this is a really big deal — pun intended.

Local TV giant Nexstar said Tuesday that it had an agreement to buy rival TV company Tegna for $6.2 billion. It’s a deal that would give Nexstar a dominating presence in local TV across the country.

My colleague Al Tompkins, who knows the local TV business as well as anyone, writes for Poynter, “If it does go through, the Nexstar-Tegna merger would create a broadcasting giant. The combined company would own 265 stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, with a footprint in 132 of the country’s 210 designated market areas, the standard unit Nielsen uses to measure TV audiences. That includes nine of the top 10 markets, 41 of the top 50, 62 of the top 75 and 82 of the top 100. But the number that matters most is that Nexstar’s reach would grow to 80% of U.S. television households — more than double the FCC’s current 39% cap.”

However, Tompkins also writes, “The FCC appears open to changing the rules. Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency ‘is committed to ending all of the rules and regulations that are no longer necessary.’ Similar rollbacks have happened before.”

Nexstar isn’t the only company eyeing Tegna. Tompkins writes, “Rumors had been flying for weeks that both Nexstar and Sinclair wanted to buy Tegna but were waiting until the FCC closed its public comment period on ownership caps. Media reports, including a Bloomberg story on Sinclair’s interest Monday evening, may have pushed Nexstar to go public earlier than planned.”

Doing the right thing

These days, media observers are keeping a close eye on the opinion section of The Washington Post. Earlier this year, Post owner Jeff Bezos announced major changes, telling staff, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

That led respected journalist David Shipley to step down as the Post’s opinion editor. Other big names have followed.

Many accuse Bezos of bowing down to President Donald Trump.

But in a strong editorial published Tuesday, the Post’s editorial board criticized the actions of federal agents deployed in Washington, D.C., under the direction of Trump.

The editorial — titled, “Mask off, please” — said federal officers should identify who they are working for, and should remove the masks they wear while patrolling the district.

The board wrote, “Patrolling the capital in masks risks squandering any goodwill. Officers who won’t identify which agency they are with, let alone show their badge number, intimidate the communities they patrol and increase the odds of dangerous escalation. While masked police are common in other countries, this lack of transparency is at odds with the American tradition.”

The Post pointed out incidents of those posing as agents or police officers to intimidate people — or worse. The Post wrote, “The suspect who shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in Minnesota allegedly impersonated a police officer when he arrived at their homes in the middle of the night. Arrests have been made this year in California, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida of men pretending to be ICE officers. In one case, a man sexually assaulted a woman, threatening her with deportation if she did not comply with his orders.”

The editorial acknowledged the explanation for the masks — that it keeps law enforcement from being doxxed, threatened or, later, targeted with violence. It also acknowledged that there could be times when officers working undercover must maintain their anonymity.

“But,” the Post wrote, “it is a step too far for standard-fare enforcement activity — especially of nonviolent immigrants.”

It was a case of the Post writing the right thing, regardless of politics.

This item gets a thumbs down

Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips is taking a buyout because, he says, the paper is eliminating that position. Phillips tweeted, “News, personal: @chicagotribune has eliminated the post of film critic. This left me two options: wait for a newsroom reassignment or take the buyout. I took the buyout. Time for something new, somewhere else. Exit column later this week.”

It’s believed to be the first time since the 1950s that the Tribune will not have a chief film critic. Perhaps the most famous of Tribune film critics was the late Gene Siskel, who co-hosted the TV show “At the Movies” with rival Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. Phillips briefly co-hosted “At the Movies.”

Siskel died in 1999. He was replaced by Michael Wilmington, who was then replaced by Phillips, who has been reviewing theatre and film at the Tribune for 24 years.

Earlier this year, another noted Chicago movie critic, Richard Roeper, took a buyout from the Sun-Times.

Slate critic and editor Sam Adams tweeted, “that's the Chicago Sun-Times and the Tribune getting rid of their film critics within six months of each other. If they tried to make Siskel and Ebert today it would be two empty chairs.”

A really good conversation

Actress Aubrey Plaza spoke publicly at length for the first time about her late husband, who died by suicide in January. Plaza was a guest on Amy Poehler’s podcast, “Good Hang.” Poehler and Plaza worked together on the NBC series “Parks and Rec” from 2009 to 2015. Plaza met her husband, Hollywood writer and director Jeff Baena, in 2011, and they were married in 2021.

Just moments into the overall upbeat interview, Poehler tactfully said, “To just get it out of the way — people want to see you and want to see how you are. They love you. They love you, and they want to see you. You've had this terrible, terrible, tragic year. You've lost your husband. You've been dealing with that, and you've been looking for all different ways in which to feel and find support. And I think, on behalf of all the people who feel like they know you and the people who do know you, how are you feeling today?”

Plaza said, “I mean, right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you. Overall, I'm here and I'm functioning, and I feel, you know, I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think, like, I'm OK. But, you know, it's like a daily struggle, obviously.”

Plaza went on to compare her grief to the alien horror movie “The Gorge,” which starred Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy. She said, “In the movie, there's like a cliff on one side and then there's like a cliff on the other side, and there's like a gorge in between, and it's filled with all these monster people that are trying to get them. And, like, I swear, when I watched it, I was like, ‘That feels what my grief is like.’ Or what grief could be like.”

Plaza added, “Where it's like, at all times there's a giant, like, ocean of just awfulness that's right there, and I can see it, and sometimes I just want to dive into it and just be in it. And then, sometimes I just look at it. And then sometimes I try to get away from it, but it's always there.”

Poehler then considerately moved on to the next topic and carried on through the rest of the interview. It was a masterclass in respectful interviewing, and it showed how the tone and comfort level of podcasts are sometimes the right platform for discussing difficult topics. Naturally, it helped that Poehler and Plaza are friends, but that, too, can be an advantage of podcasting.

Plaza made an appearance at “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary special in February to introduce musical guests Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard. But she had not been interviewed since her husband’s death.

Media tidbits

• The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin with “The Race to Rescue PBS and NPR Stations.”
• Well, this headline hits the trifecta. It’s Mediaite’s Willa Pope Robbins with “Marjorie Taylor Greene Spills the Dirt to Megyn Kelly About Why Laura Loomer Started Attacking Her.”
• The Hollywood Reporter’s Winston Cho with “Dr. Phil’s Bankrupt Media Company Sued Over $500 Million TV Deal.”
• There’s a just-released Netflix sports documentary about the Dallas Cowboys that’s getting lots of buzz and praise. Here’s Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod with “Netflix’s ‘America’s Team’ Cowboys docuseries isn’t just football’s ‘The Last Dance’ — it’s better.” And here’s The Athletic’s Jason Jones with “New Cowboys series on Netflix revisits rocky relationships, addresses controversies.”

Hot type

• The New York Times’ Rick Rojas (and visuals by Annie Flanagan) with “Seeking Tales and Sipping Whiskey in a Shack Floating Down the Bayou.”

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