A bidding war for one of America’s biggest media companies is colliding with Trump-era power

Oh, remember that big breaking story about how Netflix snuck in with a winning bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery in a mega-media deal?

Uh, not so fast.

Paramount has launched a hostile takeover bid to snatch Warner Bros. Discovery away from Netflix in a media fight that sure is going to be, well, hostile.

Just last week, Netflix stunned the business and media world by announcing an $83 billion bid for most of Warner Bros. Discovery, including its film and TV studios, its gaming business, HBO Max and HBO. Left just as stunned were Paramount and CEO David Ellison, the overwhelming favorites to buy the whole Warner Bros. Discovery package, including its cable news properties such as CNN and TNT.

Many figured Paramount wouldn’t go down without a fight, and, sure enough, the company came out swinging Monday morning — announcing in a news release it would pay $30 per share in cash, valuing Warner Bros. Discovery at just more than $108 billion, including debt.

In the release, Ellison said, “WBD shareholders deserve an opportunity to consider our superior all-cash offer for their shares in the entire company. Our public offer, which is on the same terms we provided to the Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors in private, provides superior value, and a more certain and quicker path to completion. We believe the WBD Board of Directors is pursuing an inferior proposal which exposes shareholders to a mix of cash and stock, an uncertain future trading value of the Global Networks linear cable business and a challenging regulatory approval process. We are taking our offer directly to shareholders to give them the opportunity to act in their own best interests and maximize the value of their shares.”

In an interview with CNBC, Ellison said, “We’re sitting on Wall Street, where cash is still king. We are offering shareholders $17.6 billion more cash than the deal they currently have signed up with Netflix. And we believe when they see what is currently in our offer, then that’s what they’ll vote for.”

One person who said he was not surprised by Paramount’s hostile takeover bid is Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Speaking at an event on Monday, Sarandos said the move was “entirely expected,” and he remained “super confident” that the Netflix bid will hold up.

CNN’s David Goldman wrote, “The math is tricky, but Netflix believes the eventual spinoff of WBD’s cable assets, including CNN — which is not included in the Netflix deal — will be worth several dollars per share. In its entirety, Netflix contends that its deal will ultimately be worth more than Paramount’s offer. Paramount, unlike Netflix, is seeking to buy WBD in its entirety. It notes its offer is worth $108.4 billion for all of WBD, compared to $82.7 billion for Netflix’s offer, which doesn’t include the value of the company’s cable channels. In accepting Netflix’s offer last week, WBD’s board clearly decided that the deal was better. It has long been argued that the cable assets will be worth more when spun off than combined with the movie studio and HBO, unlocking significant value for shareholders.”

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Now for the messy part …

Of course, any humongous deal like this involves more than just money. There’s the political side, and boy, there sure are political ramifications involved here.

Paramount said its offer is “backstopped” by the Ellison family. However, Paramount’s bid includes billions of dollars in funding from other backers, including sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, and Affinity Partners, the investment firm founded by Jared Kushner. Yes, the Jared Kushner who is the son-in-law of President Donald Trump.

Axios’ Dan Primack reports, “Affinity Partners was not mentioned in Paramount's press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.”

Paramount said in its offer that those parties “have agreed to forgo any governance rights – including board representation – associated with their non-voting equity investments.”

Still, it doesn’t take a degree in finance to see the potential conflict of interest in a deal that ultimately has to survive the scrutiny of the Trump administration. In fact, at an event Sunday night before Paramount announced its takeover bid, Trump said he would be “involved” in the final decision of the WBD sale.

Trump had kind things to say about Sarandos on Sunday, but Ellison has a good relationship with Trump.

Ellison told CNBC on Monday, “I’m incredibly grateful for the relationship that I have with the president. And I also believe he believes in competition. And when you fundamentally look at the marketplace, allowing the No. 1 streaming service to combine with the No. 3 streaming service is anticompetitive.”

Goldman wrote for CNN, “Netflix has contended that its deal will pass antitrust scrutiny. It stands ready to refute Paramount’s marketplace claims by pointing to different metrics: Nielsen’s measurement of the industry shows Netflix with 8% of total TV usage time, slightly under Paramount’s 8.2%. By that measure, Netflix ranks No. 6 on the Nielsen gauge, with YouTube at No. 1 and Disney at No. 2.”

However, Ellison argued, “Saying that streaming is not a market is a little bit like looking at the beverage market and saying that Coke and Pepsi can merge because Budweiser is a replacement to it.”

When asked in the Oval Office about it all Monday, Trump downplayed it by saying, “I don’t know enough about it.”

Then there’s this interesting piece from Semafor’s Rohan Goswami and Ben Smith: “Finger-pointing in Washington as Paramount goes hostile.” They write that Ellison’s aggressive takeover tactic “is backfiring in Washington, where some officials have grown frustrated with widespread speculation that a politicized Justice Department would play favorites for the conservative Ellison family.”

Goswami and Smith wrote, “The Paramount team seems to ‘believe the worst possible tropes’ about corruption in the Trump administration and are ‘leaning into all the stereotypes,’ said one person close to the administration’s deliberations. ‘They thought they were playing 5D chess and they were playing tiddlywinks.’”

It feels like this thing is going to carry out for a while. As they say in the TV and entertainment industry: Stay tuned.

What else is Trump saying?

On the surface, it might appear that Trump would favor Paramount and Ellison taking over WBD, especially in light of Trump also liking some of the changes Ellison is making at CBS News — including the hiring of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief.

But Trump was not happy with CBS News on Sunday because it aired a “60 Minutes” interview with Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. In the interview, Greene continued her criticism of Trump. Once one of Trump’s biggest supporters, Greene has been more and more critical of Trump recently. She has announced she is stepping down from Congress in January.

Trump lashed out at Greene and CBS News in a rambling Truth Social post on Monday.

Trump called Greene a “traitor” and said the reason she “went BAD is that she was JILTED by the President of the United States.” He also referred to “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, who interviewed Greene, as “Trump hating,” and then said she still owes him an apology for an old interview she did with him.

But the notable part is Trump writing, “My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE! Oh well, far worse things can happen.”

So, at least for the moment, it would appear Paramount is in Trump’s doghouse. Although, with Trump, that can change like the weather.

Oh, one more thing

Primack points out one more interesting piece of information: “WBD could be the second major takeover Kushner has been involved in this year, having previously played a key role in the take-private agreement for gaming giant Electronic Arts.”

CBS News’ big news

Big changes are coming to the “CBS Evening News.” Status’ Oliver Darcy reported Monday that “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil will become the next anchor.

“CBS Evening News” co-anchor Maurice DuBois announced last week that he is leaving the network at the end of the month. The news was not surprising. His co-anchor, John Dickerson, announced in October that he would leave the network by year’s end.

DuBois’ final newscast will be Dec. 18.

That meant the “CBS Evening News” experiment of co-anchors and a new format to replace Norah O’Donnell and the traditional format didn’t jump-start the newscast, which is typically a distant third in the ratings behind ABC’s “World News Tonight” and the “NBC Nightly News.”

Figuring out who would take over anchoring duties was one of the first major moves by Bari Weiss, who was named editor-in-chief of CBS News in October.

Darcy reports it will be Dokoupil. There were reports that other names were floated as possibilities, including Fox News’ Bret Baier, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and even O’Donnell, who stepped down as anchor in January after nearly six years to become a senior correspondent. But it’s not known how seriously CBS considered those names, and whether any of them were actually interested in the job.

CBS hasn’t commented, but Darcy reports that Dokoupil will start his new role after the new year. Dokoupil joined CBS News in 2016 and has co-hosted the morning show since 2019.

Speaking of Cooper, Variety’s Brian Steinberg reports that Cooper recently signed a contract extension with CNN.

Meanwhile, it was also announced last week that CBS News had hired Matt Gutman, a longtime ABC News correspondent based in Los Angeles. Gutman is expected to have a prominent role at CBS News, but he was reportedly never in line to become the “Evening News” anchor.

Another Trump outburst

In what is nearly a daily happening, President Donald Trump lashed out at a reporter over a question that he didn’t like.

On Monday, it was ABC’s Rachel Scott, who asked the president if he would release classified footage of a Sept. 2 military strike on what the administration claimed was a drug boat.

Scott’s question was, “Are you committing to releasing the whole video?”

Trump snapped back, “Didn’t I just tell you that?”

Scott answered, “You said it was up to (Defense) Secretary (Pete) Hegseth.”

Trump then went to his go-to insults: “You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious — actually, a terrible reporter. And it’s always the same thing with you. I told you, whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me.”

This happens so often that you might wonder why it’s worth even mentioning anymore. But it’s not normal behavior for the president of the United States to constantly act this way, and to shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, that’s Trump being Trump” would be to normalize it. And that kind of petulance and disrespect should not be normalized.

Best podcasts?

The Golden Globe nominations were announced on Monday. There were a lot of familiar names: Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Michael B. Jordan, Emma Stone, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, Jean Smart and on and on. Here’s the complete list of nominees.

Interestingly, there’s a new category this year: Best podcast. And like any category at the Golden Globes, there are some familiar names and some notable snubs.

First, the nominees: “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard,” “Call Her Daddy” (with host Alex Cooper), “Good Hang with Amy Poehler,” “The Mel Robbins Podcast,” “Smartless” (with actor hosts Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes), and NPR’s “Up First.”

Those who might be considered snubs include “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which tops the Apple, Spotify and YouTube podcast charts. Other popular podcasts and podcasters left off the nomination list include the Kelce brothers, “Pod Save America,” Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro, Bill Simmons and The New York Times’ “The Daily,” just to name a few of the gazillion podcasts out there.

Media tidbits

• For our Poynter 50 project — a series reflecting on 50 moments and people that shaped journalism over the past half-century — it’s Nora Neus with “When the press amplified false claims about Iraq, it failed its highest duty — and fueled a war.”
• Republished by Poynter with permission from Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative, it’s Eric Rynston-Lobel with “As local news disappears, new networks are stepping in to fill the void.”
• Mediate’s Tom Durante with “Fox’s Trey Yingst Makes Fiery Call for Independent Access to Gaza as He Accepts Excellence Prize at Foreign Press Awards.”
• Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian with “The journalist who fell in love with the married Kennedy scion and wrecked her career.”

Hot type

• For Esquire, David Gauvey Herbert with “Playing Santa Does Strange Things to a Man. What It Did to Bob Rutan Was Even Stranger.”
• From The New York Times’ styles desk: “The 67 Most Stylish People of 2025.”

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Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].

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