Has the Bari Weiss Era begun at CNN? And would it make much of a difference if it did?
Late yesterday, the war over Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) ended with a white flag from Netflix. David Ellison and Paramount/Skydance had aggressively pursued a hostile takeover for months after the WBD board arranged a friendly partial sale with Ted Sarandos. After a major shareholder group threatened to take the WBD to court and initiate its own hostile takeover, the board reluctantly began negotiating with Ellison, who eventually sweetened the bid to $31 a share, well above the Netflix offer, with additional guarantees on financing – a point to which we will return shortly.
Sarandos and Netflix threw in the towel, leaving Paramount/Skydance in position to acquire WBD in its entirety:
Netflix pulled the plug on its deal soon after the Warner board of directors said it determined Paramount’s $31-per-share offer for the entire company was superior to Netflix’s bid for Warner’s movie and television studios and HBO Max streaming service. Paramount is now poised to take control of the entertainment company, home to properties and brands including HBO, Superman and Harry Potter.
“We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match,” Netflix co-Chief Executives Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said. “This transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price,” the pair said.
Pending regulatory approval, Paramount will own not only Warner Bros. and HBO, but also many popular cable networks including CNN, TNT, TBS and Food Network. The deal would represent a ground shift for the entertainment industry, which is trying to adapt to seismic shifts in audience habits and technology.
Regulatory approval may still prove tricky. People assumed that Netflix would have issues with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding potential antitrust concerns, but Paramount/Skydance has at least one major problem, and potentially more. If this deal goes through, Paramount/Skydance will end up owning HBO/Cinemax as well as Showtime/The Movie Channel. cable services that have competed against each other for more than 40 years. This kind of consolidation matters in FTC approvals, especially because there are no other similarly positioned providers in this competition. Amazon Prime and Netflix come close, but they don’t generally compete within the cable-provider market on clearance the way HBO and Showtime do. Consumers generally access Amazon Prime and Netflix outside of cable-box platforms, directly on the Internet.
The FTC could require Paramount/Skydance to spin one or both streaming entities off for regulatory approval. I won’t go so far as to predict that it will happen – the FTC has become very political over the past two decades – but there is at least a substantial possibility. That would impact the overall value of the acquisition (WBD calls it a ‘merger’), although Paramount/Skydance would also receive the compensation from a sale or spinoff.
That’s not the only reason to look at this outcome as entirely sunny. When Ellison had to demonstrate a firm commitment in financing the bid, he apparently reached out to some sovereign funds for backing. Erick Erickson began raising the alarm on the potential influence these funds might have on content in the new merger, and Jared Whitley explained the risks this week at Deseret News:
At the exact same time that harsh scrutiny of Qatari influence at U.S. universities, among U.S. politicians, in international relations, on the international sports scene and even in U.S. media is increasing, the country has been unveiled as a chief backer of the Paramount bid.
This backing comes through as many as three different funding lines: the Qatar Investment Authority directly, Affinity Partners and potentially the Qatari-linked RedBird Capital. This backing was enough of a scandal that Paramount denied it in November 2025 but was forced to admit it in December. RedBird is a cooperative partner of QIA. Affinity was started with $200 million from Qataris, followed by another $1.5 billion in 2024. Wherever you look, the Paramount bid appears to be backed by a country linked to Hamas, ISIS and more. …
Why would a bid so dependent on Qatari cash make sense, in terms of U.S. interests — or those of the rest of the world? I can’t conjure any good answer, but the deal is dependent on Qatari money. The bottom line: Netflix’s market capitalization is in the $320 to $340 billion range. Paramount’s market capitalization, meanwhile, is about $7 billion. Paramount simply doesn’t have the cash to do the deal without tapping the Qataris — and so they have.
Whitley’s numbers are a bit off here, but not so much that it negates his point. As of this week, Paramount/Skydance has a market capitalization of $15.25 billion and an enterprise value of $24.42 billion. WBD has – had – a market cap of $69.93 billion. Whitley nails Netflix’s market cap, at $359.19 billion. It’s understandable that the WBD board viewed the Ellisons’ bid with such skepticism until they shored up their financing, given the massive pill they wanted to swallow.
How much influence will that give these Qatari backers when it comes to content? More than they would have had if Netflix bought WBD, assuming that the Qatari funds didn’t then heavily invest in the proposed rump WBD that would have held all of the cable channels after the sale to Sarandos.
This brings us back to the Bari Weiss Era, which has already begun at CBS News. Conservative interest in this corporate bidding war largely focused on the schadenfreude of Weiss taking charge of CNN as part of a merged news division at Paramount/Skydance. It’s not clear yet if Ellison wants to do that at all, or instead pick someone else to run CNN. But even if Weiss ends up running a synergy-driven merged CNN/CBS News organization, it will take her even longer to digest that while still turning the rudder on the CBS News Titanic at the same time. And CNN has different issues and challenges, as Olivier Knox reminded us yesterday:
Can she solve CNN’s “normies aren’t watching news-related stuff 7-10 pm on weeknights” problem?
— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) February 26, 2026
That’s an excellent question. Fox News gets far higher ratings and viewership, but that may be more of a curated audience that is poorly served by all of its competition. It’s also at least somewhat product-related, so a more balanced approach in prime time could generate more interest. WBD never did solve the product-related problems, and their panel discussions suggest that the hard-left tilt may have gotten worse during that period. Weiss is only barely budging the needle on balance at CBS News so far too, so any expectations that a Bari Weiss Era would produce massive changes in the near term are completely unrealistic.
Nonetheless, it now looks as though the Ellison Era has begun at CNN, and Ellison is the one driving these changes. He hired Weiss to carry them out at CBS News, and perhaps Ellison has someone else in mind for CNN and its unique challenges. Frankly, though, I suspect Ellison has much bigger fish to fry in this acquisition.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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