Report: Paramount Owners Look to Acquire Warner Bros. Discovery

It could be one of the biggest media blockbusters in history. The Wall Street Journal reports Paramount Skydance is making a bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery.

If successful, the deal would create a news, sports, and entertainment monster, impacting the future of important media properties like CBS, HBO, CNN, and two movie studios with 100-year histories. It would also likely result in the fusion of HBO Max and Paramount+.

The Journal reports the deal would be backed by the Ellison family. David Ellison is the current CEO of Paramount Skydance, having taken over just last month. His father is Larry Ellison, the cofounder of Oracle and the richest man in the world. Like the fictional Charles Foster Kane, there’s nothing a rich guy loves more than gobbling up media properties. Larry Ellison is a longtime Trump supporter, so you can do the math on what may happen with the media portfolio from here on out.

The deal would likely face antitrust scrutiny and the proposal has not been formally submitted, so we can’t say for sure if a merger can occur.

What TV Channels and Streamers Could Be Combined in the Deal?

Warner Bros. Discovery controls HBO Max, Cinemax, and Discovery+. It’s working on a standalone streaming service for CNN and one for TNT Sports.

Paramount has consolidated its premium streaming services down to just one main provider, having killed off the standalone Showtime streaming service in 2023 and Noggin in 2024. BET+ still exists outside the Paramount+ umbrella, however.

Paramount also controls one of the best free streamers: Pluto TV. If the companies combine, you may see the WBTV free channels disappear from Pluto’s competitors.

In theory, all of these streamers could be combined into one ultra-streamer. Or the company could decide it wants less expensive services for particular audiences.

As for TV channels, this deal would be absolutely massive, assembling 10 of the 30 most-watched TV channels in the U.S.

Paramount Channels	WBD Channels
CBS	HBO
Comedy Central	Discovery Channel
BET	HGTV
Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite	CNN
MTV	TNT
Paramount Network	TLC
Showtime	Cartoon Network/Adult Swim
Logo	Food Network
Pop TV	TBS
VH1	Investigation Discovery (ID)
Smithsonian Channel	Travel Channel
CBS Sports Network	Magnolia Network
CMT	MotorTrend
	truTV
	Turner Classic Movies (TCM)
	Science Channel
	American Heroes Channel (AHC)
	Animal Planet
	HLN
	OWN
	Cooking Channel

One unanswered question here: Does Paramount want all those channels?

Remember, Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to dump the majority of its TV channels and a mountain of debt on a new spinoff company to be called Discovery Global. Does Paramount want those channels? Or would they still dump them?

What Sports Rights Could Be Combined?

You may remember Warner Bros. Discovery lost rights to the NBA, which takes their portfolio down significantly.

This deal would be of greatest importance to NCAA basketball fans. A combined company would control all of the March Madness tournament.

The addition of U.S. Soccer would strengthen Paramount’s already stellar soccer lineup.

Paramount Sports	WBD Sports
NFL – AFC Sunday afternoon games	MLB
NCAA Football	Unrivaled (basketball)
WNBA	NCAA Basketball and March Madness
BIG3 (basketball)	NHL
NCAA Basketball and March Madness	French Open
PGA Tour & The Masters	U.S. Soccer (men’s and women’s teams)
UEFA Champions League (soccer)	NASCAR
NWSL
Serie A (soccer)
UFC (starting in 2026)
Argentina Liga Profesional de Fútbol (soccer)
EFL (soccer)
Carabao Cup (soccer)
Concacaf Nations League (soccer)

What News Organizations Could Be Combined?

A combined portfolio would pair CBS News with CNN. Would this make sense? You may remember NBC News is ridding itself of MSNBC. That cable channel and several others will be spun off to become a new company called Versant.

On paper, it may not make sense for Paramount to hang onto the #3 cable news network. CNN has been flailing for years as leadership shifts and the organization can’t figure out how to cover the MAGA movement. Fox News and a dozen other right-wing channels have saturated the market for conservatives. MSNBC (soon to be called MS NOW) skews liberal.

CNN currently occupies a “no man’s land” where panels contain a token liberal, a token conservative, and a few flapping heads who add no real value. The once-great cable channel still has a few quality journalists like Anderson Cooper, Donie O’Sullivan, and Daniel Dale. It’s often indispensable during international crises. But its coverage of domestic politics is abysmal. There’s too much opinion without a unifying worldview.

If another Trump ally gets control of CNN, it could skew further right. But with Fox News, OAN, The Blaze, Newsmax, Rumble, NewsNation, Truth Social, Lindell TV, and a million other troll factories, what’s the point in trying to join the fray?

Whenever a billionaire gets control of a media asset, it tends to skew hard right. We would expect this to be no different, assuming Paramount doesn’t dump CNN on another buyer or spin it off as was planned.

Does This Deal Make Sense?

From a streaming standpoint, the temptation of fusing the Warner Bros. library with Paramount’s vault is truly fantastic. Both movie studios have legendary archives. If they came together in one streaming service, it would be a must-have for any cinephile.

WBD’s HBO brand is a longtime leader in world-class adult programming. Paramount’s Nickelodeon brand has a history of kid-powered favorites. Pairing DC superheroes with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, South Park, The Matrix, Transformers, Game of Thrones, Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, and Harry Potter is a great IP package.

The sports collection would improve with a merger, but it’s a patchwork portfolio. There’s no NBA, and not enough NHL or MLB games to make a meaningful difference. The NFL is a cornerstone, but it only helps the union for one day a week for 5 months a year. Surely, the Ellisons would make waves when the next round of media rights is available. (David paid a staggering $7 billion for the UFC.) NFL rights aren’t available until 2033, the NBA is locked up until 2036, college football won’t have a rights package until 2030. The MLB and NHL are up for grabs in 2028.

The TV portfolio wouldn’t really make sense. It’s too many channels at a time when live TV can’t stop eroding. Paramount could either cherry-pick their favorite channels and leave the rest to die with a zombie WBD company or they could ask Warner Bros. to pull the trigger for them and proceed with their split before an acquisition proceeds.

Ultimately, competition is a good thing in the entertainment industry. Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox just reduced the number of movies we get every year. Disney has mostly stripped the IP and used it to patch holes in their movie and TV lineup.

If Paramount absorbs Warner Bros. Discovery, it simply becomes too big to manage succesfully. We already saw this when Shari Redstone ran Paramount. Nearly all their TV channels were abandoned, left showing reruns of their glory days. Paramount brass say they plan to revitalize their TV channels, but that’s a huge lift with a giant price tag. You can’t just turn on the content hose and bring back the heyday of MTV or Comedy Central. The current Paramount has enough on their TV to-do list without adding 20+ channels.

If we had to predict the future of a full-blown merger, we expect it would make for a great streaming service, but the TV channels would likely die faster than they already are. The movie output would reduce, following the Disney-20th Century Fox pattern. Sports fans would likely enjoy the bundle, but those expensive sports rights would probably drive the streaming cost higher.

The ultimate fate of such a massive media company is almost certainly some form of consolidation. Paramount wouldn’t program both OWN and BET – one would probably be cut. Would they need Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon? Is there any point in keeping Showtime when you have HBO? The assets would be sold or smothered.

Ultimately, if it ends the career of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and incompetent boob David Zaslav, it may be worth gutting some of cable TV’s most legendary channels.