This is a TVNewser analysis piece.
Last Thursday morning, Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount Global from the Redstone family was finally complete.
The new owners, led by David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount, a Skydance corporation, have a gargantuan task in revitalizing the media conglomerate’s shine as it not only has to contend with its legacy competitors, including Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox Corp., but newer ones from the streaming and tech space, such as Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, and Apple.
One area within the company that will undoubtedly receive a lot of attention is CBS News, which became a focus of the merger approval process, and several questions remain about the organization.
In late 2024, the revered news organization, home of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, CBS Sunday Morning, and 60 Minutes, came under the crosshairs of the then-Donald Trump campaign, which accused the network of “deceitful” editing during a 60 Minutes interview with former vice president and then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Once in office, the Trump administration continued with its scrutiny of the news outlet. And with the merger potentially hanging in the balance, the situation created pressure for Shari Redstone, the former non-executive chairwoman of Paramount Global, who reportedly sought to make settling the case a top priority.
In July, a $16 million settlement was reached, with the majority of the funds going towards Trump’s future presidential library. This agreement was similar to how ABC News settled a lawsuit with the president for $15 million in December 2024.
As part of the settlement, CBS News issued no statement of apology or regret for the 60 Minutes interview with Harris.
However, the process of reaching that settlement came with enormous costs, with two key 60 Minutes executives, Wendy McMahon, president and CEO of CBS News and Stations, and CBS Media Ventures, and Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes, departing.
The settlement, the departures of senior leadership, and the news that Skydance Media will install an ombudsman to review “complaints of bias or other concerns” and ensure “viewpoint diversity” at CBS News as part of the merger’s FCC approval process, have created uncertainty around what the news organization looks like moving forward.
What happens now