Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in recent weeks, and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount.
The discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, comes as Paramount portrays itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery, after it announced last month it was open to offers, because it would have an easier time getting through regulatory review.
Ellison often speaks to connections at the White House but, in at least one of the calls, engaged in a dialogue about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, the people said.
The conversation also touched on floating names to replace Burnett and the possibility of running CBS assets like its flagship 60 minutes program on CNN air – proposals that have animated the White House, the people said.
That discussion, described by people on the condition of anonymity because they are sensitive, were characterized as informal since Ellison does not have a formal role at Paramount. Still, he holds a major ownership stake in the company, which is run by his son, David Ellison.
Spokespeople for the White House and CNN declined to comment. The elder Ellison, Oracle and Paramount did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts to position Paramount as the front-runner, especially with the Trump administration, underscore the Ellisons intense interest in acquiring Warner Bros Discovery – and the White House’s interest in seeing its preferred bid succeeding.
Paramount is preparing a bid for the entirety of Warner Bros Discovery ahead of a 20 November deadline to submit non-binding, first round bids. The company previously submitted multiple unsolicited and unsuccessful offers to buy Warner Bros Discovery, which then put itself on the block.
Trump already has a positive view of the Ellisons after Paramount paid a $16m settlement to the president over an interview 60 minutes did with Kamala Harris last year. Additional backing from White House officials would smooth over any other hurdles for the Paramount bid.
Paramount could also benefit from additional ties into Trump’s orbit. Multiple current and former consultants in Washington, including people now working inside the White House, used to have contracts with Oracle, where Larry Ellison is executive chairman.
The only regulatory scrutiny would be an antitrust review by the justice department. Former antitrust division officials who served in Trump’s second term, under assistant attorney general Gail Slater, suggested they did not immediately see competition issues.
“This won’t pose serious antitrust issues,” the former official said of the Paramount bid, adding that Ellison’s contacts with the White House would similarly not pose legal problems. “That’s just how the government relations game is played,” the official said.
Brendan Carr, the Federal communications commission chair, had previously told the Guardian in that a Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery would be very unlikely to require any review by his commission.
“I’d be very surprised if there was an FCC role at all in that type of transaction,” Carr said, though he added he was “not focused on the rumor mills around those transactions”.
Carr also demurred when asked whether he thought that Paramount taking over all of Warner Bros Discovery would be in the public interest. “Given that I don’t think it’s going to come before us, I haven’t spent a lot of time with that one,” he said.
Other parties interested in Warner Bros Discovery are Netflix and Comcast, the parent company of NBC News and liberal cable channel MS NOW, though the network is being spun off into a separate company called Versant. Still, Trump could hold the network’s consistent criticism of him against Comcast.
By acquiring all of Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount and Comcast believe they would benefit from greater scale to compete on streaming. Netflix is interested in the studio business and HBO’s library of movies and TV shows to enhance its offering.
Jeremy Barr contributed reporting
