Over the last month, as David Ellison has settled into control of Paramount, a new conventional wisdom seems to have coalesced around a guy who, by dint of his relative youth and centibillionaire father, might otherwise have been written off as a nepo baby of hyperbolic proportions. David is smart, his friends and fellow executives will assure you. He gets the business. And, most notably, he plays to win—or, as Mark Shapiro put it to me, he is “an assassin when it comes to winning.” But as John Malone made clear in his recent interview with the Times, all things can be true. Malone, who met with David in Sun Valley, said he found him both “very bright” and “pretty arrogant.” But, in the ultimate benediction, the aging cable cowboy assured all that he would “bet on that guy.”

In any case, David has inarguably moved fast since taking the reins of his new media barony—a notable contrast from the deal’s interminable close. In the span of a few weeks, he reached a $7.7 billion deal for UFC rights, lured the Duffer brothers away from Netflix, struck a distribution agreement with Legendary Pictures, and, this week, greenlit a Call of Duty film after acquiring the rights from Activision. (If you subscribe to my partner Matt’s indispensable What I’m Hearing email, you saw all these deals coming long before the ink hit the paper.) Even before that, David effectively approved Stephen Colbert’s cancellation and South Park’s $1.5 billion renewal. (Sure, sure, guys, that was all Shari.) Yes, he had a year to plan these moves thanks to Brendan Carr’s meddling, but the pace of execution does indeed betray a killer instinct.

Now, David has made advances on yet another target: an acquisition of The Free Press, the defiantly heterodox news and opinion media entity founded by Bari Weiss. As you know, David has been courting Bari for almost a year, and formally pitched her on acquiring the company at the Allen & Co. conference in July. Those talks have progressed in recent days, and I am now told that the two sides have agreed in principle to a deal and lawyers are hard at work finalizing a formal agreement. 

David’s offer for The Free Press is expected to be well above the site’s most recent $100 million valuation, but well below the $200 million figure that was recently floated in the Financial Times. (That was an absurd ask; The Free Press does $15 million in annual subscription revenue, and Bari’s politically charged content makes it hard to scale the advertising business. Plus, there’s no tech stack—it’s all on Substack.) Either way, it will land Weiss a king’s ransom just a little over five years after her dramatic departure from the Times. The deal is not done yet, of course, but, as a source with knowledge of the negotiations told me this afternoon, it is “on the 1-yard line.”

As part of the deal, I am told David plans to give Bari a role at CBS News that would, among other things, task his fellow Millennial with guiding the editorial direction of the division. Bari’s avowedly pro-Israel and anti-woke worldview—not to mention her broadly shit-kicking anti-establishment disposition—would inevitably inspire blowback from various corners of the newsroom, and could dramatically change the editorial posture and reputation of one of the most storied, and certainly self-important, institutions in American journalism. For David, that’s likely part of the point.

On some level, David’s pursuit of The Free Press seems driven by a desire to align his news network with his own politics. How else to explain why the guy who just bought his way into Hollywood moguldom, NFL rights, and the streaming wars would want to endure the thankless chore of integrating a politically charged digital news business that, despite its relative success in the Substack economy, would account for a modest eight-figure revenue line in his $18 billion entertainment business? If the lifers at CNN threatened to burn the place down when Chris Licht moved his office to a different floor, imagine the looming hysteria that will transfix CBS News. Assumedly, for Ellison, employee migration is also part of the point.

David probably looks at CBS News as a bit of a blank canvas. It’s a declining business, a cost burden, and, as recent history has made abundantly clear, a potentially massive P.R. headache. But the fact that it is losing money also opens a lot of opportunities for reinvention: Why continue to operate a declining asset that also bleeds cash at status quo? If you have to have it, why not try something unconventional? Without getting philosophical, he’s planning on owning this asset interminably and his shareholders have already suffered through years of Shari-inflicted cash incineration. Why not take a flier on a format that’s economically inconsequential and eroding regardless? And if this maneuver gives David Rhodes second thoughts about moving back from London to manage the division, he can entrust it to existing newsroom leader Tom Cibrowski. 

Therein lies the intrigue behind the Bari deal. Even as he is poised to scale down the business, reduce talent salaries, and make it a leaner, trimmer operation, David is also poised to bring on a politically divisive marquee talent who might infuse the brand with a bold new identity and, frankly, at least make the network interesting again. 

Ellison also likely knows there may be a surprising upside here. You may not be able to believe everything you watch on Fox News, but the network’s personality-driven content has single-handedly overturned the hourglass on the industry. We’re living through a media age, for better or worse, that prizes authenticity above all—it’s the leitmotif that explains the rise of Dave Portnoy and Joe Rogan and Donald Trump. Can CBS platform Weiss, and let Bari be Bari, while still credibly delivering the news every evening and retaining the sanctity of 60 Minutes, etcetera? Yes, it certainly can, just as the Times and the Journal once did. And also because, well, that’s what David wants.