Aug 8, 2025

Greetings from Los Angeles, and welcome back to In the Room. In tonight’s issue, news and notes on David Ellison’s inaugural visit to CBS News, and his grand, possibly quixotic ambition to transfuse New Paramount with his dad’s tech and turn a legacy creative business into an innovative platform.

🍸 Plus, on the latest edition of The Grill Room, Julia Alexander and I chewed over Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro’s ESPN-NFL deal, Ellison’s potential interest in Warner Bros., the latest New York Times and Wall Street Journal earnings, and much more. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen.

Also mentioned in this issue: Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Shell, David Zaslav, George Cheeks, Gayle King, Emma Tucker, Jonah Peretti, Jim Bankoff, David Rhodes, Tom Cibrowski, and many more…

Let’s get started…

A Nexstar-Tegna tie-up: Nexstar Media Group, the nation’s largest local television broadcaster, is in advanced talks to acquire its rival Tegna, per The Wall Street Journal. In addition to solidifying Nexstar’s position in local broadcasting, the deal would test Trump and F.C.C. chairman Brendan Carr’s tolerance for media consolidation. Nexstar, valued at $5.6 billion, operates more than 200 stations in 116 U.S. markets; Tegna, valued at $2.5 billion, operates 64 stations in 51 markets. The Journal did not report terms of the deal.

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The Vice price: Vice Media, the once-disruptive digital media company that peaked at a $5.7 billion valuation in 2017, then filed for bankruptcy six years later, has secured a $75 million credit facility from Fortress Investment Group, the famed distressed debt investor. According to Axios, this financial lifeline will be used to fuel Vice Studios and “jumpstart” $500 million worth of content projects over the next three to five years. In truth, Vice will operate as a slimmed-down production vehicle laser-focused on paying down its debts. Good luck.
More Vox layoffs: Late last month, Vox Media chief Jim Bankoff told me he had no plans to implement layoffs at the company. On Thursday, Vox laid off 15 employees at Eater, citing a need to reallocate resources to the app, events, and trade coverage. This comes on the heels of a handful of layoffs on the branded content and marketing teams last week, which also took place after our conversation. While Vox stresses that this is merely a “reprioritization” of resources, the about-face has been notable enough to catch the attention of the union, which cited Jim’s comments to me in a statement, adding: “We’ve learned that we cannot trust Jim Bankoff’s word when it comes to layoffs.”
And finally… here’s New York Times editor Ed Lee, a once-trailblazing media reporter and former editor of Recode, with a coda to my piece last week on Emma Tucker’s reinvigoration of The Wall Street Journal, and all the envy and admiration that it’s inspired at the Times.

And now, the main event…

Visible Man

Media coverage of David Ellison’s post-merger victory tour has largely focused on his plans for CBS News, looming synergies at Paramount, and his relationship with Trump. But all this may understate the true scale of Ellison’s ambition: to transfuse New Paramount with his dad’s tech and turn a legacy creative business into… a platform.

Dylan Byers

On Thursday morning, less than an hour after closing his acquisition of Paramount, Skydance C.E.O. David Ellison and his new TV chief, George Cheeks, stopped by the CBS broadcast center in Midtown to join the CBS News 9 a.m. editorial call. It was a savvy performative gesture, given all the recent tumult at the news division and the lingering uncertainty around Ellison’s ambitions for it. “I believe in the legacy of CBS News and being in the trust business and in the truth business,” Ellison told the journalists, according to a source present. “We are committed to investing in this company into the long-term future.” Ellison then met with top execs, producers, and talent. As my partner Matt Belloni has reported, Gayle King gifted him a mug.

As you know, clearing the Skydance-Paramount deal required a fair amount of capitulatory diplomacy toward Trump—not just from Shari Redstone, who paid the president $16 million to settle a meritless lawsuit against 60 Minutes, but also from Ellison, who put in ringside time with the president and, according to Trump, committed to $20 million worth of free advertising time for conservatives causes. (In a Q&A with reporters on Thursday, Ellison deflected when asked if Skydance had made such a commitment.) And yet, most of my CBS News sources after the meeting seemed genuinely reassured by his overture. “The vibe in the room was relief,” one said, “kind of shocked gratitude that he’d stop by the newsroom first.”

Alas, a quirk of American journalism is that the same people who make a profession of skepticism tend to be credulous toward their own bosses’ pablum and corporate choreography, especially on day one. Recall that, before putting CNN out to pasture, David Zaslav joined its 9 a.m. editorial call to tout the network’s “rendezvous with destiny” as “a purveyor of facts and truth in journalism.” In 2023, Jeff Bezos spent a day or two assuaging anxious Washington Post staffers, then promptly returned to the life of a centibillionaire megatitan while the paper burned and the aforementioned staff raced for the exits. Last week, Vox Media C.E.O. Jim Bankoff told me he wasn’t planning on implementing layoffs—and then laid off about 20 employees in two tranches shortly thereafter. Remember how much Jonah Peretti loved BuzzFeed News before realizing it was a terrible and unsustainable business? C.E.O.s may be intoxicated with the news business, but mere infatuation can’t resolve the flaws in the underlying business models.

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In any event, Ellison may indeed have big ambitions for CBS News, but he can’t just wave his hands to reset the eroding business models of the monocultural era. As the denizens of CBS News well know, news has become a commodity even as newsgathering has remained expensive. And yet, amid all the political drama engulfing the network, staffers there have been myopically preoccupied with archaic concerns like sagging ratings, personnel changes, and office vibes. Rather than contemplate how the very distribution of news is changing, they seem to be looking to Ellison, and the company’s new president, Jeff Shell, for programming tweaks that might deliver CBS News from its perennial third-place position. The bakeoff between David Rhodes and Tom Cibrowski for control of the news division somehow seems more pressing than whether broadcast news itself will survive the decade, and how to position themselves if it doesn’t.

The Oracle Behind the Curtain

In fact, Ellison is presumably contemplating something far more sweeping and transformational. I’ve noted his obsession with using technology “to transform every single aspect of this company,” and, specifically, using his father Larry’s Oracle infrastructure to transform Paramount+ from a glitchy third-world streamer into a state-of-the-art product, while also using A.I. and cloud computing to streamline production and cut costs. In a memo to employees this week, he said he and his team were “committed to being the very best storytellers and the most technically advanced media and entertainment company in the world—because we know it takes both to win.”

Even this may understate the true scope of Ellison’s ambitions. In an age where tech platforms like Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify have transformed into creative businesses, Ellison is trying to reverse-engineer that process and retrofit a creative legacy business as a tech platform. Yes, as my partner Kim Masters has reported, Ellison may consider putting in a bid to add a spun-off Warner Bros. to his portfolio… but it’s also likely he may instead invest his capital in new companies that none of these journalists or their agents have ever heard of. Meanwhile, his father remains in pole position to acquire TikTok.

It’s possible that the real play here is to reimagine the media portfolio through nontraditional, or at least nonlinear, channels, and integrate them into a new, state-of-the-art streaming service on the back of Oracle’s cloud technology. I’m not saying that Maurice DuBois will be delivering the news from atop a skateboard with a bottle of cranberry juice, but the change will be just as significant. The future isn’t about a new graphics package for Mornings or preserving the integrity of 60 Minutes. Just like everywhere else, newsroom talent who are overpaid by market standards—almost all of them, frankly—will be nudged toward Substack or take a pay cut. And while the threat of litigation from the president may have ceased, the attention will likely be replaced by an equally disturbing quietude. Ellison and Shell will simply need to direct their attention elsewhere.

After all, Ellison’s team and RedBird have been working among themselves on a plan that revolves around both extraordinary consolidation and transformative M&A. Ellison’s decision to hold on to the former Viacom assets has been misread as a sign that they still confer some negotiating value. Instead, Shell will almost certainly tighten the belt further, extract value, opportunistically sell off some divorceable assets, and then send off the rest while maybe keeping Nickelodeon—which, as Matt noted last night, seems like Paramount’s version of Bravo, which avoided an exile to Versant.

Reinventing this whole bloated mess will obviously be a quixotic challenge—all the more so because legacy mediacos are riddled with misaligned incentives, led by a generation of executives who’ve survived by playing defense, and staffed by creatives still clinging to nostalgic ideals about “journalism,” “movie theaters,” and their own personal “brand.” That isn’t exactly fertile ground for innovation. And yet, Ellison almost certainly didn’t buy this thing with the intention of tolerating the headaches that come from owning a news division in terminal decline.

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