This week, during a predictably banal introductory address at Warner Bros. Discovery, David Ellison waxed prosaic about his vision for the company, acknowledged the impending layoffs—they’ll be brutal—and, among other things, reiterated his dedication to the “editorial independence” of the company’s storied cable news network. “CNN has an incredible legacy that we want to honor and maintain,” he told Warner executives during an event on the lot in Burbank. He said he was honored to be a “steward” of that legacy and promised that CNN would remain in “the truth business.”

Memories run long in TV news, and those who suffered through David Zaslav’s platitudes over the last four years—he was quite fond of deploying F.D.R.’s “rendezvous with destiny” line when discussing CNN’s mission—were understandably underwhelmed. (Standard disclosure: As a result of our acquisition of Air Mail, Zaslav has become a de minimis investor in Puck.) The new David has said that he wants his news organization to serve the 70 percent of Americans who identify as center-left or center-right, but you can forgive the journalists at CNN for harboring suspicions. Even by the standards of Trump II–era corporate genuflection, the Ellisons have done a lot of White House wheel-greasing. On a less conspiratorial level, David may simply see the logic in better emulating the one news network that actually still has an audience: Fox News.

In any event, the anxieties around CNN’s ostensible editorial drift pale in comparison to more existential concerns about a potential merger with CBS News, the open question of whether Bari Weiss will expand her remit over both businesses, and how much David intends to invest in the combined unit given his rather hefty debt obligations. Four years ago, when Chris Licht walked in, most CNN insiders couldn’t countenance the trauma that the new regime would inflict on the newsroom. Amid the subsequent ennui of the Mark Thompson era, most have come to grips with the fate of their business. “I mean, I can always go to Substack,” one anchor accustomed to seven-figure checks and hours of hair and makeup assured me—or herself—recently.

David’s “plan” for CNN and CBS News doesn’t really exist yet, and he’s still at least six months out from this deal closing. But, as with the rest of the portfolio, he will almost certainly aim to balance a heavy cost-cutting mandate—at least $6 billion in synergies across the company, and probably a lot more—with his ambitions to grow the business, all somehow simultaneously. And after speaking to people close to him, as well as several veteran television executives, it’s actually not hard to imagine how the CNN–CBS News tie-up might play out.

First, David may effectively eliminate the CBS News infrastructure—sell the CBS Broadcast Center and other costly real estate, shutter the studios and control rooms, lay off production units and administrative staff—and produce shows like CBS Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation out of CNN, saving hundreds of millions annually. 60 Minutes, which has historically operated free from the news division, could move to Hudson Yards or be folded into CBS Entertainment in order to maintain its storied independence.

In any case, the CBS programs would retain Tony and Norah and Gayle, along with the top correspondents and producers. But most back-end production would be handled by CNN teams that already make around 18 hours of live programming a day, and could surely handle three or four more.

At the same time, David could create additional savings on the digital side by eliminating CBSN, the network’s streaming service. CNN already operates the more robust digital and streaming infrastructure, which targets the same audience. Its streaming products might then incorporate the CBS News linear shows, and the combined service would become a tile on the base tier of the forthcoming, yet-to-be-named HBO Max–Paramount+ streamer.

From a branding perspective, CBS News and CNN would likely remain distinct, especially given CBS’s broadcast affiliate obligations. But the two networks could work in concert and share talent, much as MSNBC used to leverage NBC News talent prior to the Versant spinoff. There could be a labor hiccup—CBS is unionized, CNN isn’t—which may force David to absorb a one-time cost if CNN were forced to bargain collectively.

The most pressing question, as seems to always be the case in this industry, is who leads this combined outfit. Many CNN insiders assume—and in most cases, fear—that David will simply hand the keys to Bari. But, as I reported last month, those assumptions are premature. Her early months at the helm of CBS News were far more tumultuous than the Paramount Skydance front office had anticipated, which has cast considerable doubt over whether she’s capable of adding the even greater responsibility of a 24-hour global news network to her portfolio. Bari has shown signs of progress throughout CBS’s coverage of the war in Iran, and earned the trust and even admiration of some former critics. But as one insider noted, “She still can’t show up to a meeting on time.” When I asked another source to confirm this punctuality issue, this person said, “That’s the least of her problems.” (Bari is also on the cusp of hiring a full-time comms chief, which may help.)

David remains very supportive of Bari, I’m told, and the likely scenario is that he gives her considerable editorial influence at CNN without the broad mandate to call all the shots on programming and personnel decisions. But he would still need a veteran television executive to manage the product. Few sources in David’s orbit believe that he would want current CNN C.E.O. Mark Thompson in that position, and it seems unlikely that Mark would want to stick around to work alongside Bari, anyway. CBS News president Tom Cibrowski is seen as a capable steward of the broadcast product, but not the right fit to run CNN.

In lieu of good internal options, David will have to find his next CNN chief on the outside. Last month, I predicted that he would put in another call to David Rhodes, the former CBS News president and current executive chairman of Sky News in the U.K. Paramount president Jeff Shell once courted Rhodes for the Cibrowski role, when Skydance first acquired Paramount, but Shell may no longer be the best sponsor in light of his own diminished standing with Ellison. Ben Sherwood, the former Disney TV chief and ABC News president who now runs The Daily Beast, often angles for these jobs when they come up, too.

In truth, the most obvious candidate for the position is Jeff Zucker, the former CNN president and the only leader who has run that network successfully in this century. Zucker is friendly with Bari, too, and adjacent to the deal through his arrangement with Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird, where he oversees the RedBird IMI portfolio. (Disclosure here, too: Through our acquisition of Air Mail, RedBird is a minority investor in Puck.) But Zucker will almost certainly never be offered the job, in part because Trump absolutely detests him. One can only imagine the wrath David would incur from the Oval Office if he so much as floated Jeff’s name. After enduring a protracted battle with Netflix, courting foreign investors, genuflecting to Trump, and then finally winning WBD, one can’t imagine that David would risk it all just to give Zucker his old job back, even if he wanted to. How’s that for editorial independence?

Of course, the brief roster here is sort of the point: Ellison’s options come down to someone who’s currently running a network news division without prerequisites, a couple grizzled vets, and another guy whose arm would have to be twisted off to make it work. Indeed, the rationale behind combining CBS and CNN isn’t really about cost savings or synergies, but merely the fact that the American consumer has largely tuned out the format and there are only so many people with proposals to fix it. And Ellison, who likes to weave his tech pedigree into his talking points, knows this point as well as anyone.

But there’s a silver lining here. For the Ellisons to adequately manage the debt associated with their publicly traded, family-controlled L.B.O. mega-merger, they need to keep the cable bundle operating longer and more profitably than many of their peer companies. CNN has needed all sorts of help over the years and rarely received the adequate affection from its overlords. And while its journalists, producers, and staffers may not take Ellison at his word, perhaps they should: After all, he really needs this bet to work out.