The other day, an anonymous Paramount Global shareholder reached out to share his concerns about my reporting on the David Ellison/Skydance offer for the company and NAI, the Redstone family holding company. He perceived my work as being “in the bag” for Ellison, as opposed to the competing offer recently concocted by an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. His critique of media analysts, such as myself and LightShed Partners’ Rich Greenfield, was that we have apparently been “cheering for the Skydance offer” while, in his view, “not a single shareholder wants it.”

That’s hardly true, of course, but our anonymous friend claimed to own around 700,000 Paramount Global Class B shares, worth around $8 million these days, and to have worked with private equity to found three biotech companies. In other words, he wanted me to know, he is no rube. And he was deeply frustrated that most of Hollywood, Wall Street, and the media seem to take Ellison so much more seriously than Bronfman, especially when the Ellison deal contains a provision whereby Paramount Global would have to buy Skydance Media, Ellison’s production company, for $4.75 billion in stock, a combination with Paramount’s studio that our friend worries would be “dilutive” to shareholders.