David Ellison attends Donald Trump's State of the Union address with Sen. Lindsey Graham. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
On Thursday afternoon, shortly after Netflix boss Ted Sarandos departed the White House following meetings with Donald Trump’s chief of staff and the Justice Department, the streamer issued a statement stunning the entertainment industry. Netflix, which was widely expected to counter Paramount’s “superior” $31-per-share bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, suddenly declared the deal “no longer financially attractive,” abandoning its pursuit of the storied movie studio and streaming operation altogether.
The unexpected reversal clears the way for David Ellison, the Paramount Skydance chief who has gone to great lengths to signal to Trump that he is an ally, to seize control of WBD’s sprawling portfolio of brands. That includes Warner Bros. Pictures, HBO Max, and a slate of cable networks—most notably, CNN.
While the move all but guarantees brutal layoffs across the company, it landed like a meteor at Hudson Yards. Inside CNN, alarm bells went off as staffers began to panic over the suddenly very real prospect that they could be working for Bari Weiss before the end of the year. Within minutes of the news crossing the wire, my phone lit up with messages…
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CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." (Screen grab via Snapstream/CNBC)
Shakeup at CNBC: Business news network CNBC announced Thursday it was cutting nearly a dozen staffers as it moves to fuse together its television and digital operations. The shakeup—coming just months after the network’s spin-off from Comcast—includes the exit of managing editor Jeff McCracken and is part of a broader restructuring under Editor-in-Chief David Cho that will see the launch of a…
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