Look no further than David Ellison’s father for reasons number one, two and three behind Paramount Skydance’s reportedly likely and imminent bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Namely — it’s a rounding error on the Oracle co-founder’s balance sheet. Ditto if you’re asking why David is paying Bari Weiss as much as $150 million to sell her growing Free Press media empire.
Yes, the younger Ellison just pulled off a massively complicated and expensive $8 billion deal to purchase the giant Paramount media empire. But as they say in the old neighborhood, the tech nepo baby, especially most recently, has “a lot of scarola” to throw around thanks to Daddy Warbucks, aka his father and partner in the newly formed Skydance Paramount, software tycoon Larry Ellison.
Bari Weiss will be the beneficiary of the money, and so will Warner Bros. chief David Zaslav if the deal goes through. Zas has been looking for a buyer since the day he came on board following the merger of Warner and Discovery a few years ago. Shares of WBD spike on the news of a potential bid on Thursday afternoon, though it’s unclear if such a transaction will pass regulatory muster or if Zas is fully on board.
It’s also unclear how much the Ellison’s will pay for WBD; it has a market cap of around $38 billion after news of the possible bid broke. So, you can see a deal of well over $40 billion.
Doesn’t look like such a problem on the day after Larry Ellison’s net worth leaped by $100 billion following Oracle’s latest blowout earnings report. Now he’s closing in on being the richest dude in the world with a net worth, as this goes to press, of more than $370 billion. Forbes, which has its own calculations for its real-time list, still has Musk ahead with around $432 billion.
Zaslav, it should be noted, had been fielding offers for at least part of his debt-laden WBD empire for some time. Media maven Jay Penske, who runs a conglomerate that owns among other properties Variety, Hollywood Reporter, the Rolling Stone and Vox Media, is said to have expressed interest in CNN, the rating challenged cable news network held by WBD.
Zaslav is said to have believed Penske was low balling him and could get more for the property if he held out for a while longer (a rep for Penske and Zaslav had no immediate comment).
CNN’s fate, if Ellison does indeed emerge as a buyer of all of WBD, is a major question. Regulators might not approve WBD holding CBS as well as the cable news channel, which means Penske might re-emerge as a bidder on the property.
That brings us back to Skydance and the Larry and David show. The conventional wisdom is that new management will be guided by the exigencies of the media business, which aren’t great. There will be cuts to CBS, particularly its news department that is on a difficult trajectory in terms of revenues.
“Zas has one idea of what CNN is worth, and other Penske had his and it was a lot lower,” said one media industry insider who asked not to be named.
The movie business is similarly challenging. People don’t go to the theater like they used to, and the alternative — streaming –isn’t the money maker once envisioned.
All true, but I also hear David, with his father in the background, is willing to spend strategically. It is why as we first reported here, Skydance is paying big bucks to hire a right-leaning think tank type as an ombudsman.
The move is part of its settlement with President Trump over the allegedly deceptively edited Kamala Harris interview. The watchdog, who will monitor lefty news bias at CBS, will earn $250,000 a year for working just one day a month.
A Skydance rep had no comment on any of the above but people inside the company say David is cognizant about not overspending on anything, including Bari Weiss and WBD as well.
She won’t be handed a lump of cash, but instead will be getting a lot of stock, sources said. Cash will be used to entice Zaslav to sell, I am told. For Weiss, there also will be an-earn-out provision based on certain business metrics she must reach, they added.
The new Skydance is a public company, so David Ellison answers to public shareholders, meaning he has to watch what he spends. Plus, just throwing around money isn’t how he rolls, ditto for the old man.
Nonetheless, with Oracle’s stock surge, Daddy Warbucks certainly has room to spend. And unless something changes radically, Bari Weiss will be getting a big check from David for the Free Press and probably land a top role at CBS News. So might David Zaslav.
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