The Trump administration favors Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Bros. Discovery – and a number of rival bidders are likely to face stiff hurdles from US regulators in the blockbuster auction, On The Money has learned.
That puts Paramount Skydance – the newly formed media giant headed by CEO David Ellison, the son of software magnate and longtime Trump backer Larry Ellison – clearly in the catbird seat as Warner Bros. Discovery kicks off a process to sell itself this week, according to a government official with direct knowledge of the matter.
Warner Bros Discovery, known as WBD, owns both the No. 1 ranked studio, the No. 3 ranked streaming services, as well as cable channels like HBO and CNN.
“Who owns Warner Bros. Discovery is very important to the administration,” a senior Trump administration official told On The Money. “The Warner board needs to think very seriously not just on the price competition but which player in the suitor pool has been successful getting a deal done.
“And that points to the Ellisons,” the senior administration official added.
With the exception of Paramount Skydance, most of the reported potential suitors for WBD – Netflix, Amazon, and Comcast – come with various forms of baggage that could hamper approvals from key US agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division, these sources say.
For Comcast, that baggage includes the anti-MAGA coverage of the cable giant’s far-left network MSNBC. It also includes NBC, which the president believes channels anti-Trump messaging not only on its newscasts but also in entertainment programming like “Saturday Night Live,” where Trump is mocked on a weekly basis.
“The odds that (Comcast CEO) Brian Roberts is going to be able to expand and buy CNN or whatever is low,” the official added. “Maybe Brain Roberts comes up w grand detente with the president but I don’t think that will happen and that’s the key.”
For Netflix and Amazon, which are eyeing chunks of WBD including its studio and streaming units, hurdles involve significant antitrust concerns. Netflix is already the No 1 streamer while WBD is No 3. Amazon, meanwhile, is under a consent decree from the Federal Trade Commission over alleged marketing abuses.
WBD CEO David Zaslav, meanwhile, believes he can make a case to the Trump administration that they should allow deals outside of Paramount Skydance, appealing to free market types in the administration.
Comcast is likewise expected to argue that it should be allowed to bid and possibly buy WBD because it has announced that it is spinning out its lefty cable network MSNBC into a separate unit, sources said.
Nevertheless, insiders said Zaslav in particular will be forced to consider regulatory hurdles that not only include antitrust concerns but also the Trump administration’s willingness to crack down on what it sees as rampant left-wing bias across the mainstream media.
“Warner really needs to think really hard about the odds of success getting the deal cleared with players outside of Paramount Skydance,” the official added. “Again when the Warner board is looking at offers it needs to give real significant weight not just of price factors but on the odds of getting a deal done.”
A WBD rep declined to comment as did a rep for Paramount Skydance. A spokeswoman for the Trump DOJ antitrust division declined to comment.
The comments from the senior administration official come after The Post reported earlier this month that Makan Delrahim, the head of the DOJ’s antitrust division during Trump’s first term, was hired by Paramount Skydance to make the argument that Zaslav will likely have no choice by to sell to Ellisons.
As The Post first reported, Zaslav earlier Thursday kicked off the bidding process for the company in a deal that could cost as much as $80 billion. The Post was first to report that Zaslav rebuffed three bids from David Elllison, the last one at $23.50 a share, from the independent movie producer now running Paramount Skydance. He expects another bid from Ellison, this a public so-called hostile offer, to force his band by appealing to shareholders to allow the company to be sold to Paramount Skydance.
David Ellison’s father Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, is worth around $350 billion and – more important – a close friend of Donald Trump, which could smooth the necessary regulatory approvals needed for a deal this size.
Trump administration officials point to Ellison’s past experience dealing with the president as key in the WBD takeover drama. Before Ellison set his sights on WBD, he completed an $8 billion deal to purchase Paramount.
That was after Paramount shelled out $16 million to Trump to settle what some say was a weak lawsuit filed by the president alleging that Paramount’s CBS news subsidiary unfairly edited an interview with Kamala Harris to make her sound smarter during the heat of the 2024 election against Trump.
CBS has since hired an ombudsman to root out alleged left-wing bias in its newsroom, and hired Free Press founder Bari Weiss, known for her pro-Israel views, to run the news network. Trump has since publicly praised the Ellisons, as “friends” and “big supporters of mine,” saying he believes they will make CBS “fairer.”
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