Following unprecedented threats from Federal Communications Fee Chairman Brendan Carr, main affiliate station homeowners Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting pressured Disney’s ABC to pull Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air over his feedback related to Charlie Kirk’s killing.
The suspension is a harbinger of what might occur beneath a basic restructuring of U.S. media that can happen if the proposed Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery merger is approved by the Trump administration.
The deal, first revealed on September 11, 2025, would erase one of many 5 remaining film studios and focus oversight of two of the nation’s most outstanding newsrooms—CNN and CBS, each targets of the Trump administration’s ire—beneath one proprietor with sturdy ties to Donald Trump.
Primarily based on analysis from the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project, our evaluation exhibits that Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery would achieve management of greater than 1 / 4 of the US$223 billion U.S. media market, together with affect over movie, tv, streaming and the cloud infrastructure upon which digital media more and more relies upon.
The mixed entity would purchase almost half of the cable tv market, together with HBO and CNN. The merger would almost double Paramount’s share of the video streaming market, uniting HBO Max, Paramount+ and Discovery.
By combining two main Hollywood movie studios, it might additionally seize almost one-third of the movie manufacturing market.
That is precisely the kind of merger that U.S. antitrust businesses have historically scrutinized due to considerations that extreme market focus provides an excessive amount of energy to some corporations.
In media markets, such considerations are pronounced: Focus threatens media range and will increase the risk of media bias and ideological manipulation.
A mega-conglomerate like Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would management an unlimited share of U.S. viewership. Topic to stress from or, worse, alignment with the Trump administration, the merged firm might promote and shield the administration’s pursuits.
Cloud management
By combining media manufacturing and helpful manufacturers similar to Harry Potter, DC Comics, and Barbie, the merged big would achieve nice negotiating energy with competing streaming corporations, advertisers and distributors. The merged corporations might additionally safe extra profitable streaming offers, higher licensing home windows, and better per-subscriber and ad rates with cable providers.
The 2023 Hollywood writers and actors strikes opposed the exploitative influence of streaming and AI on inventive staff’ compensation. The brand new media big would wield vital bargaining energy over these media staff.
The merger’s potential detrimental influence extends past movie and tv industries.
Paramount is helmed by David Ellison, and the merger is backed by his father, Larry Ellison. Ellison senior owns the world’s fifth-largest cloud provider, Oracle.
Cloud suppliers are the important infrastructure for streaming platforms, ferrying digital content from streamers to viewers. As streaming turns into the dominant mode of media consumption, the Ellison household’s management over this infrastructure might give Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery one other lever of energy over its rivals.
Range denied
With potential dimension and attain to rival Disney and Comcast’s NBC Common, Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery might turn out to be one other huge media outlet with right-wing ties.
The proposed deal follows the Trump administration’s $1.1 billion cuts in public media funding. These cuts—affecting PBS, NPR, and greater than 1,500 affiliated native information stations throughout the nation, all accused by Trump of “partisan bias” – successfully speed up the ongoing demise of local, independent news.
Concurrently, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. has settled its dynastic succession, guaranteeing Fox remains a core channel for the American right.
If the merger is authorized, Fox Company, the conservative Sinclair Broadcasting, and Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would management one-third of all U.S. media.
This consolidation would additional cement the partisan media model driving deepening political polarization in the U.S., as public and native information media lose funding. The deal additionally would undermine already declining media independence, basic to holding the highly effective—whether or not firms or politicians—to account.
Wielding regulation
The Trump administration has not shied away from utilizing antitrust regulation and communications regulation to train political management over media.
Earlier than initiating its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount was acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance Media. Forward of the federal government’s merger evaluate, amid regulatory signals it could affect the review process, Paramount-owned CBS paid $16.5 million {dollars} to Donald Trump to settle a lawsuit Trump filed based mostly on allegations of “misleading” enhancing of an interview together with his political opponent Kamala Harris. Modifying of interviews is a standard editorial practice.
Shortly after, the merger was authorized by the FCC with strict political conditions: hiring an ombudsman to supervise CBS’s reporting and eliminating all the community’s range, fairness and inclusion initiatives.
David Ellison accepted these conditions, promising to remove all of Paramount’s U.S.-based DEI applications. For the ombudsman function, he employed Kenneth Weinstein, former CEO of the conservative Hudson Institute and ambassador to Japan beneath the primary Trump administration.
Since then, the Paramount CEO additionally has pursued Bari Weiss, a outstanding conservative voice, to information “the editorial direction” of the CBS news division. Ellison’s strikes sign that editorial independence at CBS, and shortly maybe CNN, could also be topic to ideological oversight.
In the meantime, Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, has ties to Donald Trump going again to the primary Trump administration. The New York Occasions in an April 2025 profile stated that Ellison “may be closer to Mr. Trump than any mogul this side of” Elon Musk.
The senior Ellison has been taking part in a key function in negotiations over the longer term possession of TikTok. His ties to Trump run deep sufficient to likely make him one of the main beneficiaries of the TikTok deal presently in negotiation between the US and China.
Trump has proven an urge for food for coercing media corporations. For example, ABC settled a Trump lawsuit in late 2024 with a $15 million donation to the as-yet-unbuilt Trump Library.
By putting two main information retailers within the fingers of a household with ties to Trump, the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger would facilitate such management.
What Orbán did—however sooner
That is the “Hungarian mannequin” on pace.
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian chief, spent a decade asserting increasing control over that nation’s media.
The Trump administration is poised to perform the identical in lower than a yr – and at higher scale.
Along with serving to allies purchase a rising share of U.S. media, in his first eight months Trump additionally has managed to attain conciliatory overtures from the nation’s tech billionaires, who fired fact-checkers at major social media platforms, curbed moderation of hateful content and asserted rigid editorial control over the op-ed pages at The Washington Put up, one of many nation’s most outstanding newspapers.
If the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is authorized and Larry Ellison joins Andreessen Horowitz as a part of the impending TikTok deal, a film studio, CBS, CNN, Fox, 185 Sinclair-owned TV stations and a serious social media platform could have homeowners with sturdy ties to Trump.
We consider the promised advantages of a Paramount-Warner Bros. Disovery merger, together with decrease streaming costs, pale subsequent to the harm it might do to media range and pluralism.
By buying higher management over movie manufacturing, TV and streaming, the merger would dramatically reconfigure the very media establishments that form U.S. tradition and politics.
The Trump administration’s evaluate of this merger might additional cement the administration’s political management over the U.S. media.
This story has been up to date to replicate developments within the standing of Kimmel’s present.
Pawel Popiel is an assistant professor of journalism at Washington State University.
Dwayne Winseck is a professor of journalism and communication at Carleton University.
Hendrik Theine is a postdoctoral fellow at Johannes Kepler University Linz and the University of Pennsylvania.
Sydney Forde is a postdoctoral fellow within the Annenberg Faculty for Communication on the University of Pennsylvania.
This text is republished from The Conversation beneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the original article.
