Following unprecedented threats from Federal Communications Fee Chairman Brendan Carr, main affiliate station homeowners Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting pressured Disney’s ABC to drag Jimmy Kimmel’s showcase the air over his feedback associated to Charlie Kirk’s killing.
The suspension is a harbinger of what might occur below a basic restructuring of U.S. media that may happen if the proposed Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery merger is authorized 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 distinguished newsrooms—CNN and CBS, each targets of the Trump administration’s ire—below one proprietor with robust ties to Donald Trump.
Primarily based on analysis from the International Media & Web Focus Mission, our evaluation exhibits that Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery would acquire 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 practically half of the cable tv market, together with HBO and CNN. The merger would practically 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 practically one-third of the movie manufacturing market.
That is precisely the kind of merger that U.S. antitrust businesses have traditionally scrutinized due to issues that extreme market focus offers an excessive amount of energy to a couple corporations.
In media markets, such issues are pronounced: Focus threatens media variety and will increase the danger of media bias and ideological manipulation.
A mega-conglomerate like Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would management an enormous share of U.S. viewership. Topic to strain from or, worse, alignment with the Trump administration, the merged firm might promote and defend the administration’s pursuits.
Donald Trump has made no secret of his distaste for Jimmy Kimmel. Donald Trump account, Reality Social
Cloud management
By combining media manufacturing and precious manufacturers reminiscent of Harry Potter, DC Comics, and Barbie, the merged big would acquire 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 advert charges with cable suppliers.
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 supplier, Oracle.
Cloud suppliers are the important infrastructure for streaming platforms, ferrying digital content material 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 opponents.
Variety denied
With potential dimension and attain to rival Disney and Comcast’s NBC Common, Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery might turn into one other large 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 continued demise of native, impartial information.
Concurrently, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. has settled its dynastic succession, guaranteeing Fox stays a core channel for the American proper.
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 mannequin driving deepening political polarization within 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 legislation 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 evaluation, amid regulatory alerts it might have an effect on the evaluation course of, Paramount-owned CBS paid $16.5 million {dollars} to Donald Trump to settle a lawsuit Trump filed primarily based on allegations of “misleading” modifying of an interview along with his political opponent Kamala Harris. Enhancing of interviews is a normal editorial follow.
Shortly after, the merger was authorized by the FCC with strict political situations: hiring an ombudsman to supervise CBS’s reporting and eliminating all the community’s variety, fairness and inclusion initiatives.
David Ellison accepted these situations, promising to eradicate all of Paramount’s U.S.-based DEI packages. For the ombudsman function, he employed Kenneth Weinstein, former CEO of the conservative Hudson Institute and ambassador to Japan below the primary Trump administration.
Since then, the Paramount CEO additionally has pursued Bari Weiss, a distinguished conservative voice, to information “the editorial course” of the CBS information 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 mentioned that Ellison “could also be nearer to Mr. Trump than any mogul this aspect of” Elon Musk.
The senior Ellison has been enjoying a key function in negotiations over the long run possession of TikTok. His ties to Trump run deep sufficient to probably make him one of many essential beneficiaries of the TikTok deal at the moment in negotiation between america and China.
Trump has proven an urge for food for coercing media corporations. As an illustration, 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 arms 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 growing management over that nation’s media.
The Trump administration is poised to perform the identical in lower than a yr – and at larger 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 main social media platforms, curbed moderation of hateful content material and asserted inflexible editorial management over the op-ed pages at The Washington Put up, one of many nation’s most distinguished newspapers.
If the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is authorized and Larry Ellison joins Andreessen Horowitz as a part of the upcoming TikTok deal, a film studio, CBS, CNN, Fox, 185 Sinclair-owned TV stations and a serious social media platform may have homeowners with robust 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 variety and pluralism.
By buying larger 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 evaluation 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 College.
Dwayne Winseck is a professor of journalism and communication at Carleton College.
Hendrik Theine is a postdoctoral fellow at Johannes Kepler College Linz and the College of Pennsylvania.
Sydney Forde is a postdoctoral fellow within the Annenberg Faculty for Communication on the College of Pennsylvania.
This text is republished from The Dialog below a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article.
