- Justice Department reviews Paramount Skydance $111 billion Warner Bros. deal.
- Deal would combine major media assets under Ellison family control.
- Trump and Hegseth publicly praise Ellison media expansion efforts.
- Lawmakers raise concerns over market concentration and political influence.
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have each publicly celebrated the Ellison family's growing media empire in recent days, even as the Trump administration's Justice Department is reviewing Paramount Skydance's $111 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery a combination that would place CBS, CNN, HBO, TikTok and Warner Bros. Studios under the control of a single family with documented ties to the White House.
The praise from Trump and Hegseth arrives at a delicate moment: the Justice Department's antitrust division is actively reviewing the deal, and regulators must ultimately decide whether a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. entity with its combined 200 million streaming subscribers, two major studios, five broadcast and cable news networks, and a 15 percent stake in TikTok constitutes an unacceptable concentration of media power.
The Scale of the Empire
If the deal closes, the Ellisons will control a media footprint that is without modern precedent in its breadth. Larry Ellison, Oracle's co-founder and the world's sixth-richest man, is backing the acquisition with a $47 billion equity commitment he has personally guaranteed alongside RedBird Capital Partners.
His son David, who has run Paramount Skydance since acquiring it last year, would oversee the combined entity. Warner Bros. Discovery accepted the Paramount offer after Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters withdrew their competing $82.7 billion all-cash bid in late February.
The combined portfolio would include Warner Bros. Studios, CBS, CNN, HBO, HBO Max, Paramount+, Comedy Central, BET, Cartoon Network, DC Studios, TBS, TNT, Nickelodeon, MTV, Showtime, Miramax, Fandango and TikTok US where Oracle holds a 15 percent stake and hosts the app's algorithm on its cloud infrastructure.
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The Political Dimension
The Ellisons' relationship with Trump has been openly cultivated. Larry Ellison sat beside Rupert Murdoch in the Oval Office in February 2025. David Ellison attended Trump's State of the Union address as a guest of Senator Lindsey Graham.
Paramount settled Trump's lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview edit for millions of dollars and cancelled Stephen Colbert's Late Show. Bari Weiss, the conservative commentator, was installed as editor-in-chief of CBS News and reports directly to David Ellison. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison privately offered Trump officials he would make sweeping changes to CNN if the deal closed.
Senator Bernie Sanders was among the most prominent voices to frame the proposed combination in explicitly political terms, posting on X on March 11 that the family's control of so many platforms amounted to oligarchy.
The Sceptics
Not everyone in Hollywood believes the deal will succeed even if it clears regulatory review. The history of mega-mergers in the industry is almost uniformly poor: AO-Time Warner, Viacom-CBS, AT&T-Warner Media all destroyed shareholder value. Netflix's streaming lead is so entrenched that even a combined Paramount-Warner entity may struggle to close the gap.
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The deal still requires shareholder approval and a full regulatory review. FCC Chairman Brendan Car has signalled no broadcast licences would change hands, potentially smoothing one regulatory hurdle. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns, and the Justice Department's review is ongoing. For now, Trump keeps cheering. Whether regulators follow is another matter entirely.
