In 1948 the Supreme Court broke up Paramount for owning too much of Hollywood. In 2026 Washington let Paramount buy Warner Bros., CNN and HBO. Monopolies are un-American, and in any other decade this one would have been stopped.
OPINION | By Joseph J. Jackson | ST. PETERSBURG (Nov. 11, 2026)
The short version
On Oct. 6, 2026, David Ellison's Paramount closed its $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The new company is called Skydance. [1][2]
TheDesk.net's map of the combined company counts 114 brands: two of Hollywood's five big studios, CBS News and CNN, HBO, Paramount+, about 60 cable channels and 29 local TV stations, including WTOG CW44 in Tampa–St. Petersburg and two stations in Miami.
Netflix had the winning deal until the president called it "a problem." Then Larry Ellison, a Trump friend and donor, guaranteed $40.4 billion of his own money. Netflix walked. [3][4][5]
The same company the Supreme Court broke up in 1948 for monopolizing Hollywood just got bigger than it has ever been. [6][7]
Look at the picture
Before you read another word, look at the graphic at the top of this story. Count the logos.
CBS. CNN. HBO. Nickelodeon. MTV. BET. TNT. TBS. Comedy Central. Food Network. HGTV. Discovery. Cartoon Network. Showtime. Paramount Pictures. Warner Bros. Pictures. DC Studios. Harry Potter. Game of Thrones. SpongeBob. Top Gun. The Godfather.
And down in the bottom-left corner, in the local stations box: WTOG, CW44, Tampa–St. Petersburg. It's ours. It's theirs now.
TheDesk.net counted every asset. I counted their boxes: 114. One company. One family at the top.
That is not a free market. That's a company store.
How they got it
Netflix won first. In December 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery agreed to sell its studios and HBO to Netflix for about $83 billion. [3]
Then the president weighed in. Two days later, Trump told reporters the deal "could be a problem." [3] A senior administration official told CNBC the White House had "heavy skepticism" about it. [4] Trump had already said what he thought of the other bidder's family: "Larry Ellison is great, and his son David is great." [4]
Then the money came. Paramount went hostile. Larry Ellison signed an irrevocable personal guarantee for $40.4 billion to back his son's bid. [5] Sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi put in about $24 billion more, along with Jared Kushner's investment firm. [8]
Then Netflix got the message. In February, Netflix declined to match Paramount's $31-a-share offer and walked away. [9] Paramount paid Netflix's $2.8 billion breakup fee. [10]
Netflix said the deal had become a "nice to have" at the right price. [11] Maybe. But when the president calls your deal a problem and calls the other bidder his friend, you don't need a formal veto. Everyone in the room can read the room.
And the news came with it. The Wall Street Journal reported that David Ellison assured Trump he would make "sweeping changes" at CNN. [12] Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said publicly: "The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better." [13]
A free press shouldn't depend on who's friends with the president.
In any other decade, this gets stopped
Defenders of this deal will tell you Skydance isn't that big, that Netflix, Disney and YouTube are bigger. Check the numbers.
Money: Skydance takes in about $70 billion a year, about a third more than Netflix. [25]
Movies: In 2025, Warner Bros. and Paramount together sold about 27% of domestic movie tickets, even with Disney's 27.5%. [19][26]
TV: Combined, the two companies hold 12.1% of all TV viewing in America. That's second only to YouTube, and ahead of Disney and Netflix. [27]
Properties: YouTube is a platform for other people's videos, not a studio. Netflix makes shows but owns one service, with no broadcast network, no cable channels, no local stations and no newsroom. Skydance owns all of it: about 18 studios and production companies, CBS, CNN, about 60 cable channels and 29 local stations. Netflix doesn't own your local newscast. Skydance might.
The only place Skydance trails is streaming subscribers, where Netflix still leads. [28] If a company this size isn't too big under today's antitrust law, then the law got smaller so the companies could get bigger.
Here is what America used to do with deals like this.
1890: Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act. Monopolies were treated as a threat to democracy, not just to prices.
1948: The Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Paramount Pictures that Hollywood's biggest studios had illegally monopolized film distribution and theaters. [6] The studios were forced to sell their theater chains and stop forcing bundles of films on independent theater owners. [7] The lead defendant's name was Paramount.
1970: The FCC banned CBS, NBC and ABC from owning most of the shows they aired and from selling the reruns, because three networks controlled too much of what Americans could watch. [14] Under those rules, CBS couldn't have owned the shows it now owns, let alone CNN, HBO and Warner Bros.
1995: Those rules were gone. [15] Megadeals followed.
2020: A federal judge, at the Justice Department's request, ended the Paramount Decrees after 70 years. [16]
2026: Paramount buys Warner Bros.
Every decade from the 1940s through the 1980s, this deal would have been called what it is. Two of the five major studios. Two of the biggest newsrooms in America. Dozens of cable channels with the power to raise your cable bill. Twelve state attorneys general sued to stop it. The states said the company would control more than 50 basic cable channels, enough leverage to push prices onto every cable customer. [17] California Attorney General Rob Bonta said too much corporate power "makes things more expensive, and it makes things worse." [18]
In 2025, Warner Bros. had 21% of the domestic box office and Paramount had 6%. [19] Together, one company now has more than a quarter of the movies Americans see in theaters, before you count a single TV channel.
The theater owners saw it coming. Cinema United, the industry's trade group, warned that studio consolidation historically leads to fewer films. [20]
Look at the graphic again. Skydance doesn't own two studios. It owns about 18 studios and production companies: Paramount Pictures, Paramount Animation, Nickelodeon Movies, Skydance, Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, DC Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, Castle Rock, CBS Studios, Paramount Television Studios, Nickelodeon Animation, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Cartoon Network Studios and more.
Many of them used to be independent companies with their own bosses and their own slates. New Line started in 1967 as an independent, made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the highest-grossing independent film of its time, and was bought by Turner in 1994. [29] Castle Rock, the company behind Seinfeld, planned to make 12 to 15 films a year on its own after Turner bought it in 1993. [30] New Line was folded into Warner Bros. in 2008. [31]
Now every one of those names answers to one boss. And the settlement asks the whole company, every film label combined, for just 30 films a year. That's about twice what Castle Rock alone once planned. Even that promise runs out after five years. [17]
Why this is un-American
America was built against concentrated power. The colonists dumped the East India Company's tea, a company with a monopoly granted by a king. The founders wrote a First Amendment so no single power could decide what the public was allowed to read.
Monopoly is the opposite of that. It replaces competition with control and citizens with customers. When one family owns the studio that makes the movie, the network that airs it, the streamer that sells it, the cable channel that reruns it, the local station you get your weather from, and the newsroom that is supposed to tell you whether any of it is fair, that family isn't competing. It's governing.
And when that family got there with a president's blessing, a $40 billion personal check and Gulf royal money, it isn't capitalism. It's the oldest kind of power there is, wearing a new logo.
That's why this is un-American. Not because Ellison is rich. Because the system that was supposed to stop him didn't.
What Florida should watch
WTOG CW44 (Tampa–St. Petersburg), WFOR CBS News Miami and WBFS (Miami) are all Skydance stations now. Watch local news staffing and whether local coverage gets folded into regional hubs.
Your cable and streaming bill. The settlement only requires Paramount and Warner basic cable channels to be negotiated separately for five years. It doesn't cover premium channels, streaming or broadcast. [17]
Larry Ellison is a Floridian. He declared his $173 million Manalapan estate in Palm Beach County his official residence. (See FMNN's investigation, The Oracle.)
Reality of the Situation
What the deal's defenders say: Paramount argues the merger gives it a bigger library to compete with much larger streaming rivals. [18] They point out that Netflix has more streaming subscribers and YouTube draws more TV viewing time. [27][28] The Justice Department approved the deal in June. [17] The states' settlement requires at least 30 films a year for two years and 32 a year after that, $1.5 billion more in domestic movies, a fund for displaced workers, and a News Editorial Independence Board at CBS News and CNN. [17][21][22] Trump told NBC News in February that he would not be "involved" in the deal. [23]
What the record shows: Bonta and the other attorneys general said even after settling that they still didn't think the companies should merge. [22] Critics called the settlement too weak. [24] The editorial independence board is set up by the same company it is supposed to watch. And the people who once broke up Paramount weren't arguing about whether Netflix was bigger. They were asking whether one company had too much power over what America sees. It does.
Who Carried the Story
TheDesk.net mapped every Skydance asset. The Associated Press, TheWrap and MediaPost covered the close and the states' settlement. The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian reported the Ellisons' conversations with Trump about CNN.
Graphic: TheDesk.net, used with credit.
Sources
1. TheWrap, "Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery's $110 Billion Merger Closes," Oct. 6, 2026
3. Fortune, "Trump warns Netflix-Warner deal may pose antitrust 'problem,'" Dec. 7, 2025
4. Variety, "Would Donald Trump Try to Block Netflix's Takeover of Warner Bros.?" Dec. 2025
6. CNBC, "US judge ends decades-old movie theater rules governing Hollywood," Aug. 7, 2020
7. CU Law Review, "Terminations of the Paramount Decrees: A Greenlight for Monopolies"
14. FCC, Network Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, Federal Register, Apr. 19, 1995
15. FCC, final rule repealing fin/syn, Federal Register, Sept. 21, 1995
17. MediaPost, "States Settle With Paramount Over Warner Bros. Merger," Sept. 2026
18. Fox 9, "Paramount acquires Warner Bros.: What it means for streaming apps and your wallet"
19. AP via Fortune, "Warner/Paramount sets up Hollywood to shrink from Big 5 to Big 4," Feb. 28, 2026
23. NBC News
25. Webull, Skydance vs. Netflix revenue and debt, Oct. 2026
26. CNBC via The Nightly, "Disney dominated the 2025 box office" (Comscore figures)
31. New Line Cinema (merger into Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008)