Ellison Offers Up CNN to Save His Merger
Twelve states and a $7 million-a-day clock forced the retreat — Raskin wants Ellison under oath.
Paramount put CNN itself on the table Wednesday. Chief legal officer Makan Delrahim told Politico's California Agenda conference that selling the network is "on the table" to settle the 12-state antitrust suit blocking Paramount's $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — the deal that would hand David Ellison CBS News and CNN in the same year. Reuters carried the admission within hours; Delrahim went further for Deadline: everything is on the table.
Everything.
The retreat has a price schedule. Ellison set September 30 as his settlement deadline and told senior executives he starts moving company operations out of California on October 1 without one. The same date starts a $7 million-a-day meter — ticking fees owed to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders until the deal closes. The trial lands March 2, 2027, before U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín. Run the meter that long and the fees climb into the billions.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has heard the softer offers — an editorial board for CNN, "internal improvements to journalistic integrity" — and called them "piecemeal promises." He described the case in an August 10 Deadline column as "straight up antitrust enforcement" against a combined company that would control nearly one-third of theatrical film distribution and one-third of basic cable. "Paramount has lost the plot as it continues to lose in court," Bonta wrote.
