The newly combined Paramount Skydance could be looking to add the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a report Thursday.
Jessica Toonkel of The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Paramount Skydance is preparing a bid to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including the cable networks that are poised to be spun off into a new venture. The news comes nearly two years after WBD and Paramount held merger talks that ultimately did not come to fruition.
Any potential acquisition would be laden with implications. The Paramount-Skydance merger went through a tortuous regulatory process that resulted in considerable upheaval within Paramount, and that was a deal that ultimately did not consolidate existing powers. This deal would among other things combine CBS News and CNN, a prospect that would likely dominate any and all headlines and discussion.
On the sports side, any such deal would combine CBS Sports and TNT Sports, two of the leading brands in sports television. While it is often assumed that CBS and TNT are corporate siblings by virtue of their joint carriage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — and going back further, their partnership on the Winter Olympics in the 1990s — they have always been separate entities with entirely separate cultures and histories.
CBS Sports may well be the most old-fashioned of the network sports divisions, and for much of the past two decades has operated with a stability that may be unmatched in the industry — holding onto the same slate of core rights and otherwise sitting out most of the highest-profile rights negotiations. That would seem to be changing under Skydance, as within days of the merger going through in August, Paramount announced its acquisition of the UFC rights package.
TNT Sports finds itself in the most uncertain period of its existence, on the brink of being spun off into a new independent company. The David Zaslav era has seen TNT Sports lose its longest-held rights package, the NBA, while adding a number of smaller properties — some through sub-licensing deals with other networks.
It is not clear whether a potential acquisition is even feasible. As Toonkel noted, Paramount Skydance would be trying to acquire a company that has a market cap twice its size. She also noted that upon the planned spinoff, the streaming and studio portion of WBD — set to be simply named “Warner Bros.” — could attract the interest of far bigger suitors, such as Amazon or Apple.
Paramount Skydance may be one of the few companies with use for the cable networks set to be spun off from WBD; Toonkel reported last week that Paramount under its new management is looking to “keep and revitalize” its cable networks, albeit “without increasing spending on them.” That is in contrast to other media conglomerates, including WBD, which have been either actively shedding their cable networks or at least publicly considered doing so.
