Greetings from Los Angeles, welcome back to In the Room, and welcome to the
weekend. Tonight, Warriors-Rockets Game 6 (ESPN). Tomorrow, Sabalenka–Gauff in Madrid (Tennis Channel) and Clippers-Nuggets Game 7 (TNT). Sunday, F1 Miami Grand Prix (ABC)—and, of course, the start of the Milken Global Conference here in L.A. If you’re in town, let’s get together.
In tonight’s issue, news, notes, and some well-informed speculation on Shari Redstone’s seemingly inevitable
Trump settlement. Yes, Paramount’s front office has floated a $15 million to $20 million offer, but given Shari’s mounting debts and diminishing deal options, the real payout is likely to be significantly higher. And if the deal does go through, what’s next for 60 Minutes?
🍸 Plus, on the latest edition of The Grill Room, Julia Alexander and I chew over the latest twists in the 60
Minutes saga and consider all the challenges facing legacy media brands in the twilight of the cable TV era. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen.
Mentioned in this issue: Shari Redstone, David Ellison, George Cheeks, Jeff Shell, Jeff Zucker, Ben Sherwood, Jeff Bezos, Bob Iger, Bill Owens, Jake Sherman, Josh Tyrangiel, John Skipper, and many, many more…
Let’s get started…
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- Amazon-Punchbowl
C.Y.A.: Relentless Capitol Hill chronicler Jake Sherman and his Punchbowl colleagues sent Amazon executives scrambling this week after reporting that the e-commerce giant intended to show consumers how much Trump’s tariffs were increasing the price of each product. When White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about the report hours later, at Tuesday’s press briefing, she chastised Amazon for its “hostile and political act.” Meanwhile, Trump
called Jeff Bezos personally to complain about the move. Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle eventually came out and denied the report, saying the company had only considered such a move for Amazon Haul, its discount retail service, and that it was not going to implement it. In the process, Amazon shares dropped 2 percent, then recovered.
During the course of this fracas, I’m told, Amazon pulled its sponsorship from Punchbowl’s newsletters. The
“presented by Amazon” branding that appeared at the top of Tuesday morning’s newsletter—where the news was first reported—was conspicuously absent from the rest of the week’s newsletters, which were published without a sponsor. As for who’s at fault here, we can only assume that if Punchbowl’s initial report were truly inaccurate, Amazon wouldn’t have waited until Trump and Leavitt put them on blast to correct it.
- Josh in the wilderness:
Josh Tyrangiel—the veteran of Time, Bloomberg Media, and Vice News whom Mark Thompson recently tried to lure to CNN to help refashion the site’s digital sensibility (yes, that’s still happening, I think?)—has instead landed at The Atlantic as a staff writer. This isn’t Josh’s first writing perch; he recently spent a year writing a column about A.I. for The Washington Post. Nevertheless, this seems like a curious fit for a media
leadership vet whose name still gets put on the shortlist for those kinds of roles. Josh left Vice in 2019, and aside from a few years helping former HBO boss Richard Plepler out on Eden Productions, his Apple TV shingle, he doesn’t seem to have been up to much.
- Skipper out at Meadowlark: Finally, former ESPN president John Skipper is leaving Meadowlark Media, the podcast and documentary studio he launched with
Dan Le Batard in 2021. I’m not yet privy to exactly what happened here, but the conventional wisdom is that this simply wasn’t Skipper’s strong suit. “Tough to go from buyer to seller,” one sports media executive texted. “Story as old as time. Very few can do both.”
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Facing a Trump lawsuit, massive debts, and a $400 million kill fee if the Skydance sale
falls through, Redstone has privately discussed settling with the president for as much as $20 million. In fact, according to sources close to the company, she’ll likely have to pay much more. “Shari has to make this deal,” said one source close to the principals. “There is no plan B.”
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On Wednesday evening, as representatives for Paramount Global and President Trump
wrapped their first day of mediation talks on the president’s $20 billion lawsuit against 60 Minutes—a source of profound anxiety for CBS News and, indeed, the industry at large—The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount’s front office had privately discussed settling the suit for around $15 million to $20 million. The proposed
fee seemed plausible enough, especially since it aligned with the “donation” that Disney had made to Trump’s presidential library last December, after Bob Iger and his board determined they’d rather pay $16 million than enter a protracted legal and P.R. war with the incoming president, expose their text messages to discovery, and potentially complicate a Fubo deal. For Paramount, however, $15 million to $20 million is more of a tactical opening bid—and wishful thinking.
According to several sources close to the company, Paramount is likely to end up paying a lot more than that. The best estimates I’ve heard for Paramount’s eventual settlement range from $35 million at the low end to $75 million. There are a few reasons for this, but chief among them is that Trump has Paramount owner Shari Redstone over a barrel.
Since Shari took control of her father’s media empire and merged Viacom and CBS into Paramount, the company’s market cap has shrunk more than 70 percent, from $30 billion in 2019 to just $8 billion today. The current deal with David Ellison’s Skydance, which will deliver $2.4 billion to her and her family, is, at this point, her best available exit. As I
noted earlier this week, if she doesn’t make this deal, she’ll face fewer and worse options as the value of the assets continues to fall—and, eventually, a full-scale dismemberment by a firm like Apollo.
Meanwhile, Shari is highly leveraged. Her holding
company, National Amusements, has been saddled with debt for years. She owes at least $186 million to Larry Ellison, David’s father, who fronted her the money to refinance a loan back in November. She also has another roughly $200 million or so in payment-in-kind preferred owed to her M&A advisor Byron Trott at BDT & MSD. Finally, she could potentially be responsible for a $400 million kill fee if the deal falls through—though this could conceivably be
waived if the F.C.C. blocks the deal.
For Shari, the alternative to a deal is, at minimum, a multi-hundred-million-dollar bath and shittier exit options. By that logic, almost any eight-figure settlement is a no-brainer. And that is why Shari has never thought twice about pursuing a settlement—and why, as I’ve
reported, she asked Paramount co-C.E.O. George Cheeks whether 60 Minutes could forgo any sensitive reporting on Trump until after the deal closes. “Shari has to make this deal. There is no plan B,” one source close to the principals told me. “She’s stuck,” said another.
Of course, Shari’s financial motives will hardly assuage the anxieties of anyone who views a settlement as a betrayal of media ethics and an assault on press freedom—and certainly anyone at CBS News and 60 Minutes who fears that she’s sapping the brand of its cherished integrity. On the other hand, as I noted earlier this week, some have tried to rationalize the settlement by assuring themselves that a scuttled deal and protracted legal fight
with the administration would prove more damaging to the business. Indeed, if Shari does not sell Paramount, it’s likely the company’s news division would face severe layoffs and budget cuts before being sold for parts to even less desirable owners. Make of that argument what you will.
If the deal does go through, that raises all sorts of new questions for 60
Minutes. Presumably, Ellison, Cheeks, and Jeff Shell, the incoming Paramount president, will be savvy enough to seize the opportunity for tikkun olam, righting the previous regime’s wrongs by redoubling its commitments to 60 Minutes’ independence—or, at least, sending a signal to the market that that’s their intention. Some posited that Skydance could bring in Jeff Zucker, the former CNN chief, to run 60 Minutes, though
he’d be unlikely to take it. One source suggested Ben Sherwood, the former ABC chief who is currently busying himself in the salt mines of digital journalism at The Daily Beast.
Intriguingly, several sources posited that Skydance might reinstall Bill Owens, the 60 Minutes executive producer who announced his resignation last week due to Shari’s interference. That’s a good narrative, but probably an unlikely outcome. Sure, Bill’s the martyr in this story, but he’s also the guy who created some of these headaches and refused to play ball with his bosses (and, not for nothing, the guy responsible for hemorrhaging the CBS Evening News audience). Love for Bill runs strong in the CBS newsroom these days. Obviously, the front offices on both sides of
this deal feel differently.
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Puck sports correspondent John Ourand and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you inside the executive suites and owners
boxes where the decisions that shape the entire sports business are made. You’ll hear interviews with players, network execs, and everyone in between. The Varsity is an extension of John’s private email for Puck by the same name. New episodes publish every Wednesday and Sunday.
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