California state Attorney General Rob Bonta is silent this morning over David Ellison‘s insistence that contentious fate and future of CNN is really the focus of the multi-state lawsuit to stop the $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery.
Not so much Ari Emanuel.
In the wake of Paramount CEO Ellison breaking his long held public silence on the suit in a punchy op-ed Tuesday morning, the outspoken TKO Group boss today recommended an “editorial board” be put in place to run CNN.
Appearing live on CNBC’s SquawkBox, the brother of potential 2028 POTUS contender Rahm Emanuel followed his pal David’s lead and said he believed the July 13 launched antitrust action is really “a little bit about politics, about CNN.” Ari added: “I think there’s a way around that.” Cutting straight to the chase and the real mastermind or threat (depending on your POV) of the matter, Emanuel emphasised such a vague editorial board entity “over the news organization” could make sure “everybody’s calm about news and possibly Larry Ellison controlling CNN and CBS.”
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Shifting swiftly away from the elephant in the room and the MAGA tendencies implied in all that, the WME co-founder then went on to claim that such a board would allow the Ellisons to “get to the business of making movies and television, which has been difficult over the last six years.”
Yeah, that might be news to CNN boss Mark Thompson. With David Ellison and Emanuel putting CNN in the hot seat, the Larry Ellison factor brought up by the super agent also may wet the appetite of the likes of Barry Diller and even Jeff Zucker to seriously individually consider a CNN offer to the MAGA entwined Ellisons.
Putting the realpolitik of ownership of the Ted Turner founded cable newser front and center in an attempt to reclaim the legal and cultural narrative, Ellison’s sometimes exaggerating essay in the Gray Lady also comes as both sides await a pivotal ruling by federal judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin on whether a trial will take place in November or deeper into 2027.
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Of course, on the same day Paramount Skydance quarterly earnings are announced and a day after TKO revealed a sold quarter, Emanuel’s Zoom-in appearance on the influential SquawkBox this AM has its own context too.
The CNBC hit is is hot off a botched July 28 WSJ opinion piece where the hard hitting Entourage inspiring agent called Bonta and other state AGs official opposition to the merger “absurd.” Similar in scope to what Ellison said Tuesday in the NYT, Emanuel’s WSJ item also slammed the lawsuit’s anti-competition premise as 20 years out of date.
Along with the Rupert Murdoch-owned Journal itself, the former agent to Apprentice host Donald Trump was widely mocked for not disclosing his own UFC economic interests with the Ellisons and Para. Back in the summer of 2025, soon after Ellison’s Skydance acquired Para from Sheri Redstone, the company inked a $7.7. billion right deal with the Dana White created UFC. Emanuel’s TKO is the parent company to the UFC — which was one reason Emanuel was in prominent attendance at the controversial Freedom 250 mega-bout at the White House on Trump’s June 14 80th birthday.
Today, Emanuel made sure to avoid all that.
He did however have a ParaBros fueled prescription to cure Tinseltown’s production woes.
“I think we need three strong streaming players, this would be the fourth,” Emanuel said of a Paramount+ HBOMax combo.
“You have Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and this merger,” he went on to tell pro-merger co-host Joe Kernen.
Reading from the Ellison playbook in what looks like a coordinated media push this morning, Emanuel continued; “Not that there’s not other players, but in the streaming world, that’s really great for the economy of Hollywood. Let’s just talk about the last six years. We’ve had four years of COVID. Then we had a writer strike. It’s been six very tough years for the movie television business. This merger, with him committing to 30 movies, 45 day release, 170 TV shows, he’s going to spend probably he says $30 billion in content a year. So I mean, we need that for the economy of Hollywood. You know, it’s one of our biggest exports.”
For the record, Bonta and the other dozen or so AGs behind the ParaBros antitrust suit, which the WGA has linked up with also, have taken a weary show us the money approach to David Ellison’s production promises. Also for the record, Comcast’s Peacock, AppleTV and YouTube all might, to varying degrees, have something to say about Emanuel’s analysis of who the real streaming players are.
