Paramount’s looming acquisition of CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery has reportedly sent a wave of dread through the 46-year-old cable news outlet.
Staffers are bracing [1] for upheaval as the deal moves closer to completion.
Paramount reached an agreement Monday with 12 state attorneys general, clearing a major hurdle to its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Breitbart News reported that the transaction will now go ahead.
The planned combination would create a sprawling media company encompassing both CBS News and CNN.
It would also include Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., along with the streaming services HBO Max and Paramount+.
Inside CNN, however, the prospect is reportedly inspiring anything but celebration.
The mood described to the NY Post was gloomy, fearful, and filled with anxious waiting for whatever comes next.
“People are very nervous,” one CNN staffer told the outlet.
“It’s dark. It’s like when you do hurricane coverage. You see the storm spinning off the coast of Haiti and moving towards Florida, and you’re just waiting and you’re like, ‘Oh, sh*t’.”
That hurricane comparison captures the helpless atmosphere reportedly hanging over the newsroom.
Employees can see a major corporate shift approaching, but the exact consequences for CNN workers have not yet been detailed.
A television executive offered an even more brutal prediction, telling the outlet, “Bloodbath coming, including at CNN,” as concerns centered on the possibility of widespread cuts.
The executive also said, “That’s the next big step — slashing and burning,” while others reportedly made similarly grim comparisons about the takeover.
The anxiety did not begin with Monday’s agreement.
CNN employees were already deeply concerned about the evolving merger in June, according to an earlier report from Breitbart News.
At that point, worried staffers reportedly turned their boss’s office into a makeshift “psychiatrist’s couch.”
Employees brought their fears to CNN executive Amy Entelis as uncertainty surrounding the potential acquisition intensified.
Part of that concern focused on Paramount boss David Ellison and his connections to Trump.
Staffers were also troubled by the connection involving Ellison’s father, Larry, who is a huge Trump donor.
Those employees apparently feared that CNN could be forced to make a turn toward the right if Ellison took control.
They voiced those concerns directly to Entelis while the merger remained in development.
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Now the acquisition has cleared another significant obstacle, making the feared corporate combination far more immediate for CNN’s workforce.
The reported reaction inside the network resembles a newsroom waiting for painful decisions rather than preparing for a triumphant new chapter.
The financial expectations surrounding the deal offer an obvious reason for the alarm.
Paramount anticipates at least $6 billion in cost savings, a target that would translate into several thousand jobs being lost during the months ahead.
Still, the prospect of several thousand positions disappearing across the combined operation has fueled the dark warnings circulating among staffers and television executives.
CNN, formally Cable News Network, Inc., was founded on June 1, 1980, by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld.
It began as a 24-hour cable news channel and was headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
CNN boss Mark Thompson is set to address rattled employees at a town hall on Wednesday, according to the NY Post report.
His appearance is expected to offer comfort to staffers confronting a merger that has already made the newsroom feel, by their own descriptions, like a disaster is approaching.