A little more on Skydance's early integration meetings at NYC's Hudson Yards & Atlanta's Techwood campus:
"A few weeks ago, as CBS News and CNN inched closer to a corporate marriage, top executives from the two news organizations and their parent companies convened for an introductory meeting. Representing CBS News were Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss and President Tom Cibrowski. CNN’s delegation included chief executive Mark Thompson, chief operating officer Alex MacCallum, and Executive Editor Virginia Moseley.
Executives from the companies’ respective parent organizations also attended, including Paramount chief operating officer Andy Gordon.
During the meeting, which has not been previously reported, Status has learned that CNN executives walked Paramount and CBS News leaders through the network’s strategy. MacCallum outlined CNN’s digital ambitions, including its recently launched streaming product and online subscription offering. Moseley, meanwhile, discussed how CNN distributes its journalism across its many platforms, from television to its highly trafficked website and digital properties.
The meetings, of course, are constrained by gun-jumping rules, meaning Paramount cannot begin managing CNN before it formally acquires the asset. But executives at the Ellison-led company are entitled to gain a better understanding of the businesses they are preparing to purchase before the transaction closes.
Paramount, which will emerge from the deal with a massive debt load, will also face significant pressure to realize synergies as quickly. Translation: Gordon & Co. will be hunting for cuts.
The first targets are likely to be back-office functions. CNN and CBS News can draw on the same shared infrastructure for human resources, legal affairs, communications, marketing, and other such services. Those are the easiest efficiencies to achieve and will be the least messy, though they’re still likely to generate plenty of headlines.
Things get much trickier after that. CBS News operates with a unionized workforce, while CNN does not. Media insiders I spoke with are not entirely sure how Paramount intends to navigate that reality.
Merger discussions between the two news organizations have famously been held before, and labor issues have always been among the biggest obstacles. Perhaps CBS News could license content from CNN, or vice versa.
But one industry insider warned that if Paramount attempts to brazenly sidestep union rules, it will almost certainly face stiff resistance. We’ll have to wait and see whether the company ultimately finds a creative solution, but it’s difficult to imagine Ellison will bite the bullet and allow CNN to become a union shop."
Behind the scenes, Status has learned that top executives at CNN and CBS News have quietly convened for meetings as Paramount moves closer to acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, uniting the two news operations.
www.status.news
"Earlier this week, Tom Cibrowski, the president and executive editor of CBS News and unwitting Sancho Panza of the network’s Bari Weiss era, found himself in a delegation of Paramount technical staff on a tour of Warner Bros. Discovery’s Techwood Campus—the 30-acre production complex in Midtown Atlanta that serves, among other things, as the global headquarters for CNN. Days earlier, Tom also joined this team on a tour of the network’s true executive headquarters at Hudson Yards, about a mile and a half down 10th Avenue from the CBS Broadcast Center.
The visits, I’m told, gave the Paramount folks an opportunity to preview the control rooms, production studios, and other facilities they will inherit once David Ellison secures his merger of the two companies, barring interference from objecting Democratic state attorneys general.
For the journalists concerned, news of these visits offered the most tangible sign yet that the integration of their two storied news networks was already underway. “I can’t believe it’s actually happening,” one CNN reporter texted me. Indeed, it’s been happening. A month ago, I reported that David had met with CNN chairman and C.E.O. Mark Thompson. Shortly thereafter, Paramount executives presided over a video conference in which Mark and his top deputies, who were in Los Angeles, presented Bari, Tom, and others in New York with an overview of their operations. Virginia Moseley, CNN’s executive editor, outlined the network’s newsgathering and editorial processes. Alex MacCallum, the chief operating officer and leading light of the network’s digital transformation, presented the site’s nascent streaming service and subscription strategy. (Guys, whatever you do, hold on to Alex…)"
And even with the recent 60 Minutes oustings, there's some internal discourse due to Ellison and his Skydance lieutenants believing Tom Cibrowski's not good enough to be the business executive running alongside The Free Press founder (the snobbish attitude makes sense due to him being a Silicon Valley trust fund kid):
"By now, you’ve surmised that there are going to be quite a few cooks in this new kitchen. And that’s before factoring in the most critical variable—the impending addition of another executive, as I first reported in May, to assist Bari in her oversight of the two newsrooms.
What David may really be searching for is a bigger version of Cibrowski himself. Tom is the one operational partner who has proven willing to assist Bari’s mission in a beta role. Alas, I’m told the Paramount front office does not believe he has the stature and strategic chops necessary for this broader assignment. That may seem uncharitable given the battle scars he’s already endured in keeping this circus tent from toppling over."
Dylan Byers Greetings from Los Angeles, and welcome to the inaugural Inner Circle edition of In the Room. If you’re not an Inner Circle member yet, you can upgrade your subscription here to get all future Wednesday sends. This gives you access to all of Puck’s most exclusive insider reporting...
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Again, this is not a new thing about Skydance rushing because what Ellison & COO Andy Gordon are doing have been done with Jeff Shell during the Redstone sale. This is what they're known for, even though it's very sloppy to do all of this before anything's official.
