There are 600 million reasons why Paramount Skydance should not tinker too much with the inner workings of CNN after the company completes the acquisition of its parent, Warner Bros. Discovery. Staffers at the news giant fear the company soon expected to be their new owner will ignore all of them.
CNN is not what it once was. It’s not grabbing the attention and viewers that it did under the aegis of its founder, entrepreneur Ted Turner, and it’s not throwing off the same amount of cash as when it was managed by media executive Jeff Zucker. There are more news platforms vying for the attention of the people who might have turned first to CNN when important headlines break, and many of those rivals use more provocative personalities and hotter rhetoric than CNN mainstays like Wolf Blitzer or Laura Coates. But give the newsroom this: Warner Bros. Discovery projected in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year that CNN will generate $600 million in profit in 2026 on $1.8 billion in revenue. The news company remains “on track” to do so, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Paramount will need that money. Its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery will give rise to a new entity that will have $79 billion in net debt. CNN, which WBD said is aiming to generate an additional $100 million in revenue each year through 2030 as it builds out a digital subscription offering, could help. Paramount has vowed to eliminate more than $6 billion in costs and continues to grapple with declines in advertising revenue and a passel of cable networks that are shedding subscribers.
