CNN Is Excluded From Netflix’s Warner Bros. Deal for Now
CNN, Unwanted by Netflix, Is Excluded From a Sale, for Now
The prospect of Paramount buying Warner Bros. Discovery had led CNN journalists to wonder if the channel might be combined with CBS News. Instead, CNN will remain in a separate corporate entity.
A CNN sign is displayed outside the network’s studios in Washington, DC.Credit...Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Dec. 5, 2025Updated 1:47 p.m. ET
Netflix’s mega $83 billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery has major implications for the entertainment industry, as well as the Warner Bros. film and TV studios and HBO.
The fallout, at least for now, will be far less significant for CNN.
The 24-hour news channel is conspicuously absent from the media entities that Netflix said on Friday it planned to acquire in its proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Instead, CNN, along with old-line cable networks like TNT, Discovery, HGTV and the Food Network, will be spun off into a separate publicly traded company that, by next year, will be called Discovery Global. Gunnar Wiedenfels, the chief financial officer of Warner Bros. Discovery, will lead the new company.
“I’ve been asked by many of you what today’s news means for us,” Mark Thompson, CNN’s chairman, said on Friday in an internal memo, which was seen by The New York Times. “And the answer is that it will enable us to continue to roll out our strategy to secure a great future for CNN by successfully navigating our digital transition.”
The immediate effect of the deal should for now quiet the concerns of CNN employees who were growing worried about who might purchase the news organization after Mr. Zaslav put the company up for sale in late October.
David Ellison, the new owner of Paramount, had aggressively pursued Warner Bros. Discovery but, unlike Netflix’s executives, he was not just interested in the entertainment and streaming divisions. Mr. Ellison wanted the entire company — CNN included.
Some CNN employees were concerned that an acquisition by Paramount could lead to ideological changes at the news channel. Paramount controls CBS News, where Mr. Ellison has installed Bari Weiss, a provocative opinion journalist, as the division’s editor in chief. A combination of CBS’s broadcast news division with CNN’s 24-hour cable channel seemed like a logical outcome of a deal in which Paramount prevailed.
Mr. Ellison, along with his father, the Oracle founder Larry Ellison, have a friendly relationship with President Trump, who has praised them repeatedly this year. The Ellisons have also signaled an openness to leveraging their media assets to boost some of Mr. Trump’s interests; recently, Paramount has shown interest in a distribution deal for a new entry in the “Rush Hour” movie franchise, a personal favorite of the president’s.
With Netflix’s apparent victory, CNN effectively ceases to be a political football.
Mr. Thompson told employees in the memo on Friday that the news division’s 2026 budget would increase and had already been approved by Mr. Zaslav and Mr. Wiedenfels.
“Let’s remain focused on rolling out our strategy as quickly and as well as possible, and let’s continue to deliver the best journalism to our audiences everywhere on TV, streaming, digital and every other platform we have,” he wrote.
That is, of course, the plan for now. A long regulatory process for the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal awaits. And even if Discovery Global becomes a separate company by next summer, many of its cable networks, including CNN, could again be put up for sale.
Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.
John Koblin covers the television industry fo
