Paramount Skydance, the media conglomerate that owns CBS News, is expected to lay off around 1,000 employees this week as part of cost-cutting measures following its controversial merger, according to reports from Bloomberg and Deadline.
The merger, which was completed in August, brought CBS News, Paramount Pictures, MTV, and the Paramount+ streaming service under the control of David Ellison, son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison. The deal was preceded by a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump to resolve a lawsuit that Paramount's own lawyers had described as 'meritless'.
Insiders say the first round of layoffs, affecting mostly US-based staff, will begin this week, with another 1,000 expected in the near future. This would represent about 11 per cent of the company's 18,600 full- and part-time employees, excluding its 3,500 project-based staff.
Paramount president Jeff Shell said after the merger: 'We do not want to be a company that has layoffs every quarter. So, it’s going to be painful.' The cuts come amid a restructuring at CBS News, which has seen the hiring of anti-woke firebrand Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief and the appointment of a former Trump appointee as ombudsman to address bias complaints.
Critics have accused David Ellison of shifting the network's coverage to the right to appeal to the president. The changes follow the announcement that CBS Evening News anchor John Dickerson will leave the network at the end of the year, after taking an on-air swipe at the Trump lawsuit settlement.
