For very good reasons, government imposes regulations on industry and similar to everyone who deals with regulations – sometimes it is a pain, sometimes it is understandable. Every government says we want some regulations but there is a difference in opinion on how much should the government impose? When the regulations hurt your competition, companies believe the regulations are good, when it affects them not so much.

In an article by Dawn Chmieleski and David Shepardson of Reuters, reported the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media. The deal is for $8.4 billion includes prominent names in entertainment, including the CBS broadcast TV network, Paramount Pictures and the Nickelodeon cable channel.

The FCC agreed to transfer broadcast licenses for 28-owned-and-operated CBS TV stations to the new owners. The FCC waited till SkyDance paid US President Trump $16 million over a 60 minutes interview.

The FCC chair Brendan Carr said the agency’s review of the proposed merger was not connected to the civil service or it is coincidental of the timing. However, Mr. Carr welcomed Skydance’s commitment to eliminate invidious forms of DEI discrimination.

Skydance CEO David Ellison is poised to become Chairman and CEO of the new Paramount. Jeff Shell, former CEO of Comcast’s NBCUniversal is to become President. If the Ellison name is newsworthy, if you connected it to Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation, he provided some of the financing for the deal. David Ellison says he will have a studio in the cloud or a fully digital cloud-based production. The company will be using AI to generate content faster and cheaper.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in deal such as this, Paramount has some great assets but has not performed well and needed an overhaul. Skydance expects to use technology and cost cutting to turn the company around, but did it really need to cut DEI and settle a lawsuit with the President before it received approval? The FCC is supposed to be relatively independent of the Presidency but is that the case? Skydance executives made a decision that everything was connected, and they had to march to the drummer. Sometimes, life falls into the grey area.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.