Paramount Global has reached a settlement with Donald Trump in his lawsuit against CBS News, clearing a path for the media company’s long-delayed merger with Skydance Media.
The settlement, announced near midnight Tuesday on the East Coast, calls for Paramount to pay $16 million to resolve the complaint. Notably, though, it does not call for a formal apology by the company over its handling of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris last fall. Trump sued CBS News and its parent company, Paramount, for $20 million over the promotion of the interview, which he said was unfair. No legal experts assessing the case believed it had legal merit, and the settlement is likely to revive discussions about whether Paramount and its controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, effectively paid a bribe in exchange for government approval of the Skydance deal.
Paramount said in a statement that it agreed that 60 Minutes in the future will release transcripts of interviews with eligible U.S. presidential candidates after such interviews have aired. The release of transcripts will be “subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns.”
Reiterating a previous statement, Paramount said the lawsuit is “completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process. We will abide by the legal process to defend our case.”
The FCC review of the transaction has been held up by the suit, and is now expected to proceed. It is the only remaining hurdle to the $8 billion transaction.
The Paramount-Skydance deal was formally proposed nearly a year ago, following a months-long period when Redstone and others running Paramount evaluated a range of potential suitors. At various times, Sony Pictures (in tandem with private equity firm Apollo), Barry Diller and Byron Allen expressed interest, and an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. also put in a bid during the 45-day “go-shop” period last summer. By and large, though, Skydance had the inside track given its longtime relationship with Paramount Pictures as a co-finance partner. Unlike some buyers, who were said to be ready to dismantle the company’s asset portfolio and potentially unload the fabled Melrose studio lot, Skydance and its CEO, David Ellison, are seen as the most film-friendly buyers of the bunch.
Surprisingly, though, given the close ties between the merger participants, the lack of overlap in the companies’ assets and the bullish outlook for M&A deals at the beginning of 2025, the closing process was an agonizingly protracted one. Paramount and Skydance had maintained the deal would be wrapped up during the first half of 2025 and already had to exercise their option for a 90-day extension of the contractual merger deadline.
The main culprit in the delay was President Donald Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit. As that case wound through the courts and mediation in recent months, the FCC’s approval of the deal remained the lone hurdle. Because Paramount is a controlled company, the merger does not require shareholder approval, though the company’s annual shareholder meeting will take place Wednesday morning.
The post Paramount Settles Donald Trump Lawsuit, Clearing Path For Skydance Merger; $16M Payment But No Apology In ’60 Minutes’ Affair appeared first on Deadline.
