Skydance has pledged to keep CNN and CBS News editorially independent. But with roughly $80 billion in debt hanging over the combined company, keeping the two newsrooms separate may be easier than keeping their operations that way.
The company is targeting at least $6 billion in merger cost reductions from its $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, while insisting most of the cuts won’t come from jobs. Combining office space, technology and production facilities could yield savings without affecting editorial decisions. Sharing bureaus, crews and other newsgathering resources would be more complicated.
Skydance’s own executives have left room for questions about where the company will draw that line. Asked on CNBC last week whether CNN and CBS News could consolidate newsgathering to reduce costs, co-CEO Ynon Kreiz said, “This isn’t about cost savings in this case,” describing the networks as “two separate businesses.” Co-CEO David Ellison, meanwhile, acknowledged there are “absolutely operational efficiencies” to be found.
Those mixed messages leave open a range of potential cuts. Interviews with current and former media executives suggest Skydance could find relatively straightforward savings in facilities, technology and production, while larger opportunities may lie in international newsgathering. But consolidating bureaus, crews and other reporting resources could force decisions about which journalists cover which stories, potentially testing the company’s promise to keep CNN and CBS News editorially independent.
That promise has already drawn skepticism from inside CBS News.
Speaking late last week at a Press Forward Summit in San Antonio, former “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley said CBS journalists had previously been assured during Skydance’s 2025 merger with Paramount that the company would protect the news division’s editorial independence.
“That was certainly not the case,” Pelley said. “Today, Skydance would tell you that it’s going to ensure the independence of CNN. I would direct my friends at CNN to observe what just occurred at CBS News in order to make a judgment about how they feel about that.”
The question now is whether common ownership can create meaningful efficiencies without making the two news operations function as one.
“Simply living under the same roof does not guarantee anything,” Jon Klein, the former president of CNN/U.S. who previously worked at CBS News, told TheWrap.
Klein said common ownership creates opportunities behind the scenes, but does not automatically make two news operations work better together. He added that there are production efficiencies to be found on the back end.
Media consultant and Vetere Group CEO Tim Hanlon similarly sees a business case for preserving both organizations while questioning how much infrastructure needs to remain duplicated.
“CBS brings the broadcast franchises and local station connections, while CNN brings a global, continuously running news operation and substantial digital reach,” Hanlon told TheWrap. But management will also have to ask “how much separate machinery it can afford underneath them,” the said.
Representatives for Skydance, CNN and CBS News did not respond to requests for comment on whether the news organizations could share facilities, international newsgathering resources or other operations.
Start with the infrastructure
The least complicated savings sit farthest from the journalism.
Hanlon said he would expect management to look first at “facilities, technology, transmission and management overhead,” areas where CNN and CBS News could potentially reduce costs without changing who decides what gets covered.
“Combining leases, vendors and technical infrastructure can produce real savings,” he said.
One former senior TV news executive made the same distinction in an interview with TheWrap, describing centralized “backroom” functions as easier to combine than the forward-facing parts of the two organizations.
Ellison has also pointed to the savings that can come from putting businesses on common technical platforms, with the consolidation of streaming services offering one example. On a smaller scale, standardizing software, production systems and other technical infrastructure across CNN and CBS News could create additional efficiencies.
Another media executive familiar with the news business separately pointed to sets, control rooms, live-production facilities and post-production infrastructure as other areas where a parent company could look for duplication.
Those are the relatively straightforward choices. The calculation gets harder once Skydance moves from infrastructure into newsgathering.
International news is the clearest test
International operations may offer the most obvious place to find larger savings.
CNN has a broader international newsgathering footprint than CBS News, and the former senior TV news executive said it potentially gives CBS access to resources that now sit elsewhere inside the same company. The executive pointed specifically to bureaus, crews, producers, security, transmission and studio space — substantial expenses when wars, natural disasters or other breaking stories require journalists and equipment to be deployed quickly.
In practice, that could mean combining some infrastructure while preserving separate editorial operations. CNN and CBS News could, for example, operate out of the same bureau space in a foreign city or use common transmission facilities or security resources while maintaining separate correspondents, producers and editorial chains. That could reduce some of the fixed costs of having two organizations in the same market without requiring the networks to make the same coverage decisions.
The media executive separately said international bureaus are likely to draw scrutiny for the same reason. Under common ownership, the executive said, management could reasonably ask why CNN and CBS News should always send completely separate teams into the same conflict zone or maintain overlapping infrastructure in the same foreign market.
Klein sees the potential upside as greater for one side of the combination.
“I think the opportunity is greater for CBS News,” he said. “They have more to gain at CBS News from this marriage.”
But international newsgathering also shows where an apparent efficiency can begin affecting the product. Sharing a lease, studio or transmission infrastructure is relatively straightforward. Sharing a producer, correspondent or field crew is not. If CNN and CBS News want the same resource for different stories, someone has to decide where that journalist goes.
Even the logistical side would vary by market. Employment laws, visas and press-accreditation requirements differ from country to country, the former senior TV news executive said, making some foreign operations easier to combine than others. The executive added that labor restrictions that could complicate domestic sharing would not necessarily apply in the same way overseas.
CNN and CBS have explored versions of this idea before. Talks about combining news resources more than two decades ago bogged down over control of the news divisions, while a 2019 proposal would have had Viacom pay CNN for international coverage as CBS closed foreign bureaus. The difference now is that the two news organizations no longer need separate corporate parents to strike a deal: both belong to Skydance.
International operations may offer the clearest opportunity to share resources, but domestic newsgathering raises an even harder question: What happens when the efficiencies involve the journalists themselves?
When the savings start changing the journalism
Domestic newsgathering presents an even more complicated picture.
Both CNN and CBS News have to fill hours of television and streaming programming each day. Two correspondents covering the same institution can look redundant on an organizational chart while still serving different shows, deadlines and editorial priorities.
The larger savings would come if one reporter, producer or field team increasingly served both news organizations. That would also make the two operations less separate in practice.
Local reporting adds another wrinkle. CBS News can draw on its owned stations and independently owned affiliates, while CNN has longstanding relationships with stations around the country.
“Independently owned CBS affiliates are a negotiation, though,” Hanlon said. “They have their own economics and competitive interests, and won’t necessarily welcome their reporting feeding another outlet competing for the same local audience.”
Labor could make domestic consolidation even more difficult. The former senior TV news executive told TheWrap that differences in union coverage between CBS News and CNN have complicated previous efforts to bring the organizations closer.
Klein also cautioned that there may be less excess to eliminate than an organizational chart suggests.
“Both of these organizations have been through waves and waves of cost-cutting already,” Klein said. “None of them are really living fat and happy.”
“They will find a lot of overlap,” he added. “The question really is, at what cost do you eliminate that overlap?”
That question matters because CNN and CBS News were built around different kinds of journalism.
The media executive familiar with the news business described CNN as a faster, “run-and-gun” operation built around continuous breaking-news coverage, while CBS News has traditionally placed greater emphasis on produced and character-driven storytelling, particularly on programs like “60 Minutes” and “CBS Sunday Morning.”
The executive argued that reducing separate crews and correspondents would inevitably affect the journalism, even if the change were framed as operational. Two newsrooms covering the same event may seek different interviews, spend different amounts of time reporting and ultimately produce different stories.
Hanlon warned against treating the organizations as interchangeable.
“Combining leases, vendors and technical infrastructure can produce real savings, but treating the newsrooms as interchangeable ignores how they developed: CBS around distinctive broadcasts and powerful program teams, CNN around continuous live coverage and a global news flow,” he said. “The same story can require different reporting and production for each, and cutting that capacity can leave you with two recognizable logos and less reason to watch either.”
Skydance has so far kept the organizations’ leadership separate. Mark Thompson will remain chairman and editor-in-chief of CNN Worldwide, while Bari Weiss will continue as editor-in-chief of CBS News. The two executives make up Skydance’s “CEO News Executive Leadership Team” and report directly to Ellison and Kreiz. Skydance is also required to establish a five-member News Editorial Independence Board, which will set guiding editorial principles and handle certain disputes involving CNN and CBS News.
For now, the company has made clear who will run each newsroom. How much of the newsgathering operation beneath them will remain separate is a decision Skydance still has to confront.
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