Shari Redstone ends talks with Skydance on Paramount deal, reports WSJ

The question is who will ultimately end up with Paramount, which is the parent company of CBS, 60 Minutes, MTV, the Top Gun movie franchise and much, much more. With us tonight. Four more is the reporter who broke the story, Jessica Tunkel, deputy media editor for the Wall Street Journal. Jessica, I am trying to understand Sherry Redstone's strategy here. I can't. Can you? That's a great question. You know, I think that this has been a very long process. These deal talks have been going on for over six months. I think she was weighing the legal liability. As you know, many of the Paramount shareholders were making a lot of noise that the Skydance offer was better for Sherry because she would be getting cash and the rest of them would be getting stuck. She was worried about getting sued after the deal was done. Guidance has sweetened its deal several times. To make it better for shareholders, but apparently it wasn't enough for Sherry to assuage her concerns. OK, so she basically she was afraid to do the deal. But I've also heard that maybe legally afraid. I mean, but she but I've also heard that there might be some, some mistrust between her and or Paramount and David Ellison, who by the way, we just referenced his father's company, Oracle. Right. So just, you know, David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle. You know, when Sherry first brought this deal to the board six months ago, she was really excited about the deal. She loved David. She thought he would be a great steward of the Paramount brand. But over the past several months, as they've been going back and forth and all the negotiations, my sources just told me that she lost trust in him. I don't know why. I don't know the details of that. Obviously, these negotiations can get very difficult and tricky, and there was a lot of components to this one. This is one of the most complicated deals I've ever covered. So I think that there was a lot of emotion there. What's the this is we're talking about 60 minutes. I mean, the most venerable news program, or at least one of them in American history. Where does it end up? Well, I think Sherry will likely sell her family company National Amusements if she can, which owns Paramount. So basically this will become someone else's problem because someone else will become the controlling shareholder of Paramount.