Media Mergers on Media Forum

Paramount Cleared 68 Regulators and Still Can't Close on Warner Bros. Discovery

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 14 August, Paramount Skydance announced that its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery had satisfied every regulatory clearance the deal requires. Eight months of review across 68 jurisdictions, including the United States, the European Union and China, produced no order blocking the transaction. Under the old rules of thumb, that sentence would be the end of the story.

It isn’t close to the end of the story. Paramount has already agreed in court not to close the deal until 1 June 2027, or until the merits of the cases against it are resolved, whichever comes first.

Paramount's $111 Billion Warner Bros. Discovery Merger Stalls While Hearst Takes All of A+E

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two deals, one week, opposite ends of the size range. Paramount’s 111 billion dollar combination with Warner Bros. Discovery is stuck in regulatory and legal delay with no clear finish date. Hearst is paying 1.2 billion to buy out Disney’s stake in A+E Global Media and take the whole thing.

The small deal closed. The enormous one didn’t. That’s the pattern worth reading, not the individual transactions.

Why the big one is stuck

Deals of this size stopped being decided by antitrust economists a while ago. They’re decided by a slower mix of regulatory review, litigation from parties who don’t want the deal, political interest in who ends up owning a national news operation, and the ordinary friction of two companies trying to hold a valuation together while the calendar runs.

Small Publishers Lost 60% of Google Referrals While Large Ones Lost 22%

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The headline number everyone repeats is that Google search traffic to publishers fell by about a third over the past year. It’s the wrong number to repeat, because the average hides the only fact that matters.

Chartbeat’s breakdown splits the decline by publisher size. Small publishers lost roughly sixty percent of their search referrals. Medium ones lost forty-seven percent. Large ones lost twenty-two percent. Same algorithm, same year, three completely different outcomes.