The Federal Communications Commission has approved Skydance's $8 billion acquisition of Paramount, which owns CBS.

But the agency's approval drew fiery dissent from the only Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, after requiring written commitments from Skydance that allow the government to influence editorial decisions at CBS. Gomez accused the FCC of "imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law."

Under the agreement, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr explained that Skydance has given assurances that all of the new company’s programming will embody "a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum." Carr claimed that the requirements were necessary to restore Americans' trust in mainstream media, backing conservatives' claims that media is biased against Trump and appointing an ombudsman for two years to ensure that CBS's reporting "will be fair, unbiased, and fact-based." Any complaints of bias that the ombudsman receives will be reviewed by the president of New Paramount, the FCC confirmed.

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• On Tuesday, Paramount settled a lawsuit Donald Trump filed as a private citizen with a $16 million payout.
• On Thursday, Trump's administration approved Paramount's sale to Skydance.
• You don't have to fill in the blanks on this one. And we're very likely to see transactions like this in the future.

Want to do business in the United States?

Pay up. More specifically: Pay Donald Trump.

That's a reasonable lesson to draw from the Paramount-Skydance deal, which received formal government approval Thursday and should finally close in the coming weeks — about 1.5 years after it first kicked off.

We don't know how Skydance's David Ellison, who is buying Paramount with the backing of his father, Larry Ellison, will run the company. Maybe he'll be able to turn the company around, and years from now we'll note how he made a savvy purchase of a distressed asset at a fire-sale price. Maybe it continues to decline. Maybe he ends up flipping it to someone bigger in short order.

But the most important thing is the thing that was clear back in January, when Donald Trump started his second term as president: If current owner Shari Redstone wanted to sell the company to Ellison, she would need to cut Trump a check.

That happened on Tuesday, when Paramount's current management formally settled a lawsuit Trump filed against the company last year. They paid $16 million, most of which is ostensibly earmarked for Trump's future presidential library.

And on Thursday, the deal got formal approval from the Federal Communications Commission, run by Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist who sometimes wears a pin in the shape of Trump's head on his suit.

In theory, the Trump lawsuit and Carr's approval were separate events. In reality, it would be very hard to find anyone who believes that. (I've asked Carr for comment.)

This is a story that has kicked up a lot of attention in the home stretch. Some of the angles are most definitely real, and concerning. Like the fact that Carr's blessing comes with pledges from Ellison to do things like "root out bias" in CBS's news coverage, which sounds very much like a company promising to cover news in a way that pleases Carr and his boss.

Some of the angles are much muddier: While we've yet to see any actual evidence that Paramount canceled Stephen Colbert's late-night show to get the deal done, it's reasonable for people to jump to that conclusion. (Over at The Ankler, veteran TV reporter Lesley Goldberg makes a compelling argument that the cancellation had everything to do with business, and nothing to do with Trump.)

We also don't know whether the Ellisons have also agreed to give Trump $16 million or $20 million in other goodies as part of the deal, as Trump has claimed at various times. (Paramount has said it has no knowledge of extra payments; team Ellison hasn't commented.)

But the main point is the main point, which we've known for many months: Last fall, Trump filed a suit against Paramount over the editing of a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris. In any other world, that suit would go nowhere. But then Trump was elected, and started getting Very Big Companies like Disney and Meta to pay him to settle other suits he would normally have little chance of winning. (Like Paramount, those settlements were made directly to him, via his future library — as opposed to other settlements he is extracting from institutions like colleges and law firms, which are paying the federal government.)

So it was clear that Paramount would have to do the same thing, or it couldn't do the Skydance deal.

Again: In theory, the "60 Minutes" suit had nothing to do with Trump's role as president of the United States — he filed it as a private citizen, prior to his inauguration.

In reality, the only reason Paramount settled it was because he's president of the United States — and one that's willing to use that power to insert himself into day-to-day business deals.

Hard to believe this will be the last one where that happens.

• CBS is canceling its most-watched talk show, "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
• The show, which has been running for more than three decades, will end in May 2026.
• CBS said the cancellation was "purely a financial decision."

CBS announced on Thursday that "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" will be canceled after next year, ending a series that has been running for more than three decades.

Colbert announced the talk show's cancellation on Thursday via a clip of his new episode, posted on Instagram.

"Before we start the show, I want to let you know something I found out just last night," he said. "Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending 'The Late Show' in May."

His announcement was followed by a long wave of boos from the audience.

Colbert took over as host of the talk show previously helmed by David Letterman in 2015, and has been running it for the last 10 years. The show was first aired in 1993.

CBS executives said in a statement to The New York Times on Thursday that the cancellation was "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night."

"It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount," the statement to the NYT added.

Ratings from the American audience measurement company, Nielsen, seen by several news outlets, show that "The Late Show" performed well in its timeslot. The show notched 2.417 million viewers across 41 new episodes, and was the only late-night show to gain viewers in 2025.

The cancellation comes shortly after Paramount, on July 1, agreed to pay President Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over a lawsuit the president filed against it. The lawsuit accused CBS's "60 Minutes" of "deceptive editing" of his interview with presidential rival Kamala Harris.

Colbert referenced the settlement in an episode on July 14, titled "A Big Bribe."

Making a joke about the settlement, he said, "As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended, and I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I'd say $16 million would help."

Lawmakers have sounded out concerns about the show's cancellation, asking CBS if the decision was political in nature.

Sen. Adam Schiff of California was one of the first to comment on it.

"Just finished taping with Stephen Colbert who announced his show was cancelled," Schiff wrote in a late Thursday evening X post.

"If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better," Schiff added.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released a statement just hours after the cancellation announcement.

"CBS canceled Colbert's show just three days after Colbert called out CBS owner Paramount for its $16 settlement with Trump — a deal that looks like bribery. America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons," Warren said.

Trump has been a regular topic on Colbert's show — particularly during his opening monologues. He's also touched on some of the administration's major scandals, including in his Wednesday episode, where he mentioned Trump and the disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein.

In September, Trump criticized Colbert in a Truth Social post.

"Why would they be wasting time and the public's money on this complete and total loser? He is not funny, which he gets paid far too much to be, he is not wise, he is VERY BORING, and his show is dying from a complete lack of viewers," Trump wrote in the post.

Representatives for CBS and Paramount did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

CBS owner Paramount has reached a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over his claim that 60 Minutes deceptively manipulated a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Trump's lawsuit has been widely described as frivolous, but Paramount seemed motivated to settle because its pending $8.4 billion merger with Skydance needed regulatory approval from the Trump administration.

In a statement provided to Ars today, Paramount said it "has reached an agreement in principle to resolve the lawsuit filed by President Trump and Representative [Ronny] Jackson in the Northern District of Texas and a threatened defamation action concerning a separate 60 Minutes report."

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for a bribery investigation into Paramount. "With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration's approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight," she said in a statement today. "Paramount has refused to provide answers to a congressional inquiry, so I'm calling for a full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken."

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