Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have officially completed their merger, forming Skydance Corp., a new $111 billion media company led by chairman and CEO David Ellison. The deal places 28 individual studios, networks, and streaming platforms under a single corporate umbrella, making Skydance one of the largest and most consolidated media companies in the industry. Skydance shares began trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “SKYD,” while Warner Bros. Discovery shares have ceased trading on Nasdaq.
The combined portfolio includes:
Film & TV Studios
- Paramount Pictures
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- Skydance Media
- DC Studios
- New Line Cinema
- Paramount Animation
- Warner Bros. Pictures Animation
TV Networks & News
- CBS
- CBS News
- CNN
- MTV
- Nickelodeon
- Comedy Central
- TNT
- TNT Sports
- Discovery
- Cartoon Network
- Food Network
- BET
- HGTV
- CBS Sports
- TBS
- OWN
- Adult Swim
- truTV
- Magnolia Network
- Animal Planet
- Investigation Discovery (ID)
- TLC
- TCM (Turner Classic Movies)
- Science Channel
- Travel Channel
- Smithsonian Channel
- Showtime
- Paramount Network
- Pop TV
- Logo
- TV Land
- The Movie Channel
- Flix
Streaming Services
- Paramount+
- HBO Max
- Pluto TV
- Discovery+
- BET+
Other Holdings
- The Free Press
Paramount+ and HBO Max are expected to eventually merge into a single streaming service.
The sheer scale of this consolidation, 28 distinct media properties now operating under one ownership structure, raises real questions about how individual brands with very different audiences and missions compete for investment, attention, and creative priority inside a single company. BET, founded in 1980 as the first Black-controlled company to trade on the New York Stock Exchange before its sale to Viacom in 2001, is now one line item among 28, inside a company carrying roughly $80 billion in net debt and already planning thousands of layoffs across the combined workforce. For a network built specifically around Black audiences, becoming one piece of a media empire this large and this debt-heavy adds real uncertainty about how much programming autonomy and investment BET retains going forward.
Skydance reports close to $70 billion in annual revenue, with a stated target of reducing its net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio from an estimated 6-7x in 2026 down to 3.0x by the end of 2029, savings the company says will come primarily from consolidating technology, marketing, procurement, and real estate across its properties. Ynon Kreiz, former Mattel CEO, has joined as co-CEO alongside Ellison. The deal took roughly a year to close, surviving a rival Netflix bid for WBD’s assets and an antitrust lawsuit from 12 state attorneys general, ultimately settled under a five-year consent decree that includes specific operating commitments and an editorial oversight board for CNN.
With 28 brands now competing for resources inside one company built around aggressive cost-cutting, the real test ahead is which properties Skydance prioritizes, and which ones get treated as expendable in the name of hitting its $6 billion synergy target.