Over nearly five decades, CNN has survived multiple owners, ratings ups and downs, and attacks by President Trump.
Now, its journalists are bracing for its most dramatic transformation yet: a corporate merger that would put the 24-hour cable network under the same ownership as CBS News.
David Ellison, the technology heir who controls Paramount, the owner of CBS, is poised to complete a $111 billion purchase of CNN’s parent company as soon as next month.
Mr. Ellison has not publicly detailed what he has in store for CNN. But the network’s newsroom is wary of his conspicuous coziness with Mr. Trump and the prospect that he may assign some oversight of CNN to Bari Weiss, his pick to run CBS News after he bought Paramount last year.
Ms. Weiss, who had virtually no broadcasting experience before taking over in October, has reshaped CBS News in occasionally chaotic ways, recently firing the leadership of the network’s flagship, “60 Minutes.” Several on-air correspondents who were fired later accused her of editorial interference, which she has denied.
Mr. Ellison and his deputies are weighing whether to put Ms. Weiss in charge of CNN, which is far larger than CBS News and is a major profit center, two people familiar with their thinking said. He has remained supportive of Ms. Weiss, despite grumbling from journalists.
Anderson Cooper, the channel’s biggest star, has told colleagues at CNN that he does not want to work for Ms. Weiss, two people familiar with his remarks said. Mr. Cooper, who overlapped with Ms. Weiss at CBS as a correspondent at “60 Minutes,” left that show this spring after 20 years.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Cooper declined to comment.
One option under consideration by Mr. Ellison would be to pair Ms. Weiss with a more experienced TV executive who could handle the technical and financial aspects of the network, two people briefed on internal discussions said.
Mark Thompson, CNN’s chief executive, has not yet heard from Mr. Ellison’s team about what role he will play after the merger, two people briefed on discussions between the companies said. He recently told Paramount officials that he would not share oversight of CNN with another executive, the people said. He declined to comment.
Paramount is merging with Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN and other properties, including HBO. A combination of CBS News, home to “Face the Nation” as well as “60 Minutes,” with CNN, a pioneer of 24-hour cable news that is on track to generate $650 million in profit this year, would be one of the largest consolidations in news gathering in decades.
Mr. Ellison has said in interviews that he wants his news networks to appeal to the middle “70 percent” of Americans, and he said recently that CNN’s “editorial independence will absolutely be maintained.”
But Mr. Ellison has made repeated overtures to Mr. Trump as he has amassed his corporate empire. He hosted a dinner in Washington in April in the president’s honor, as the Trump administration was deciding whether to object to Mr. Ellison’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery; he also attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout with the president at the White House this month. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, said in March that he was excited about CNN’s prospective new ownership, adding, “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
Mr. Ellison’s relationship with Mr. Trump has raised alarms at CNN, according to interviews with network correspondents and employees.
As the merger approaches, the 18th-floor Manhattan office of Amy Entelis, the CNN executive in charge of on-air talent, has turned into something of a psychiatrist’s couch for anchors and correspondents, who often drop in to air their anxieties about the looming changes.
Jake Tapper, CNN’s lead Washington anchor, flew to Los Angeles this spring for a meeting with Mr. Ellison, two people familiar with his travel plans said. Their representatives declined to say what the men had discussed.
The tech journalist Kara Swisher, who is a regular presence on CNN in addition to her podcasting ventures, said she would not continue to work for the TV network if Mr. Ellison installed someone to replace Mr. Thompson as its top leader.
In an interview, Ms. Swisher pointed to the unfolding situation at CBS News as a rationale. “So far, there’s nothing I’ve seen that indicates that they’re serious about creating a modern digital news organization,” she said.
The agita about CNN’s future surfaced when employees gathered in Atlanta this month to mourn Ted Turner, the CNN founder, who died in May.
Toward the end of the memorial service, Mr. Turner’s grandson John R. Seydel III took the stage. He said Mr. Turner would not have stayed quiet amid “larger and larger acquisitions” in the media industry and the “hollowing out” of venerable news programs like “60 Minutes.”
“He’d be the first to speak up,” Mr. Seydel said, “especially now, as the very network he built and the leaders that are in those positions these days are facing similar threats.”
