Bianna Golodryga, a longtime international anchor and senior global affairs analyst for CNN, is leaving the network.
Golodryga, the co-anchor of the CNN International program “One World with Zain Asher,” announced her departure Thursday in a post on X. She will make her final appearance on the network Friday, according to a CNN representative.
“After nine wonderful years at CNN, I’ve decided to leave for an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up,” Golodryga said. “I’m grateful for the experiences, friendships and support from fabulous colleagues during my CNN years. Exciting news to share very soon!”
Golodryga’s exit comes three days after Christiane Amanpour, the network’s best-known international journalist, stated her intention to leave CNN next June.
In the short term, CNN and Skydance’s CBS News are operating independently under their current leadership. But consolidation is expected at some point with international bureaus being an expected early target. There is also anxiety among the CNN rank and file over how involved CBS Editor in chief Bari Weiss will be in the combined operations.
Weiss has been a polarizing figure at CBS since Paramount acquired her contrarian digital news site the Free Press last year and gave her oversight of the network’s storied news division. She has made major changes at “CBS Evening News” and the top-rated newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” where several correspondents were fired after accusing her of pushing them to add right-wing talking points to their stories.
Golodryga, 48, arrived at CNN as a contributor in 2017 and joined the network full time two years later. She previously served as co-host of “CBS This Morning,” and was an anchor for Yahoo! Finance. She also worked for ABC News as a correspondent and co-anchor of the weekend edition of “Good Morning America.”
Golodryga, who immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee from the Soviet Union in 1980, is the co-author of a young adult novel, “Don’t Feed the Lion,” which dealt with antisemitism.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor whose intrepid reporting became a symbol of the network’s global reach and influence, announced Monday she will end her 43-year run in June.
Amanpour, 68, told colleagues in a memo she will step away from her eponymous daily CNN program at the end of the year. She will continue her Saturday program, “The Amanpour Hour,” until May before exiting the following month.
Amanpour was one of CNN’s first breakout stars, traveling the world to report on global hot spots and helping build CNN’s strong reputation for international coverage, especially in war zones. She was front and center as the network delivered images of the first Gulf war, the Bosnian war and conflicts in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Iran.
Amanpour’s announcement arrives as CNN faces uncertainty under new ownership. Skydance absorbed the network as part of its $111-billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. International bureaus are expected to be the first place where CNN and Skydance’s CBS News are expected to consolidate resources. Deliberations over editorial direction are likely to be intense.
There have been reports of internal strife at the London bureau at CBS News over the tone of its Middle East coverage since Bari Weiss, a strong supporter of Israel, took over as the network’s editor in chief last year. Weiss replaced Claire Day, a longtime veteran of the network, with Shayndi Rice, a former Wall Street Journal editor, overseeing all of the network’s international operations.
In a memo to staff obtained by The Times, CNN Worldwide Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Thompson said he has discussed Amanpour’s future for several months. “Like so many CNNers who will hear the news today, I’m very sorry to see her go, but I’ve come to accept that this is the right time for her, both personally and professionally,” he wrote.
Amanpour did not offer a reason for her departure, devoting most of her memo to thanking the production crews who worked with her over the years. She said she will continue to co-host “The Ex-Files,” a podcast she co-hosts with her ex-husband Jamie Rubin, a former journalist who served in the State Department during the Clinton administration.
Amanpour was born in London and raised in Tehran. Her family fled Iran in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution. She arrived at CNN in 1983, working as a news desk assistant in Atlanta and then at its New York bureau with the ambition of becoming a foreign correspondent.
Amanpour’s reporting from war zones and ability to land interviews with global leaders made her one of the most recognizable journalists in the world. During her time at CNN, she served as a contributor to the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes.” She also served as anchor of the ABC News Washington roundtable program “This Week” from August 2010 to December 2011.
Amanpour’s work has been recognized with 16 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards and three DuPont-Columbia Awards.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether the decision of the White House television press pool to halt coverage of President Trump last month violated antitrust law, an agency spokesperson said Saturday.
Emily Covington, a spokesperson for the department, said group boycotts among business competitors might violate U.S. law. “The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws,” she said.
The announcement came after the television pool of five broadcasters last month ceased presidential coverage after the administration barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House because of coverage Trump disliked.
Messages were sent late Saturday to the five outlets seeking comment: ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC.
The White House press pool, which is a rotating cast of news outlets that covers the president, has become a proxy for the wider fight over whether the president, or anyone, can control the content of news reports — a type of free speech, a pillar of American democracy.
Last month’s developments marked an extraordinary escalation in Trump’s efforts to restrict news reporters and outlets that he finds insufficiently supportive.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued over the days-long ban. It was lifted after a judge handed the three news organizations a reprieve, which is in place until Tuesday.
Television pool coverage of the White House has also resumed.
Jose Zamora, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ regional director of the Americas, on Saturday criticized the administration’s decision to investigate.
“The government should not use antitrust investigations to intimidate news outlets defending press access,” Zamora said on X. “The public’s right to know depends on that access.”
Durkin Richer and Taxin write for the Associated Press. Taxin reported from Santa Ana.
Tech scion David Ellison spent three years doggedly pursuing his dream: acquiring Paramount, then Warner Bros. Discovery.
Ellison pulled off his bold feat this week by completing Paramount’s $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros., uniting two industry pioneers and a wealth of cherished properties — Batman, Bugs Bunny, Harry Potter and Maverick of “Top Gun,” as well as CBS, HBO, Comedy Central and CNN. All will be tucked under a corporate umbrella that Ellison is calling Skydance — the name of the studio he formed two decades ago.
The mogul and his lieutenants celebrated their victory in style, ringing the New York Stock Exchange opening bell on Thursday, capping a bruising battle to secure approval of a deal that had sparked protests across Hollywood over fears of looming job cuts.
Ellison and his team must braid together two huge film studios (housing nine film labels), four streaming services, three TV production studios, three animation units and more than 50 television networks, including two prominent news organizations. That could be a daunting task, particularly based on how previous Hollywood mergers have fared.
“Now, the real work begins,” David G. Fubini, a Harvard Business School senior lecturer, said in an interview.
Anxieties were evident Tuesday — the day the deal closed — when Ellison held a town hall meeting at Warner Bros., which drew nearly 500 employees.
During the session, CNN’s Anderson Cooper quizzed his new bosses, including about anticipated layoffs and news independence.
“Do you stand with CNN and our effort to completely restore access to covering President Trump?” Cooper asked, referring to CNN’s legal fight alongside MS Now and Politico to reverse the president’s ban on the three organizations.
“Of course,” Ellison replied.
CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper, pictured here in 2021, quizzed his bosses at a Burbank town hall.
(Evan Agostini / Invision / Associated Press)
Hours later, Ellison parried with reporters in Paramount’s darkened Stage 3, recently revamped with laser projection capabilities to simulate fantastical and far-flung settings for TV shows, such as the streets of New York.
“This was a turbulent process, and, at times, a really ugly process, to actually get this deal over the finish line,” Ellison acknowledged to reporters. “What I want to be able to do now is turn the page, and actually make sure that we are in the business of rebuilding trust.”
To do that, Ellison intends to make more movies and TV shows than rivals. He wants to ensure the Warner Bros. and Paramount studios, which will be kept separate for now, remain talent-friendly destinations.
Ellison has taken an opposing view from his predecessors who confronted crumbling industry economics by cutting expenditures to boost their corporate bottom lines.
The 43-year-old executive, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, proudly views his family as “owner-operators,” unshackled by quarterly earnings expectations or the need to dole out dividends to keep investors happy. The Ellison family controls the company’s voting stock, allowing David Ellison to take a long-term view as he charts Skydance’s course.
The goal is to “win in storytelling,” Skydance said in an investor presentation. It intends to build the media industry’s most “technologically capable” firm, which uses artificial intelligence to speed work flows. Skydance plans to spend at least $30 billion a year on film, television and video game content.
Skydance co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, Sarah Ellison, CEO David Ellison and investor Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital Partners on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.
(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)
The realities of Ellison’s big swing will soon sink in as he and his team turn their focus to integrating the myriad operations and about 55,000 employees.
In some ways, Ellison is behind the curve.
Most major mergers are consummated after executives have dedicated months to quietly drafting detailed operational plans and organizational hierarchies. Ellison, in contrast, has spent the last nine months in a pitched battle for Warner Bros. — ultimately vanquishing Netflix, hundreds of vocal merger opponents, and California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his coalition of 11 other state attorneys general who filed an antitrust lawsuit in July in an attempt to derail the deal.
Ellison and Bonta resolved their legal fight Sept. 21. A week later, a federal judge cleared the way for the merger to close.
The lawsuit settlement with Bonta requires that the combined company produce at least 30 movies a year for five years. It also must maintain the studio facilities in Los Angeles, making “reasonable efforts to operate the lots in a manner consistent with past practices,” according to the agreement.
Skydance has committed to maintaining operations on the Warner Bros. lot, pictured here, and at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Ynon Kreiz, former chief executive of Mattel toys in El Segundo, has been tasked with leading the integration. The 61-year-old executive joined Ellison at Skydance as his co-CEO earlier this week. Day One of the combined company marked Kreiz’s second day on the job.
“They have a whole new management team that will be expected to immediately lead this massive integration,” Fubini, a former partner at consulting firm McKinsey, said. “The clouds have cleared, and they are at the base camp of Mt. Everest facing this enormous undertaking.”
In a report this week, TD Cowen Global Research maintained its “hold” rating on the newly constituted Skydance, expressing some doubts about Ellison and his team’s ability to “avoid integration and execution problems that have bedeviled other major media mergers.”
Hollywood has had a history of failed mergers, including Discovery’s 2022 takeover of WarnerMedia from AT&T, which led to years of cost cuts that ultimately seeded the ground for Ellison’s takeover. AT&T’s purchase of the same assets in 2018 also quickly unraveled, some 20 years after the epic failure of AOL Time Warner.
Ellison now must grapple with the hefty acquisition costs for Warner Bros., which climbed as the deal was delayed. The company emerged from the transaction with $86.8 billion in total debt; with most of that going toward buying out Warner Bros. Discovery’s stockholders at $31.17 a share.
The debt burden also includes more than $18 billion in obligations leftover from past mergers. Skydance has nearly $7 billion in cash on hand.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison and executive producer David Ellison arrive at the L.A. premiere of “Star Trek Into Darkness” at the Dolby Theatre in 2013.
(Eric Charbonneau / Getty Images for the Hollywood Reporter)
The Ellison family brought in foreign investors, including royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi as passive owners, to contribute equity to the deal. Gerald Cardinale’s RedBird Capital Partners, a longtime Skydance stakeholder, added $4 billion, bringing its total investment in Skydance deals to $6 billion.
The deal’s financial terms pose deep challenges, analysts said. Fitch Ratings this week downgraded Skydance credit, citing “materially higher leverage after the acquisition and significant execution and integration risks,” according to its report.
“Interest rate increases made financing this transaction far more expensive than anyone anticipated,” said Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School. “Those lenders are going to start expecting their interest payments — Skydance executives won’t have the luxury of time.”
The company could struggle, Talley said, to “generate the cash flow needed to easily service that debt unless they can significantly cut costs.”
Skydance has promised investors that it will make $6 billion in cost cuts over three years. It anticipates $2 billion in reductions within a year, with the bulk of the rest occurring in the second year of the merger.
“They are going to be firing a lot of people,” TD Cowen Global Research media analyst Doug Creutz said.
During the press briefing, Kreiz sought to downplay the expected workforce toll, saying Skydance would achieve savings by combining technologies that support streaming services and marketing expenditures. It plans to save costs on real estate by locating employees at Skydance-owned properties in Santa Monica, Hollywood and Burbank.
Ellison and Kreiz said they would jointly manage the new colossus.
“Where David will focus on creative, technology, long-term strategy, including especially as it relates to the creative part of the business, I will focus more on the operations and the day-to-day management of the business,” Kreiz said.
Kreiz was named to Skydance‘s expanded board this week along with Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective; and Bobby Kotick, former CEO of Activision.
The new leaders expressed confidence they could expand and integrate their two major streaming services to drive growth. HBO Max and Paramount+ combined will reach more than 200 million subscribers.
The plan, they said, is to combine the two streamers within a couple of years, but the company may offer subscribers a bundle with the two offerings sooner.
Skydance, according to sources, also expects to bolster its free, ad-supported service Pluto TV, which offers more than 200 channels. The service hasn’t had much corporate attention in recent years amid the cuts and deal-making.
The executives have not disclosed which teams would soon be affected or how they will structure overlapping business units.
For example, the company’s three TV studios each have their own leader: Channing Dungey runs the largest, Warner Bros. Television; David Stapf has long managed CBS Studios; and Skydance executive Matt Thunell has been president of Paramount Television Studios since last year.
Integrating CNN and CBS
Anxiety over whether CNN and CBS News would be mashed together was quelled, at least for now.
Skydance announced that it was retaining CNN Worldwide Chairman Mark Thompson as head of the larger news organization. CNN journalists had worried that CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, who has presided over a year of turmoil at the network, would be put in charge of both.
Any news consolidation could take years, in part, because CBS News is largely unionized while CNN is a non-union shop.
“We are going to spend the next several months basically getting under the hood,” Ellison said.
CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, pictured here in 2023 in Los Angeles, has had a turbulent tenure at CBS.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Another challenge will be stabilizing the Warner Bros. film unit, which has had a rough year at the box office. This month, the top two Warner Bros. film executives, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy, exited abruptly, clearing the way for longtime Ellison lieutenants Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein to oversee both film studios. The co-heads of DC Comics, James Gunn and Peter Safran, segued to the new Skydance.
Skydance also will have to deal with the NFL, which could demand substantially higher fees for CBS to keep its Sunday games.
The current contract allows the league to reopen negotiations because of the ownership change. Skydance is hoping it can wait three years until the contracts of other broadcasters also are up for discussion.
Skydance will be a major player in sports. Last year, Paramount agreed to spend $7.7 billion for UFC fights. The combined company also has rights to professional golf, including the Masters tournament; National Hockey League; Major League Baseball and NCAA basketball, including March Madness, as well as European rights to televise the Olympics.
“Until you actually get inside the company, there are things you won’t know,” Creutz said. “But they are going to have to come up with answers pretty quick.”
David Ellison emerged with his prized Hollywood juggernaut Tuesday as the merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery officially closed.
The $111-billion transaction culminated a year-long battle by the 43-year-old tech scion to add Warner Bros. Discovery to his family’s growing portfolio.
The Ellison family now controls one of the largest traditional media companies ever formed, with HBO, CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, TBS, Food Network, two traditional Hollywood studios and two major streaming services.
Shares of the new company began trading under the ticker SKYD, a switch from last week when the company went by PSKY for Paramount Skydance. Ellison has called the merged company, Skydance, the name he selected two decades ago when he began building his Hollywood studio.
