On Thursday afternoon, F.C.C. chairman Brendan Carr and fellow commissioner Olivia Trusty voted to approve the $8 billion merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media, bringing an end to more than 250 days of regulatory review and political pressure on both mediacos, and thus greenlighting Shari Redstone’s hard-fought $2.4 billion exit and David Ellison’s inheritance of a century-old studio, the NFL’s AFC rights, and a once-storied television business now rendered a political piñata. The whole saga would make for a great HBO miniseries, if not for the fact that it kind of already did, and the depressing reality that the stakes have suddenly begun to feel so low.