On Tuesday, Skydance C.E.O. David Ellison and his legal counsel met with F.C.C. chairman Brendan Carr and his deputies to discuss Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Paramount, which finally appears set for approval, on the heels of Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump over his 60 Minutes lawsuit. Among other things, Ellison and Carr discussed Skydance’s “commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints,” according to a summary of the meeting written by Ellison’s lawyer, Matthew Brill, and obtained by my partner Eriq Gardner, who slipped it to me on deadline. These principles, Brill wrote, “will ensure CBS’s editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers.”

In the context of Trump and Carr’s longstanding pressure campaign against CBS, a commitment to “varied ideological perspectives” is, of course, an assurance that the network’s programming will strive to be less overtly liberal and more tolerant of conservative viewpoints. And as a slate of recent developments suggests, the editorial agenda across Skydance is indeed set for an overhaul—from CBS News to The Late Show, where the company has now decided to drop Stephen Colbert and the entire late-night enterprise.

As my partner Matt Belloni reported just yesterday, Ellison is talking to former CBS News president David Rhodes—an undeniably smart but not universally beloved manager—about returning to the helm of the news network. (Indeed, Paramount co-chief George Cheeks recently met for coffee with Rhodes while in London, per sources familiar.) Ellison is also in talks to acquire Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, a move that would inject a hefty dose of center-right, pro-Israel, anti-woke editorial sensibility into the network. The effective acqui-hire would be expensive—The Free Press recently closed a round at a reported $100 million valuation—but it sure would put his stamp on the joint.

If both David and Bari come over, Matt wrote, “the plan would call for Rhodes to manage and operate CBS News day-to-day alongside Weiss as an ideological guide of sorts.” Whether you see that as a welcome broadening of the discourse or an affront to CBS’s longstanding journalistic traditions probably depends on your politics. But even the hypothetical possibility of this duo would sure make a nice talking point for Carr. Rhodes, of course, cut his teeth at Fox News.

Finally, on Thursday, CBS announced that The Late Show would be shuttered after the 2025-26 season. The gesture has invited a lot of reasonable scrutiny. Was Colbert, a frequent Trump critic, a blood sacrifice for F.C.C. approval? “This was part of the deal with Trump,” one well-connected media executive assured me shortly after the news hit, albeit without any evidence to prove what many believe to be true, aping the paranoia of the moment. Paramount insists that it was “purely a financial decision,” and Colbert himself has offered similar assurances to staff and skeptical friends, I’m told, all aligned with Matt’s reporting last night. (Sign up for What I’m Hearing here, although I assume you already are…)

Indeed, The Late Show loses CBS $40 million a year, and, as I wrote three years ago, the entire genre has been contracting at a breathtaking clip. Indeed, one second-order effect of CBS’s decision is that Fallon and Kimmel are now on a death watch. Nevertheless, the timing of the decision has raised some rather obvious questions. Among them: If this really was “a financial decision,” why didn’t CBS announce it at the upfront in May and jack up ad rates for the final season? And yet, sometimes these things come together less elegantly behind closed doors.

In any event, the net effect of all these developments is the same: CBS News’s editorial bent will likely change to better reflect the views of David and his father, Larry; there will be no more satirical skewering of the president in late night; and, if Trump’s P.S.A. claims are real, there will be $16 million in advertisements for conservative causes peppered across the network’s air. Presumably, that’s a vision for CBS that Trump and Carr can get behind, and it should be enough to move this deal across the finish line so David can finally have his movie franchises and his NFL rights—and, sure, the House of Cronkite, too.

Elsewhere this week, Substack founders Hamish McKenzie and Chris Best revealed, via The New York Times, that they had closed a $100 million funding round that now values the company at $1.1 billion on a mere $45 million in annual recurring revenue. The real news, however, was that the round was led by The Chernin Group, a glossed-over detail that foreshadows Substack’s transformation into a true media company—advertising (finally), better tech, better creator tools, etcetera—as well as a leadership change.

Indeed, Chernin has a history of taking popular brands and installing skilled operators that can professionalize the culture, initiate new revenue streams, and flip the business for a sweet exit. Erika Ayers Badan perfected this formula in partnership with Dave Portnoy at Barstool, and is now trying once again for Chernin at the helm of Food52 without the founders, who have exited the brand. One suspects that a similar strategy may be an option here.

And while many in the media industry were buoyed by the very V.C.-like 20x+ multiple for a company, most saw other clues, too. Indeed, that $100 million was likely a mix of fresh capital and buying out shares on the secondary market. Also, Chernin doesn’t write large checks in order to follow them with enormous checks, and one suspects that early investor a16z followed along in this round for optics as much as the ability to protect their position in the waterfall. Anyway, this may be the last significant funding round that determines whether Substack becomes a true platform company—the investment thesis here, clearly—or ends up more like Medium. At the end of the day, the company might be a fascinating downstream-of-A.I. vehicle for investors who aren’t quite writing those sorts of gaudy checks.

Sure, some investors were mystified by the fact that the founders floated their latest round in Eric Newcomer’s Substack, and that McKenzie decided to start contributing to a media newsletter hosted on rival platform Beehiiv. (These guys may just like attention: Their flacks just sat down for a dual profile in Air Mail, for heaven’s sake…) But the real open question in the industry is whether Substack can stand up an advertising business as quickly and effectively as its new investors are likely anticipating.

Running an ad network requires not only a new sales force, but also an ideology around brand safety—especially for a platform that doesn’t quite have platform scale. And what happens, pray tell, when Emily Sundberg or Newcomer decide they want to reserve their inventory for their own direct-sold advertising? Either way, the company may be the latest to learn a lesson that has humbled so many predecessors: Selling ads ain’t as easy as it looks.