Now on to the latest Paramount news, the backstory of that wild South Park episode, and Ellison’s planned first big talent move at Paramount…

At this point, would anyone have been surprised if David Ellison and Shari Redstone had preempted 60 Minutes to personally and publicly declare Donald Trump the sexiest man alive? The kowtowing leading up to today’s F.C.C. greenlight of the $8 billion Skydance-Paramount deal has bordered on comical. Set aside the $16 million bribe—sorry, settlement—of the bogus CBS News lawsuit, or Trump going on TV to claim the real bribe is actually more than double that amount. By the end, Trump and Brendan Carr, his F.C.C. lapdog, were basically screaming Jump! over and over, with Ellison responding repeatedly, How high? When Dad agreed to buy David a Hollywood studio, it wasn’t supposed to be this… demeaning.

You fear “bias” at CBS News? How about a big role for Bari Weiss, the reactionary Substacker who’s never worked in TV news, and an ombudsman hired essentially as an anti-“woke” narc. You hate Stephen Colbert? He’s out. Yes, the show was losing tens of millions of dollars, but if canceling Late Show happens to please the president, all the better. You want D.E.I. programs gone? Done. No matter that George Cheeks, the Paramount co-C.E.O. who is expected to stay atop CBS, personally mandated not that long ago that writers rooms for CBS shows be staffed with 50 percent people of color. That’s all over now. You’re welcome. We’ll probably never know what additional promises Ellison made or didn’t make to Trump, or what they discussed during those two private stop-n-chat’s during UFC matches, both orchestrated by Ari Emanuel and begging for an off-Broadway scripted adaptation by Aaron Sorkin. Trump first told us he’d been promised $16 million in P.S.A.s and other concessions. Then it jumped to $20 million. Ellison tells us nothing. Maybe this is all performative B.S. by the Trump people, a corporate version of sending the National Guard to L.A. to quell an uprising that wasn’t real. Maybe Ellison and New Paramount will just ignore all these pledges once the deal closes. Regardless, the whole thing is pretty silly, and embarrassing, and, frankly, depressing. And yet… Ellison is now on the brink of acquiring the asset that I first reported he wanted way back in December 2023. He and Shari survived F.C.C. review by the most openly vindictive and transactional administration of the television age. Ellison may have lost some hair and part of his dignity—“capitulation over courage,” in the words of the dissenting F.C.C. commissioner—but he outlasted everything from Shari’s vacillations over whether to sell, to the Paramount board exodus and litigation threats (those aren’t over), to Charles Phillips and his alleged attempts to sabotage the deal, to “Project Rise Partners” and Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Byron Allen and all the other suitor nonsense. This political stuff has been going on for a year now, since the deal was announced last July. And finally, after all that, Ellison’s gonna win a 100-year-old movie studio. A great business? Probably not, but not even the richest of rich kids have one.

Given all that, it’s a bit surprising—and, I suppose, a good sign?—that last night’s South Park episode aired at all. Not that creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker don’t poke at the president regularly, and often in crude and outrageous fashion. But a naked Trump demanding sex from Satan? Multiple shots of the president’s “tiny penis” and an image of him violating a goat? A storyline involving a multimillion-dollar settlement of a bogus Trump lawsuit with explicit references to Paramount and Colbert, all culminating in an A.I.-generated Trump, sweaty and nude, talking to his own penis in the desert? (The A.I. deepfake Trump was particularly brilliant, given that the same day the episode aired, the president announced White House A.I. policy positions favoring lackluster protections against exactly this kind of dangerous technology. It’s almost like Parker and Stone bought a company that creates deepfakes just for this moment.) All that was missing from the episode was a billionaire’s power-mad son trying to buy and enslave the whole town of South Park. But there are nine episodes left this season.

No, Ellison didn’t watch the episode in advance, per multiple sources. But he was given a heads-up that it was “disparaging” to the president. (Love the understatement.) Here’s how it went down: As often happens, Matt and Trey were working on the show right up until the day it aired. (It was actually way more incendiary until some late trims, I’m told, and Stone said tonight at Comic-Con that they compromised by adding eyes to the penis so “it’s a character.”) South Park is typically reviewed by Paramount standards and practices, with an additional level of legal scrutiny. But for this particular episode, titled “Sermon on the ’Mount” (get it?), Parker and Stone’s producer Anne Garefino flagged it to Paramount exec Keyes Hill-Edgar, who alerted Chris McCarthy, George Cheeks, and Brian Robbins. The co-C.E.O.s watched the show—no doubt knowing it would draw a rebuke from the White House just as the transaction neared the long-sought F.C.C. approval—and leaned toward airing it, but they decided to bring in Redstone. After the men described the episode to Shari (I’d pay good money for a recording of that conversation), Redstone said she would back their ruling. “Shari Redstone had not seen the episode, so she told the C.E.O.s that she trusted their judgment and would support their decision,” a rep for Redstone told me. The verdict: Air it. Predictably, the White House punched back this morning, though notably, Trump himself has not commented or posted about the starring role that he and his allegedly “teeny-tiny” penis play in the episode. The whole thing capped one of the most contentious talent negotiations I’ve ever covered—and a possible indicator of how Ellison & Co. plan to approach deals at New Paramount. We don’t need to rehash the sordid back-and-forth, but suffice it to say that as far back as March, Matt/Trey and the current Paramount guys thought they had a $1 billion, 10-year deal with HBO Max and a path to another nonexclusive arrangement with Paramount+. The HBO Max deal was actually at the longform papering stage. But Ellison and his deputy Jeff Shell blocked it, as was their right, and later started negotiating their own version of a preferred, lower-stakes deal. (Two sources who spoke with Ellison during this time say he spent a good deal of their conversations complaining about McCarthy and Hill-Edgar; I doubt either is getting invited to Lanai any time soon.) Ellison initially offered South Park only a three-year extension for Paramount+, per one source familiar with the talks. Matt and Trey, via their lawyer Kevin Morris, went nuclear, claiming Ellison was repeatedly trying to lower the market value of South Park so he could exploit it more cost-effectively on the platform he owns, even if it meant less money for Park County, Paramount’s 50-50 joint venture with Matt/Trey. Litigator Bryan Freedman got involved, and a wild period of screaming phone calls, threatening letters, and cameos from Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery executives ensued. Ted Sarandos courted Ellison at Sun Valley with a $275 million-a-year exclusive offer, and David Zaslav and his HBO Max team were trying as late as last weekend to get nonexclusive rights (and to include a settlement of litigation over South Park “specials” in the deal), with Matt and Trey even offering to contribute $60 million to bridge the gap. Ellison, advised by Shell and incoming TV chief Cindy Holland, ultimately decided to keep South Park to himself, though he could still sublicense part of the library to other platforms. The global Paramount+ deal is valued at $300 million a year for five years. Plus, after initially telling Morris that he didn’t even want to discuss a renewal of the Stone/Parker overall deal, which isn’t up until 2027, Ellison agreed to a $250 million-a-year extension for five years. Morris also wanted a huge advance, partly because the guys had taken out a loan from Carlyle that needed to be repaid. Ari Emanuel got involved (he advises Ellison, and WME reps Matt and Trey), and they settled on a compromise of a faster recoupment instead. That paved the way for a deal to be announced Wednesday and the now-famous episode to air as planned that night. All 26 seasons of South Park will disappear from HBO Max on August 5, and Ellison will see if a property that has consistently performed on whatever service that hosts it, including HBO Max over the past five years, will help Paramount+ lure and retain subscribers. South Park is the 20th-most-watched streaming show of 2025 through June, according to Nielsen, with close to 10.5 billion minutes viewed on HBO Max. For context, Friends (17th place) amassed 11.4 billion minutes, and the most-streamed show on the platform, The Big Bang Theory, generated 16.6 billion minutes watched. And neither of those shows is producing 10 new episodes a year for the next five years.

Given the F.C.C. order, the Paramount transaction should sail to a close as early as August 7. (That date was moved up from August 12.) McCarthy jumped ship today, giving the greenlight for the trades to announce his exit before he could be pushed. He’s known for months, as you and I have, that there’s no role for him at the new company, and the South Park situation didn’t help his cause. If he goes to a rival streamer, it’ll be fascinating to see if Taylor Sheridan eventually follows. McCarthy is not generally well-liked by talent, but Sheridan has been given basically everything he wants to make his chart-topping shows, and Holland has telegraphed that changes are coming.

As I’ve noted, everything is on the table at New Paramount, and the Skydance team will finally be able to implement plans that have been sitting idle for nearly a year. The promised $2 billion in cost savings will result in far fewer employees. The cable networks are officially for sale or will be shipped off to Versant-land. CBS will almost certainly air fewer scripted programs, and Holland wants to reduce the cost of many of the shows they do make. CBS News will be tweaked under David Rhodes and Bari Weiss, if Ellison can close those deals. Paramount+ and Pluto TV are likely to merge, resulting in big cost reductions. At the same time, Ellison is planning to announce a slew of new additions as soon as the acquisition closes. I’m told that one of the first moves is a big overall deal with Will Smith and his Westbrook to make films for Paramount—finally, some good news for Westbrook and Candle Media, which owns a stake, after The Slap significantly hurt that business. Smith might be banned from the Oscars until 2032, but as far as Ellison is concerned, he’s back. (A rep for Smith and Westbrook declined to comment.) Beyond that, all eyes in Hollywood are now on Ellison and his first moves at the studio once the deal closes. Is the contentious fight behind South Park a sign of how New Paramount will treat its biggest talent partners? Now that Holland has committed $1.5 billion to one show, will it impact her budget elsewhere? Will Trump leave Ellison and Paramount alone, even if The Daily Show or 60 Minutes or South Park continues to attack? I, for one, can’t wait until next week’s episode.

See you Monday, Matt

Clarification: On Monday, I jabbed Peacock for raising prices and forcing Bravo fans to pay for the NBA and other sports they don’t watch. Turns out Peacock just launched a “Select” tier with next-day NBC and Bravo shows (no sports) for $7.99/month. Smart! Got a question, comment, complaint, or suggestions for Skydance-related South Park characters? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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