The battle for Paramount Global has now been joined. On the one hand, there is David Ellison, RedBird Capital, and KKR, who together have concocted an interesting, albeit complicated, deal that would take out Shari Redstone at a big profit and then recapitalize Paramount Global with new equity, a new management team, and the addition of Skydance Media while keeping Paramount Global a publicly traded company. That’s a lot to digest, sure, but the promise is that the combination of David Ellison, Jeff Shell, and likely Jeff Zucker will de-Bakish-ize the business—clean it up by selling off BET and Showtime and then somehow stem the losses at Paramount+, perhaps by combining it with Comcast’s Peacock or shutting it down altogether.