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1:30 PM ET, March 1, 2026

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Nellie Andreeva / Deadline:
Sources: Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters held a town hall to explain Netflix's decision to withdraw from the WBD bid; the town hall excluded a Q&A session  —  With Netflix employees still absorbing the news that the streamer won't be buying Warner Bros. per the two companies' December 5 agreement …
Bloomberg:
How Paramount's David Ellison deployed financial backing and political lobbying, including his well-connected chief legal adviser, to beat Netflix and win WBD  —  After the board of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. concluded a meeting Thursday afternoon, Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav called David Ellison …
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Paramount agrees to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, paying $31 per share in cash, giving WBD an enterprise value of $110B  —  Netflix backed away from its $87.2 billion deal on Thursday. … The two companies formally unveiled the deal Friday after Netflix formally bowed out of the running a day earlier …
Bloomberg:
Paramount pays the $2.8B breakup fee owed to Netflix; NFLX closes up 13.8%, and PSKY closes up 20.8%  —  Paramount Skydance Corp. has paid the $2.8 billion breakup fee owed to Netflix Inc. after the streaming company dropped its planned deal to buy parts of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., according to people familiar with the move.
Deadline:
One analyst says European regulators are unlikely to block a Paramount-WBD deal; another says it's likely that regulators would slow down the approval process
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Inside the Podcast Business Summit and interviews with Kara Swisher, Adam Friedland, and others about how video podcasts won over audio, paywalls, ads, and more  —  The six biggest takeaways from this week's podcast business summit  —  Welcome back to Soundbite.  This week has been a doozy.
Discussion: Podnews
CNN:
CNN employees and viewers have serious concerns about whether Ellison will uphold CNN's editorial independence amid severe political pressure  —  Viewers and readers of CNN might be wondering the same thing that CNN employees are asking right now: What will Paramount's ownership mean?
RELATED:
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
Memo: CNN CEO Mark Thompson urged employees to avoid jumping to conclusions after Netflix pulled out of the WBD deal and to focus on serving CNN's audience
Jeremy Barr / The Guardian:
Memo: another CBS News producer leaves, after 46 years, and says, “We've been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum”  —  Mary Walsh, leaving after 46 years, says staffers told to ‘aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum’
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
The FCC approves Charter's $34.5B merger with Cox, combining cable, fiber, and cloud units, and taking the Cox name and using Spectrum for consumer business  —  The FCC on Friday announced that it has given the greenlight to Charter Communications' $34.5 billion merger with Cox Enterprises.
Chris Gardner / The Hollywood Reporter:
Equalpride, parent company of LGBTQ+ outlets like Out and The Advocate, cuts staff, including the EICs of Pride.com and The Advocate  —  Commenting on the latest round of cuts, a source tells THR, “These brands mean a lot to people, and we need to be telling our stories now more than ever.”
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 More News: 
Kristin Robinson / Billboard:
Suno CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman says the AI music company hit 2M paid subscribers and $300M ARR; pitch deck: it had 1M paid subscribers in November 2025
Discussion: TechCrunch
 Earlier Picks: 
Christine Wang / Axios:
TMTG says it is in talks to spin off Truth Social into a public company, following the close of its previously announced merger with nuclear fusion startup TAE
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Spotify launches Audiobook Charts in the US and the UK, which will be updated weekly and highlight the top audiobooks overall and by genre
 

 
From Techmeme:

OpenAI:
OpenAI and Broadcom unveil Jalapeño, an LLM-optimized inference chip developed from design to manufacturing tape-out in nine months, aided by OpenAI's models

Lauren Goode / Wired:
Qualcomm says it will acquire Modular, which builds a chip software platform and has a proprietary coding language, in a nearly $4B deal set to close in H2 2026

Maggie Eastland / Bloomberg:
Sources: in a letter to US officials, Anthropic accused Alibaba of adversarial distillation, accessing Claude 28.8M times from April to June via ~25K accounts
 
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