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7:20 PM ET, July 27, 2025

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Paramount says it expects its merger with Skydance to close on August 7; the new company will trade on Nasdaq as PSKY  —  In just under two weeks, Paramount Global will complete its takeover by the smaller Skydance Media to form “Paramount Skydance Corp.” — and bringing a rollercoaster M&A ride to its conclusion.
RELATED:
Lucas Manfredi / The Wrap:
FCC filing: Larry Ellison will hold a minority voting interest of ~35.5% in the combined Paramount-Skydance company, without any veto or special voting rights  —  The Oracle chairman will not have any “veto rights, or any special or outsized voting rights,” per an amendment filed with the FCC
Discussion: Slate, HuffPost and The Information
Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the FCC, dissents against the Paramount-Skydance merger and says the FCC made “unprecedented” moves to help broker the deal
Nellie Andreeva / Deadline:
Chris McCarthy, co-CEO of Paramount Global and president of Showtime/MTV, plans to depart the company once its acquisition by Skydance is completed
Ellie Wolfe / The Baltimore Banner:
The Johns Hopkins University Press will license its authors' books to train AI models, citing concerns that “the window may be closing” for making AI deals  —  The Johns Hopkins University will license its books to train proprietary large language models, an advanced form …
Axios:
Rupert Murdoch's media empire is playing both sides of the Trump-Epstein scandal, with the WSJ breaking bombshell news that Fox News is largely ignoring  —  Rupert Murdoch's media empire is playing both sides of the Trump-Epstein scandal, breaking bombshell news with one hand and largely ignoring it with the other.
CNBC:
The fate of Jimmy Kimmel's ABC show, whose contract ends in 2026, will reveal if Colbert's cancelation was a one-off or a fundamental shift in late-night TV  —  There are two schools of thought around CBS' decision to end “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Arielle Swedback / On Substack:
A survey of 2K Substack publishers finds 45.4% use AI, mainly for research; among them, 51.1% are over age 45, 55% are men, and 85% of tech publications use it  —  AI is here—at schools, in memes, and, yes, even on Substack.  But beyond sniffing out its usage—who's being too liberal with the em dashes or the “It's not [this].
New York Times:
Docs and interviews: Media Matters is struggling to survive, having racked up ~$15M in legal fees to defend itself from lawsuits by Elon Musk, the FTC, and AGs  —  Scrambling to pay legal fees, Media Matters has dialed back its criticism, trimmed its staff and contemplated closing entirely.
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Meta will no longer accept political, election, or social issue ads in the EU from October, like Google, with both citing incoming regulation  —  Meta on Friday said starting in October it will no longer accept political, election or social issue ads in the European Union …
Lucia Moses / Business Insider:
Sources: Netflix is searching for a video podcasting head; the role could be under Netflix's TV and film licensing arm rather than the original content side  —  - Netflix is quietly searching for an exec to lead its video podcast efforts.  — The streamer is chasing YouTube, which has cemented itself as a video podcast titan.
Discussion: Bloomberg
Michael Schaffer / Politico:
Sources: all but one person on WaPo's obit desk has taken the paper's buyout offer; the lone holdout is too junior to qualify for the buyout deal  —  It looks like it's time to submit a death notice for the Washington Post's obituaries section.  —  The paper's longtime obit chief …
Austin Fuller / Current:
At a CPB meeting, CEO Patricia Harrison said CPB is doing “everything possible” to secure funding for FY26 while also preparing for a possible shutdown  —  Dru Sefton / Current … “So it's very difficult — hope on the one side, and sort of acceptance on the other,” Harrison said.
RELATED:
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Donations to US public media surge amid funding cuts, up by ~$70M YoY so far in 2025, but still fall well short of the annual $550M that Congress has cut
 
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 More News: 
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Source: India orders ISPs and app stores to block 25 streaming services, like Ullu and ALTT with millions of downloads, for allegedly promoting obscene content
Katie Robertson / New York Times:
Project Veritas has withdrawn its 2020 lawsuit against The New York Times; the lawsuit accused the newspaper of defamation over an article published in 2020
Morgan Sung / KQED:
Sen. Alex Padilla grants the Internet Archive federal depository status, making it a part of a network of over 1,100 libraries that archive government documents
 Earlier Picks: 
Peter White / Deadline:
Source: E! News, the long-running celebrity news show, will end on September 25; its digital brand will continue with a focus on social platforms
 

 
From Techmeme:

Dario Amodei:
An essay on policy responses to AI's exponential progress across regulation and public safety, macroeconomics and taxes, science, civil liberties, geopolitics

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft's Xbox division is planning major layoffs next month and significant budget cuts for marketing and some other areas

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Cybersecurity researchers complain that Claude Fable's guardrails are too strict, rejecting “innocuous tasks” like reading blog posts or performing code reviews
 
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