In today’s splintered age of smartphones, streaming apps and endless scrolling, it almost sounds impossible: Walter Cronkite, the famed CBS Evening News anchor of the 1960s and 1970s, routinely drew average nightly audiences of 53 million people.
Americans tuned in with extraordinary focus as he guided them through some of the defining moments of the 20th century, from the killing of John F. Kennedy to the awe-inspiring achievement of the Moon landings.
Repeatedly described in public surveys as “the most trusted man in America,” Cronkite ended each broadcast with the now-famous line: “And that’s the way it is.”
To him, those words reflected the highest duty of journalism: to present the facts honestly and plainly, regardless of the backlash, discomfort or political storm that might follow.
For generations, that kind of independent broadcast journalism has been central to the health of democratic society. Yet the model Cronkite embodied is now facing a serious challenge, as global streaming platforms such as Netflix reshape viewing habits. Last month, Ofcom reported that Netflix had overtaken the BBC as viewers’ first destination for television.
Across the UK and the United States, a wave of media mega-mergers is putting trusted, independent television news under pressure — while creating a wider set of concerns for audiences and public life.
This is happening just as millions of people are abandoning traditional broadcasters and turning to social media for “news,” despite those platforms being fertile ground for misinformation, hostile foreign influence and low-quality AI-generated content.
Many readers may not have tracked these vast, multibillion-dollar media deals, which can feel closer to the elite boardroom battles of Succession than to ordinary daily life. But the stakes are far from abstract: the impact on the public could be profound.
On both sides of the Atlantic, ‘mega-mergers’ between media corporations are jeopardising the existence of reliable, independent TV news, writes our columnist Alex Brummer
If the proposed merger deal goes ahead, Comcast will find itself in possession of two major British news providers – Sky and ITN
In Britain, the Sky network – owned by the gargantuan US conglomerate Comcast – has announced a £1.6billion deal to buy ITV’s broadcasting and streaming arm and create the country’s biggest commercial broadcaster.
In America, meanwhile, Paramount, run by billionaire Donald Trump ally David Ellison, is attempting to build its own sprawling media empire by buying Warner Bros Discovery for a staggering £83billion.
Of the two, ITV’s sale concerns me the most.
This venerable British broadcaster – home to Coronation Street, countless popular shows and sporting gems from the World Cup to Six Nations rugby – would be out of domestic hands for the first time in its 70-year history. This is despite ITV’s power to marshal audiences of up to 10 million – a feast for advertisers.
ITV’s chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall felt she had little choice but to agree to the takeover against the onslaught from streamers.
Despite a canny investment in streaming platform ITVX, which has racked up healthy subscriptions, the group’s share price has spent years in the doldrums and shareholders are impatient.
Under the Sky deal, a diminished ITV – including its excellent studio arm, responsible for such productions as Mr Bates vs The Post Office – would remain untouched. Crucially, however, the fate of news arm ITN (in which DMGT, owner of the Daily Mail, has a 20 per cent stake), remains alarmingly unclear.
ITN boasts exemplary credentials for proper, old-school news-gathering.
In 2021, it delivered historic coverage of the January 6 riots, when Trump’s unruly crew of Maga fanatics stormed the US Capitol. ITN were the only non-US crew to breach the building alongside Trump’s insurgents.
But what will happen to this important news provider after the Comcast-Sky take-over? Nobody knows.
Since it launched at 6pm on February 5, 1989, Sky – with its rolling 24-hour news coverage – wields an important role in setting Britain’s political and news agenda, thanks to well-known faces.
If the deal goes ahead, Comcast will find itself in possession of two major British news providers – Sky and ITN. To its billionaire chairman and CEO, Pennsylvanian Brian L. Roberts (a nepo-baby who inherited Comcast from his dad Ralph), that may look like one provider too many.
When Roberts paid Rupert Murdoch a whopping £30billion for Sky in 2018, he promised heavy investment. Instead, Comcast has been hacking away at the British broadcaster, among other things by closing a digital facility that made short videos for social media. Sky’s agreement with Comcast for news provision expires as soon as 2028. I wouldn’t want to be working at Sky or ITN after that date.
Andy Burnham faces a serious dilemma over the Sky-ITV takeover. Sir Keir Starmer’s government stumped up no less than £1.3billion of taxpayers’ cash to encourage Comcast-owned Universal to build a sprawling, 471-acre theme park in Bedfordshire, due to open in 2031, at an estimated cost of £5billion.
The worry for Burnham now is that if our regulators try to block the Sky-ITV deal, Comcast might pull out of this massive facility, losing the jobs and investment it will bring.
New Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy could overrule the regulators – but at what cost to British news production? To me it’s clear: for the sake of our national news landscape, this deal must not go ahead.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy could overrule the regulators – and for the sake of our national news landscape, this deal must not go ahead, says Brummer
Which brings me to the Paramount-Warner takeover. Although this might seem a purely American concern, there are direct implications for Britain.
Audiences here enjoy content from Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount thanks to Channel 5, TNT Sports, the Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and CNN International, as well as Paramount+ and HBO Max. Warner alone employs 4,000 permanent UK staff – a number that doubles during film-making.
The companies also make tremendous use of our world-leading post-production facilities in Soho, central London. Their estimated direct contribution to our economy is £2.2billion. But you can be sure that Paramount, as it seeks to ‘streamline’ its new acquisition, will soon look for places to cut.
Yet as well as the risk of losing thousands of British jobs, there are concerns that Warner-owned CNN, which offers robust criticism of Donald Trump, will be suppressed by the Maga sympathies of Larry Ellison, the billionaire Oracle founder and financier of the Paramount bid.
This is an important test. If you believe in independent news, that needs to cut both ways. Whatever you think of Trump, seeing venerable American broadcasters such as CBS and CNN being forced to kowtow to the White House would be an affront to the First Amendment and American Press freedom.
And while you might think there’s nothing we can do here about this nine-figure American deal, our own regulator the CMA could, in fact, force the sale of British studio assets such as Paramount’s Channel 5, because a takeover could give the US behemoth an uncompetitively large slice of the UK market. This might sharpen minds across the Atlantic.
In the meantime, our nation’s current affairs and creative crown jewels are under mortal threat. Burnham needs to show some mettle – and do everything he can to kill these deals stone-dead.
