By FishbowlLA Staff
Two weeks ago the Paramount–Warner deal got frozen. Last week it got parked. This week it got a date — and it is not one anybody on the Melrose lot wanted to hear. Meanwhile the studios opened their books forty-eight hours apart, a Spanish-language institution vanished from the LA dial, and one of the last true morning-drive dynasties in this market re-upped. Here’s the week.
A judge finally put a date on it: March 2, 2027
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín set the antitrust trial over Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery for March 2, 2027, running roughly twelve court days. The ruling came Tuesday, August 4, and it split the difference between the two sides: Paramount had pushed for a November start so it could still salvage something like its original timetable, while the coalition of state attorneys general and the Writers Guild — who filed in mid-July — wanted April, arguing they needed the runway for expert discovery.
Neither got what they asked for, which is usually the sign of a judge who intends to actually try the case. For everyone drawing a paycheck in Burbank or on Melrose, the practical translation is simple and grim: the org charts stay in the drawer for another seven months minimum, and the “we’ll know more after the deal closes” answer that has been handed to LA crews since February now has to stretch across two more awards seasons.
Both halves of the merger opened their books this week, and neither looked great
Paramount Skydance reported Tuesday. Paramount+ added 2 million subscribers in the quarter, largely on the back of the UFC deal and World Cup rights in Latin America, and streaming revenue rose 9% to $2.5 billion. But net earnings still fell to $41 million from $57 million a year earlier, because the television side keeps bleeding: TV revenue dropped 9%, from $3.45 billion to $3.12 billion, with distribution fees — the per-subscriber money cable and satellite operators hand over — down 6%.
Warner Bros. Discovery followed Thursday morning, and the shape was similar but uglier at the top line: revenue fell 11.2% year over year to $8.72 billion, missing Wall Street’s estimate by 5%, though GAAP earnings of six cents a share beat a consensus that had penciled in a loss.
The subtext of both reports is the same one that has hung over this town for three years. Streaming is finally scaling; linear is falling faster. The merger was supposed to be the answer to that arithmetic, and the merger is now a 2027 problem — with a ticking fee to WBD shareholders starting to accrue in the meantime and a reported $7 billion break fee waiting if it all comes apart. That is a lot of money to spend on standing still.
Recuerdo is gone: 103.9/98.3 flips to Latino Mix
TelevisaUnivision flipped Spanish Oldies “Recuerdo 103.9/98.3” — KRCD Inglewood and KRCV West Covina — to Spanish CHR “Latino Mix,” with new KLXM and KLXO calls taking effect Wednesday, August 5. RadioInsight, which flagged the domain filings on July 31 before the company said a word, reported the change August 3. The lineup will lean on TelevisaUnivision’s syndicated “El Flow” and “Mixology,” with local personalities still to be named.
This was the last Recuerdo left in the Univision portfolio, and it is being retired in the market that arguably invented the format’s audience. It had drawn a 1.6 share in the June Nielsen book — thin, but the sort of number a heritage Spanish-language brand can carry for years before somebody upstairs decides the demo has aged out. The move pushes the pair straight into SBS’s Mega 96.3 territory, which posted the same 1.6, and follows Meruelo pulling Power 106 toward a gold-based presentation and flipping Cali 93.9 to bilingual AC. Read the whole sequence together and you get the story of the year on the LA dial: everybody is chasing the same bilingual, current-leaning listener, and the stations built for their parents are the ones getting reformatted.
Ellen K re-ups at KOST, and the streak reaches 36 years
iHeartMedia announced Tuesday, August 4, that it has signed Ellen K to a multi-year extension to keep hosting “The Ellen K Morning Show” on 103.5 KOST, along with her weekend show carried on 48 iHeart AC stations. Regional president Paul Corvino called her “one of LA’s most beloved personalities”; she talked about the new “Therapy Thursday” podcast and said she loves “EVERYTHING about morning radio.”
Worth pausing on the tenure. She has been in Los Angeles mornings since 1990 — first alongside Rick Dees, later Ryan Seacrest, at KIIS-FM, then over to KOST in October 2015. That is thirty-six consecutive years of waking up this city, through three ownership eras and roughly a dozen format panics. In a week when the biggest local media story was two conglomerates explaining why their revenue fell, a signed morning-drive contract is not a small thing. It is one of the very few jobs in LA media that still gets renewed rather than restructured.
That’s the week
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