On September 17, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission's Video Division granted Paramount Global permission to exceed the statutory 25 percent cap on indirect foreign ownership of a broadcast licensee's U.S. parent. Paramount holds the licenses for 28 CBS stations.
The decision-maker matters, and it was not the chairman. The ruling was issued under delegated authority and signed by David Brown, Chief of the Video Division, Media Bureau. There was no commission vote. Brendan Carr, who chairs the agency, had publicly endorsed the deal in March: “I think this is a good deal, and I think it should get through pretty quickly.”
What was approved is non-voting equity. The Bureau found “it is in the public interest to permit up to 100% indirect foreign equity interest of Paramount, in the aggregate,” and named the investors and their stakes: Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund at 15.1 percent, four Emirati entities at 12.8 percent each, and two Qatari entities at 10.6 percent each. Paramount told the agency foreign investors would hold roughly 49.5 percent of its equity. Each investor also received advance approval to grow to 20 percent.
What was not approved is voting control. The Bureau denied as moot Paramount's requests for foreign voting interests above 25 percent, because a September 4 Letter of Agreement with the Justice Department's National Security Division commits the investors to non-voting stock with no governance rights, no information rights, no influence over content, and no access to non-public data on U.S. persons. The Ellison family and RedBird Capital keep all of the voting stock.
The Bureau rejected the argument that a stake that large buys influence anyway: “We find this argument unconvincing. The Proposed Investment is not a loan, which must be repaid, but a purchase of stock that has no voting rights.”
Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency's sole Democrat, objected to both the substance and the route. “An investment this large in one of America's biggest media companies doesn't just buy equity; it secures influence over what gets said and what gets made,” she said. “That's why I called for this new and novel issue to go to a full Commission vote given what's at stake. Instead, the FCC snuck this ruling out as a staff-level decision, with no public vote and no accountability for a call of this magnitude.”
Three months earlier, Sens. Cory Booker, Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren had written to Carr warning that the advance approvals “could result in up to 100 percent aggregate foreign ownership of one of the nation's largest broadcast media companies,” and that while advance approval is procedurally standard, “the nature of the request is unprecedented.” They asked him to state whether Attorney General Todd Blanche was chairing the national-security committee reviewing the deal and, if he had not recused himself, on what basis he was participating in “a national security review with direct financial implications for sovereign wealth funds with documented ties to the Trump administration.” Their closing question was whether putting “49.5 percent of the equity in the parent company of CBS, CNN, and 28 broadcast television stations into the hands of three foreign governments serves the American public.”
Two things cut the other way and belong in the record. A 100 percent aggregate ceiling is not itself unprecedented; the ruling cites grants to Searchlight in 2023 and Univision in 2022. And this ruling does not clear the underlying $111 billion Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger, which a federal judge has halted after finding it likely to violate antitrust law while a twelve-state suit proceeds.