Shari Redstone Reveals She Is Undergoing Treatment For Thyroid Cancer

Shari Redstone, who for months has been leading the charge to merge Paramount Global with David Ellison’s Skydance Media has, at the same time, been fighting a more personal battle with thyroid cancer.

A spokesperson for the 71-year-old chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount Global confirmed the news in a statement to Deadline.

“Shari Redstone was diagnosed with thyroid cancer earlier this spring,” the statement read. “While it has been a challenging period, she is maintaining all professional and philanthropic activities throughout her treatment, which is ongoing. She and her family are grateful that her prognosis is excellent.”

The diagnosis throws yet another wrench into the process of selling Paramount — the company built into a media empire by her late father, Sumner Redstone — after an already Baroque saga. The pending $8 billion merge with Skydance Media, proposed last summer had seemed likely to close earlier this year. But President Donald Trump then took legal action against CBS News over its handling of an interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The lawsuit, now in mediation, and a slow burn by the Federal Communications Commission in its review of the deal, have put it in a protracted limbo state. Just this week, a number of voices have expressed the first public doubts that it will be consummated. 

Failing to close the merger will be a major setback for Redstone, who has spent the past decade taking the reins of CBS and Viacom and finally melding them together after internal opposition. While the current deal would enrich Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount, and enable her to repay debt, a new sale at a lower price brings uncertainty. And it is difficult to foresee whether Trump’s animus against CBS would moderate with another buyer. Skydance’s acquisition is backed by Larry Ellison, the tech billionaire who is also a Trump donor and longtime supporter.

Redstone has been running National Amusements and serving as Paramount’s non-executive chairwoman. In ascending to the key role, she had to overcome not only the bias toward male executives in the media business but also her own father’s doubts. After a period of estrangement, the two eventually reconciled years before Sumner Redstone died in 2020 at age 97.

In steering Paramount, Redstone has taken after her father in some hands-on respects, publicly backing CBS anchor Tony Dokupil’s interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, which a number of staffers felt was unduly harsh on the author during a discussion of his visit to Palestine. Redstone, who has made fighting anti-Semitism a central priority of her philanthropic efforts in the past couple of years, said Dokupil provided a “role model for what civil discourse is.” Critics and colleagues assailed the anchor for his persistent questioning of Coates, whose latest book criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Paramount will be “a melting ice cube” if its pending $8 billion merger with Skydance doesn’t close, former FCC commissioner Rob McDowell cautioned last week.

Asked about the state of the FCC’s review of the deal during an appearance at Gabelli Funds’ 17^th Annual Media & Sports Symposium in New York, McDowell said even a depleted commission could still approve the transaction. After the abrupt resignation last Wednesday by Republican commissioner Nathan Simington, the regulatory body is about to go down to just two members (one Republican and one Democrat), raising questions about its capabilities.

“Paramount can get approved at 1-1 because it could be a bureau action,” said McDowell, now a partner at Cooley LLP. “The conventional thinking, which is inaccurate, is that you need commission votes for high-profile mergers. Only if there’s something ‘new or novel.’ The Skydance proposal is a simple transfer of control of licenses. They’re not already a broadcaster, they aren’t other issues at play. So, it should be approved on bureau action so that’s something that you do not need an FCC vote of the commissioners to get done.”

Meanwhile, Paramount Global this week set its annual shareholder meeting for July 2, offering another signal that the long-gestating merger with Skydance Media is unlikely to close on schedule.

Wall Street analyst Rich Greenfield said this week that he’s becoming increasingly concerned the deal may not close. Another 90-day extension is set to start in July and run through early October and he believes the sides will walk away if there’s no FCC approval by then.