Over the last year and a half, the Federal Communications Commission, led by chairman Brendan Carr, has had substantial oversight of Paramount Skydance Corp.
The FCC signed off Skydance’s deal to acquire Paramount Global, approving the transfer of broadcast licenses (just days, funnily enough, after CBS announced that it was canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert). And the Commission is currently reviewing a request that would permit Middle East investors to own a majority of Paramount Skydance’s economic shares (though control of the company would remain with David Ellison).
Along the way, of course, Paramount and its CBS subsidiary has had other matters before the FCC too. A ProPublica report released Wednesday, however, reveals that both Carr and fellow Republican FCC commissioner Olivia Trusty received pricey gifts valued at thousands of dollars from Paramount: Tickets to the Kennedy Center Honors, which were televised by the network.
ProPublica found that Trusty’s ethics disclosure revealed that the tickets to the event were valued at $12,000. Carr hasn’t filed his ethics disclosure yet, but was seen seated in a private box with David Ellison, and Kennedy Center guidelines suggest that those tickets would be priced at $125,000 each.
The timing of the event coincided with Paramount fighting Netflix for control of Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount was ultimately successful, and now is in the midst of its FCC review.
All of that being said, ProPublica found that attendance at the Kennedy Center Honors has been a bipartisan tradition, with CBS offering tickets to FCC commissioners with the company’s compliments. The non-profit found that seven out of the 10 commissioners that have served in the last 10 years attended, including Carr’s predecessor Jessica Rosenworcel, and Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner, who did not attend in 2025. but has done so in the past.
But Paramount’s deal for WBD is attracting newfound scrutiny (not to mention lawsuits), which seems to have put the gifted tickets in a new light.
