Been in the copyright records all night. When the banks collateralized Warner’s library last September, they wrote down 569 titles. Most were obvious — Harry Potter, Batman, Game of Thrones. Then one anomaly: exactly one CNN work in the vault. The pilot episode of Parts Unknown. Myanmar, 2013.

CNN has 655 registered copyrights spanning 45 years and you are telling me that the banks hold only one 43-minute episode of a show that once defined CNN as prestige documentary, made by a man who died in 2018. And get this: when I went to watch it, CNN’s own page for it is a dead link. You have to rent it off Amazon, OR [get this], stream it for free with ads on Pluto TV. And I’ll give you one guess who owns Pluto TV.

Paramount.

I think it’s pretty weird that the banks financing this merger hold the CNN name and essentially nothing CNN has ever made. Their entire grip on 45 years of journalism is one dead man’s episode. But maybe that’s the entire point.

If someone decides to sell CNN off, the only legal step is the bank signing a paper that lets the name go. The shows, the archive, the newsroom — none of it is pledged to anyone. It’s free and ready to move. It has been free and ready to move since September. Two months before any formal bids even hit David Zaslav’s Desk. Allegedly.

Full investigation: substack.com/home/post/…