CBS

Nineteen years after acquiring Last.fm, CBS was reported in May 2026 to have separated from the music service as coverage increasingly centered on ownership and media-power shifts.

Who they are

CBS appears in the coverage as a US broadcast and news-media company whose programming, digital distribution, streaming efforts and acquired assets connect it to the broader television platform market. Its historical stories span CBS News and 60 Minutes, sports streaming, All Access, and the 2019 merger with Viacom that formed ViacomCBS.

The recent arc

Recent coverage has moved away from CBS’s earlier experiments in digital carriage and direct-to-consumer programming toward corporate control and the political context around major media properties. The September 2025 New York Times report on Larry Ellison potentially controlling CBS, CNN and TikTok, followed by a December account of his effort to make the case for Paramount rather than Netflix to acquire WBD, put CBS inside a wider contest for media scale and influence.

CBS also surfaces as a news publisher in consequential policy coverage, including its May 2025 report that the Trump administration fired Copyright Office head Shira Perlmutter after her office raised AI-training copyright concerns. The latest item, Engadget’s May 2026 report that Last.fm became independent again 19 years after CBS acquired it, points to continued unwinding or reassessment of legacy media holdings.

The tension

The coverage repeatedly circles the collision between legacy broadcasters and digital distribution or streaming rivals. CBS sought reach through YouTube, Twitter convention livestreams and a no-sign-in Super Bowl stream, while making Star Trek exclusive to All Access to compete with Netflix and Amazon; more recently, the relevant rivalry has broadened into a high-stakes ownership contest involving Paramount, Netflix, WBD and politically connected prospective media power.

Why it matters

If this trajectory continues, CBS’s significance will rest less on any single broadcast or app than on how its news, entertainment and legacy assets are positioned within consolidation and platform competition. The outcome remains uncertain, but the Ellison reporting, Netflix’s WBD agreement and the Last.fm separation together show why control of established media brands, their libraries and their distribution paths remains strategically consequential.

Related: Netflix · Paramount · Amazon · Trump · Netflix agrees to acquire WBD's studios and streaming business in an $