David Ellison has combined Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount into a single company, and given it a new name: Skydance. The integration is the easy part compared with what follows.

First, the news business. A combined news division of that scale inherits legacy contracts, a fragmented digital strategy and two sets of expectations about what journalism is for.

Second, the studios. Balancing theatrical release against streaming has been the industry's central argument for a decade, and a merged company has fewer degrees of freedom to keep both paths warm.

Third, sports rights, which have become the most expensive and least flexible line on the balance sheet. Fourth, streaming profitability, still more measured than advertised. And fifth, debt: the transaction was structured in a way that leaves the new entity carrying a great deal of it.