Skydance Deal Done, What Next For Paramount Global?

MediaSkydance Deal Done, What Next For Paramount Global

ByDavid Bloom, Senior Contributor

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights, given current economic conditions

Where does Skydance Entertainment, the media company assembled by mogul-in-the-making David Ellison, scion of another wealthy industry pioneer, take Paramount Global now that the Federal Communications Commission has finally signed off on the deal, ing the way for it to close on Aug

Conversely, Late-night talk shows have become an endangered species, as younger audiences tap YouTube and social media for highlights, and advertising revenue continues to decline, in light of current trends

In contrast, But Colbert is also a pointed critic of the Trump Administration, calling Redstone’s $16 million settlement of a specious Trump lawsuit against 60 Minutes “a big fat bribe” two days before the cancellation announcement (an important development). 5 billion deal to secure three seasons of new South Park episodes and 26 past seasons was announced, in time for a scorchingly satirical take on the president’s penis, satanic bedfellows, an AI-generated Trump wandering nude in the desert, and much else

Additionally, The Sermon on the ‘Mount episode also represented, amid the resulting furor on the right, a canny announcement that the collected calumnies of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are finally available on the Paramount Plus ing service, after years licensed on Warner Bros

The data indicates that s debut the week the FCC apved the sale also may have sent reassuring messages to the left-leaning side of the company’s employees, creative partners and audiences

Nevertheless, Meanwhile, Tanya Simon was made permanent head of politically battered CBS stalwart 60 Minutes, as staff had recently petitioned to happen

Simon was interim head after Bill Owens resigned as executive ducer, and has been with CBS nearly three decades

As an aside, Simon’s father, Bob, was a CBS foreign correspondent and 60 Minutes regular who accreted 27 Emmys, four Peabody awards and a DuPont over 47 years

Local news (and weather, traffic and sports) remains one of the few reasons many people still tune into broadcast

Acquired rights to football and men’s basketball games for the revived Pac-12 college athletic conference, as well as the conference’s championships in both sports

The data indicates that reconstituted conference is a pale shadow of its former glory a few years back, but more sports has been a winning strategy for all the companies trying to remain relevant to a large chunk of potential viewers

Up next: widespread whacking

These days, however, cord-cutting has turned much of cable into dead networks walking

Furthermore, Comcast’s NBCUniversal has already spun off nearly all its cable operations other than Bravo into a standalone company called Versant

Additionally, Discovery has reorganized in similar fashion, and announced plans to split off its Global Networks unit into a separate company under CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, along with a boatload of debt and a 20-percent stake in the remaining ing & Studios unit that it’s supposed to sell within a year of the split

However, “Over the next few years, we expect virtually all linear TV gramming outside of sports and news to shift to catalog content and reruns of what appeared on ing; there simply will not be a model to support original entertainment gramming on linear TV," the LightShed note reads

Moreover, "That will lead consumers to seek increasingly smaller (skinnier) bundles of channels focused on broadcast networks, sports channels, and news channels (quite telling)

Meanwhile, Makes you wonder why any investor would want to own the plethora of coming standalone cable network companies

At the same time, ” Yes, indeed

Furthermore, It seems highly ly that Paramount holdings such as Comedy Central, MTV, and Nickelodeon depart the mothership in similar fashion, perhaps in a Titanic-sized merger of sinking ships with Versant and/or Global Networks

Additionally, Ellison has ved a savvy enough operator that he ly wouldn’t lead or finance that of rollup, but perhaps he could use a spinoff to lighten debt loads and position Paramount Global for a media future where cable dery matters less and less

And while Ellison has committed to beefing up local news operations, what’s he going to do with CBS News (this bears monitoring)

Both its morning show and its evening news are mired in third place, with on-air talent that, at least traditionally, enjoyed extremely generous contracts

Will CBS News do more (or, more ly, less) with less, in today's financial world

Numerous notable on-air personalities have departed recently across all the broadcast networks, including CBS News’ Nora O’Donnell and NBC’s Hoda Kotb

At the same time, Expect more of that to continue

This leads to the conclusion that Paramount Studios lot has long been for both film and TV duction, but in truth, has often used as a site for various conferences, food festivals and the, suggesting its facilities haven’t been fully exploited for many years

Does Ellison amp up the film-duction spending, at a time when movie theaters in the United States are still generating subsequently lower revenues than they did before the pandemic (that was one of Redstone’s challenges; her family’s National Amusements, which has had a controlling of Paramount, also owns hundreds of underperforming theaters) Skydance will bring some areas of focus that haven’t been part of any corner of Paramount lately, including a game unit and feature animation (though South Park’s creators pungently reminded everyone last week they can still dish out the satire, even if it will be available mostly on ing going forward) (this bears monitoring)

The changes ahead are ly to be deep and painful, particularly amid a deep recession afflicting the entertainment in Hollywood, in whose literal physical neighborhood the Paramount lot sits, in today's financial world

But perhaps the relatively young and -savvy Ellison, a hugely successful movie ducer (recent Mission: Impossible movies and much else) and son of one of the world’s handful of richest people, is just the person to take a century-old movie studio into this uncertain future (an important development), in today's market environment

Plenty of work lies ahead

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