Studio's leadership team meets the press in wide-ranging Q&A session held on Melrose lot
 |
| David Ellison speaks during the Aug. 13 Q&A session with media on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood |
Paramount Chief David Ellison: BET Networks No Longer for Sale
BET Networks is no longer being shopped to third-party buyers, the new leadership regime at Paramount Skydance confirmed on Wednesday, August 13 as top executives gathered for a wide-ranging Q&A with journalists.
David Ellison, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the studio that he acquired last week, told reporters that BET and its content franchises would be a key part of the new regime’s streaming strategy. Ellison said the plan is to operate the company with its assets intact — that’s in contrast to the string of assets sales that Paramount Global and its predecessors have done in recent years. BET in particular had been shopped to a number of prospective buyers in private equity and prominent Black investors and stars including Tyler Perry.
Ellison said the concept of keeping Paramount Pictures, CBS and other assets together was a key point of his earliest discussions last year about buying the studio with former Paramount Global chair and majority shareholder Shari Redstone.
“We had this conversation with Shari when we had the first meeting, actually about the company. It is our intention is to keep the company together and invest in that lens,” Ellison said.
“We’re thinking about the cable network is not as declining linear assets that we need to spin them up or deal with somehow. We’re thinking about those brands that we have to redefine,” Ellison said. “Nickelodeon is also one of those. Fids and family is so important to the world and making sure that we’re doing the right thing for Nick and that whole cadre of content is critically important to us as well.”
Overall, Ellison and his top lieutenants sketched out a roadmap for the new Paramount Skydance team’s priorities that include increased investment in the Paramount Pictures studio, CBS and the Paramount+ streaming platform. Ellison and Paramount president Jeff Shell reiterated that the plan is to consolidate the company’s major streaming assets — subscription service Paramount+ and free ad-supported (FAST) platform Pluto TV — into one central service to save operating costs and to make Pluto TV a better driver of subscriptions for Paramount+.
Joining Ellison and Shell at the session were Andy Gordon, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer; George Cheeks, Chair of TV Media; Dana Goldberg, Co-Chair of Paramount Pictures and Chair of Paramount Television; Josh Greenstein, Co-Chair of Paramount Pictures and Vice Chair of Platforms; and Cindy Holland, Chair of Direct-to-Consumer.
Asked point blank if the programming budget for Paramount+ will increase to make the service competitive with larger rivals such as Disney+ and HBO Max, Ellison said yes. Cindy Holland, the Netflix alum who is leading streaming operations for the new Paramount, was also blunt when asked if she intends to commission made-for-streaming movies from the sibling studio. “Made for streaming movies are not a priority for me,” she said.
Gerry Cardinale, head of RedBird Capital which also had a big role in financing the $8 billion transaction, offered an expansive view of a team ready to spend what it takes to upgrade Paramount’s aging infrastructure. Cardinale complimented Ellison for being a savvy business executive in addition to having the creative ambition to own a movie studio, Big Three broadcast network and more.
“I’m betting my firm and my career on this deal. That should tell you guys one thing: We are coming, we are going to invest, and we’re going to be really sophisticated. This is not other people’s money,” Cardinale said. He even suggested that the Paramount Skydance ethos would not only change the corporate culture at Paramount and CBS but influence the broader industry.
The new regime is thinking about “How do we build the culture, not just for Paramount but for Hollywood,” Cardinale said. “I could not be more excited. Yes we are going to be investing a lot of money, and we’re going to show the great return on that investment.”
Among other highlights from the Q&A session:
“I’m here because I love movies,” Ellison said flatly when discussing his motivations for executing the complex acquisition that took more than a year to complete. The 42-year-old CEO described Sundays spent watching movies on VHS with his mother. “Our idea of a good time on Sunday was, we had 3,000 VHS movies, and Sunday was the one day we were kids that we could actually do whatever we wanted. And we would just binge all day long.”
Ellison also saluted the star that has had a long association with Paramount and Skydance when pressed about the status of the studio’s follow-up film to 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.
“We’re really proud and honored that in our partnership with Tom, we have made 10 movies together. We want to be in business with Tom for the foreseeable future,” Ellison said. "Top Gun cannot be a bigger priority. I want to be making movies with Tom and telling stories with Tom for as long as he wants to be doing it. There’s nobody who works harder and who loves movies and loves business more.”
Ellison was pressed about the new regime’s view on CBS News. The slog of closing the merger took a toll on the Eye’s news division as President Donald Trump waged war with a baseless $20 billion lawsuit against 60 Minutes over its Kamala Harris interview. A $16 million settlement with Trump paved the way for the FCC to approve the Paramount Global Skydance transaction.
CBS News and the journalism it produces “is something that is incredibly important to me that we couldn’t support more,” Ellison said. “It’s also the area of company that we want to invest in. For sure it’s a vital part of our democracy, and it’s an honor to be part of that organization.
Goldberg, co-chair of Paramount Pictures and Paramount Television, buttressed Ellison’s pledge to invest in strong family and YA-friendly movies and TV shows. “That’s a space we’re going to run toward,” she said.
Goldberg also emphasized that there will be a new approach to managing Paramount’s valuable Star Trek franchise. "Star Trek is absolutely a priority, and it’s priority across the company,” Goldberg said. “We’re not going to be siloed off so that there’s a conversation happening about television and another conversation” about film plans.
Ellison made a point of asserting that the new ownership group is aligned with the interests of Paramount Skydance’s common shareholders. The company is bracing for widespread layoffs that will be part of the company’s pledge to find $2 billion in savings post-merger.
“What we need to do to make sure we can run as efficiently possible can as a company. And then the other is where we need to invest for growth, for long term,” Ellison said. He noted that the Ellison family and RedBird own 70% of the economic interest in the company. “We’re the largest shareholders. So from that standpoint, we’re going to look at everything through a long-term value creation lens.”
Original source: Variety.
More from Deadline:
As Paramount Stock Surges, David Ellison Leans Into “Long Term” Approach In L.A. Meet & Greet; Praises CBS News As “Home Of Walter Cronkite”
“We’re in the business of long-term value creation,” David Ellison proclaimed Wednesday as the stock of his newly minted Paramount, A Skydance Corporation leaped double digits in the first week of his reign. As the majority shareholder in the new Paramount, with strong support from RedBird, Ellison went on to take the win, but also cautioned his plan was not to center on “any one day, we’re looking long term …create value for our shareholders.”
A week ago, a jargon-sprouting Ellison seemed less like a mogul in the making and more like the guy who just got handed the keys to his new Paramount ride. A guy more eager to take the legacy studio out for a spin than engage in strategy. Now, with a couple of well executed jabs and wins under his belt, the Skydance founder and his seasoned crew seem more like the masters of the Hollywood octagon.
Still, after a $16 million payout to Donald Trump in the dying days of Shari Redstone’s regime as the $8 billion Skydance takeover awaited FCC approval and POTUS’ suggestion that there was a big-bucks side deal, the fate and state of CBS News seemed a sore point.
But not to David Ellison.
“Being in the truth business, the trust business is incredibly important to me,” Ellison said today during a Los Angeles press conference, referring to CBS’ news division as “the home of Walter Cronkite. Repeating phrases he used at a New York huddle with media last week and as a small pink-themed anti-Trump protest was going on Wednesday outside the Paramount gates, Ellison said, “one of the things that is important of politicizing this company …we’re an entertainment company first. I’m not going to be in the position of making political comments about anything.”
And then he kinda did, at least more than most Tinseltown execs of late.
“It’s a vital part of our democracy and an honor to be a part of that institution,” he said in what clearly was messaged as a balm to those worried that a bending of the knee to Trump would be the new normal at the home of 60 Minutes.
Otherwise, a $7.7 billion UFC deal, ratings and political South Park TKOs, that leaping stock and some high-tech moves in the offing have the new Paramount looking like the smartest gang in town – at least until the promised billions in cuts and more hard choices are unveiled. To that, in their second sit-down with the press in a week, CEO Ellison and his top brass of company prez Jeff Shell, streaming leader Cindy Holland (who wasn’t at the NYC event), TV boss George Cheeks, film duo Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein (who also weren’t in the NYC presser last week) board member Gerry Cardinale and COO Andy Gordon today addressed the elephants and gold rings in the room.
Looking at the big picture and what may stay, be sold or be shuttered, Ellison kept it big with a pledge to not cut loose BET and “keep the company together and invest. Talking up the possibilities of AI, Ellison weaved away from any interest in buying TikTok, other studios and outlets as a method to turbo charge Paramount’s evolution. “We are going to get to the other side of the lake,” he noted of the troubled state of the industry, with an emphasis on a tech-driven and redundancy slicing “better experience for the user” on streaming platforms and more.
As expected, there was a standard amount of deflection Wednesday from Ellison and his top team, as well as heavy use of the term “excited.” According to Ellison, as a publicly traded company his Paramount wasn’t going to play the “rumor and speculation” game, but with rumors of a deeper relationship with longtime pal Tom Cruise, there certainly was a nice homage to the star and the upcoming Top Gun 3.
Cause that’s what studio bosses do.
###
From Deadline:
Paramount’s Movie Priorities Under New Skydance Owners Include ‘Top Gun 3’, ‘Star Trek’ & More; Execs Expound On Vision
Refresh for updates… Hours after the Skydance-Paramount merger closed last week, the new studio leadership group led by co-chairs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg (who also serve as Vice Chair of Platforms and Chair of Paramount Television, respectively) sent a loud message to the town that they meant business, closing a deal for the hot Timothée Chalamet-James Mangold package High Side, which Deadline first told you about.
It was a bold move and a bolt of energy that told the town Paramount 2.0 wasn’t looking to cut back on its upcoming feature slate, rather to make good on the promises made during merger talks. All of this was underscored this afternoon at a Los Angeles presser for the new Paramount.
“One of our biggest priorities is restoring Paramount as the No. 1 studio for filmmakers and talent in the world,” Paramount’s new CEO David Ellison said today at the media gathering. “Great filmmakers make great movies. For us, we’re going to strategically scale the amount of content for our streaming service as well as studios.”
The new entertainment conglom, which prevented a further collapsing of the motion pictures studios, even had the No. 1 exhibition boss, AMC’s Adam Aron, giddy on an earnings call Monday about the prospects for more movies on the big screen. Paramount in recent years has averaged 11 to 14 feature films. Greenstein during today’s presser said the goal is for 15 movies a year ASAP, followed by 20 movies a year in the near future.
“Paramount has been cash-hampered in recent years, which has caused them to greenlight fewer movies than they might have liked to. It appears to us that Skydance is cash-rich, and it would be our expectation that Skydance will be releasing more movies coming out of Paramount than Paramount has been releasing in recent years,” said Aron.
While High Side is still a ways off, the new top feature brass — which also includes President Don Granger — has plenty of projects to dive into as they get settled into their new office space on the Melrose lot. From high-profile franchises that have a been at the center of their release schedules for decades to new original stories featuring A-list talent, below is a list of where things stand on several properties that could help build the future slate.
Slate status report
While it might seem like a high jump for the new administration to succeed, particularly at a studio that lost Marvel to Disney in 2009, it’s only recently that Paramount saw some of its best grosses in more than a decade. In 2022, Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise’s highest-grossing movie ever (and technically Paramount’s too at a global level), rallied its annual grosses to $1.29 billion domestic, and $2.6 billion global. And Ellison’s Skydance had a tremendous amount to do with that success, having co-financed 50% of Top Gun: Maverick. No doubt making Top Gun 3 a reality will be a prime to-do for Greenstein, Goldberg and Granger.
Other musts for Greenstein and Goldberg as expressed this afternoon are four-quadrant family movies and R-rated comedies.
Speaking of co-financing, what happens now that the studio’s biggest co-financer is now the owner? Sources tell us that the plan is for the new Paramount on future big tentpoles — like Star Trek and Top Gun — is to keep the upside completely. Any slate co-financing is bound to happen on mid-sized budget movies that have risk potential.
Paramount president Jeff Shell, who was known as being a proponent of window crunching during his run at NBCUniversal, will continue to look at maximizing theatrical window value at the new Paramount. However, Cindy Holland, Chair of Direct to Consumer, emphasized, “Made for streaming movies aren’t a priority for me.”
The previous Brian Robbins-led Paramount regime leaves behind a trove of high-end talent production deals for the new C-suite to tap, i.e. Ryan Reynolds, Damien Chazelle, Jon Krasinski, the genre label 18hz led by Walter Hamada which has the movie Primate upcoming, and Smile producer Temple Hill.
While High Side marked the first major package the studio purchased, when it comes to the first films to go into production sources say its too early to know given that no greenlights have been given and the top brass is getting settled. That said, insiders say films like The Rescue with 1923‘s Brandon Sklenar in talks to star has a strong chance given the ties the project has to the current regime.
Another high priority for the Skydance-owned Paramount is Star Trek, with which Ellison has been involved since the 2013 sequel Star Trek Into Darkness.
“Star Trek is a priority across the company,” said Goldberg.
As of right now, Paramount is developing a film in the Star Trek franchise that features brand new characters; it has Andor director Toby Haynes on board to direct with Seth Grahame Smith writing and Simon Kinberg and J.J. Abrams producing. The studio has another installment with Captain Kirk, Spock and the rest of usual characters returning with Abrams producing and Steve Yockey writing.
One project the studio is sure to have an eye on: what to do with the next installment in the Top Gun franchise after the sequel blew away box office records? “Top Gun is a priority for us,” said Goldberg. Though it has not been formally announced, news broke in 2023 that Ehren Krueger had begun working on a script for the next film. Star and producer Tom Cruise has focused on the most recent Mission: Impossible films, so not much has moved forward. But now that Cruise is off those projects and looking for his next film, don’t be surprised if movement starts to pick up.
On the Transformers front, the franchise saw a rebooted live-action film, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts ($442M global box office), starring Anthony Ramos, in 2023 and an animated pic, Transformers One, bow last year. Prior to the sale, the studio had three separate scripts in development including one that sources say has Michael Bay returning to the franchise. Those scripts should be ready for new leadership to take a look at shortly.
The most recent high-profile franchise to get a release date for its next installment was A Quiet Place Part III, which the studio recently dated for summer 2027. John Krasinski is back to write and direct, though no cast is attached at this time.
Following the success of the animated pic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the studio moved fast on a sequel, dating the next film for September 17, 2027. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are back to produce, with Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears and Yashar Kassai directing. They also have a live-action version based on the graphic novel that has Hamada producing.
Other titles include the Olympics pic Winter Games starring Miles Teller and Hailee Steinfeld; a Ferris Bueller spinoff the studio had been developing pre-merger, titled Sam & Victor’s Day Off, most recently hiring Ben Zazove and Evan Turner for a rewrite; and What Kids Want, with Bill Holderman and Erin Simms attached to rewrite the script and direct.
There are a number of Skydance development titles coming over that include The Rescue; an untitled John Tuggle film starring Superman star David Corenswet; a film based on the Mike Hammer books starring Matthew McConaughey, with Nic Pizzolatto writing; and The Traveler, with Lee Isaac Chung attached to direct. While not confirmed at this time, it is fair to say that these Skydance priority pics will now become priority projects at Paramount.
Release schedule
Below is the current Paramount 2025-2026 release date schedule.
2025
Roofman – Oct. 10
Regretting You – Oct. 24
The Running Man – Nov. 7
SpongeBob Movie: The Search for Squarepants – Dec. 19
2026
Scream 7 – Feb. 27
Untitled Trey Parker/Matt Stone/Kendrick Lamar movie – March 20
Scary Movie – June 12
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie – July 24
The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender – Oct. 9
2027
Children of Blood & Bone – Jan. 15
The Angry Birds Movie 3 – Jan. 29
Untitled K-Pop movie – Feb. 12
Sonic the Hedgehog 4 – March 19
A Quiet Place III – July 9
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 2 – Sept. 17
###
From Deadline:
Cindy Holland On Programming Strategy For Paramount+: “We Want To Entertain All Audiences Around The World”
Almost five years after Cindy Holland exited her post as head of originals at Netflix, she is in charge of another major streamer in her role as Chair of Direct-to-Consumer for Paramount, overseeing the newly acquired company’s streaming platforms Paramount+ and Pluto TV.
During a press conference with Paramount’s new leadership following the Skydance merger held Wednesday on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles, Holland made her first public comments about the original strategy for Paramount+.
“We want to entertain all audiences around the world,” she said. “On Paramount+ today,, we have a really great foundation, which is the Taylor Sheridan universe. We also have incredible CBS next-day, live sports, a lot from the cable networks, franchises like Star Trek, so many series. We’re seeking to expand that and make sure that we’re offering programming for everybody not just occasionally, not just for the one thing they came to watch but ultimately and hopefully a year round and a daily habit for all audiences.”
One thing you want see on Paramount+: original movies. “Streaming movies are not a priority for me,” she said.
Paramount CEO David Ellison stressed that the budget for streaming originals will be increased but would not specify by how much.
“We’re starting at a great place on Paramount+, but one of the most important metric when it comes to streaming is engagement,” he said. “And to get the required engagement, we simply need to have more content. That means more stories, more series, more films, more sports to make sure that we can deliver those experiences to audience, to have them spend more time on our hub.”
As she looks to supply more series, Holland will look beyond Paramount, opening Paramount+ to third-party suppliers. Her focus will be types of shows that are not on CBS.
Paramount’s first major move for Paramount+ was not on in entertainment but on the live sports side with a seven-year, $7.7 billion UFC deal. It does fit the male skew of many of Paramount+’s most successful original series, like the Taylor Sheridan dramas or the Star Trek franchise. On the flip side, the CBS series, which stream on Paramount+ next day, have a female appeal.
Holland is known for her 18-year tenure at Netflix, including nine years as VP Original Content, during which she spearheaded the streamer’s rise to a leading original programming player with shows such as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, BoJack Horseman, Grace and Frankie, Narcos, Making a Murderer, Stranger Things, The Crown, Ozark, Big Mouth, Russian Doll and The Queen’s Gambit.
Holland’s team is led by two executives she had worked with at Netflix and more recently at Sister: Efrain Miron who will serve as EVP, Head of Content Strategy & Licensing, DTC, and Jane Wiseman, EVP, Head of Originals, DTC.
Paramount+ has been largely in a holding pattern over the past year with no new series greenlights except for existing franchises such as Sheridan’s Yellowstone and Showtime’s Dexter, and other series from Sheridan and his longtime collaborator David Glasser of 101 Studios.
###
From Deadline:
Paramount Leadership On Not Spinning Off Cable Networks, Holding Onto BET & Plans For BET+
There are three media companies that own a movie studio and a TV studio, a streamer and a substantial number of cable channels: NBCUniversal, Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount. The first two are both in the process of spinning off the majority — or all — of their ad-supported cable assets into new companies ready for private equity play. Do not expect Paramount to follow them under its new ownership following the acquisition by Skydance, the company’s leadership stressed at a press event Wednesday in Los Angeles.
“There’s no question it’s super challenging business,” said George Cheeks, Paramount’s Chair of TV Media division that encompasses all linear networks, CBS as well as Paramount Media Networks’ MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET, among others. “But, the cable group, the content group, has created these incredibly iconic franchises, and we’re all seeing the pay cable business shifting over to streaming. So there’ll be a lot of conversations about what iconic franchises we want to continue, shift maybe to streaming, etc. We’re seven days in, but I do feel like there’s a lot to preserve there. There’s a lot of great, iconic franchises.”
Following up on that, Paramount President Jeff Shell, who later gave a thumbs-up to his former company NBCUniversal’s decision to spin their cable assets into Versant, explained why Paramount won’t be doing that.
“Our cable portfolio is a little bit different than some of the other companies that are spinning and doing that stuff,” he said. “We have less of our economics of the company on cable because they decline so much. But the brands are much more defined, as George said. You look at a brand like BET, which is a pretty strong brand that’s going to be a pretty important building block of our of our streaming strategy. So we’re thinking about the cable networks not as declining linear assets that we need to spin off or deal with somehow. We’re thinking of them as brands that we have to redefine.”
Paramount COO Andy Gordon added Nickelodeon to the list, stressing that “kids and family is so important to the world, and making sure that we’re doing the right thing for Nick and that whole cadre of the content is critically important to us as well,” while Cindy Holland, Chair of Direct-to-Consumer, gave South Park as “a great example” of show which, 27 seasons in, continues to debut on cable network Comedy Central before moving to streaming, currently on Paramount+ globally.
Going back to Cheeks’ comment about “iconic [cable] franchises we want to continue, shift maybe to streaming,” South Park would be perfectly suited for such a shift given its popularity on streaming where it keeps reaching new generations of fans. (It explains the $1.5 billion fee the show just landed for a five-year Paramount+ deal.)
Underlining the cultural relevancy of the Paramount cable brands, Shell later noted that he had received more calls about MTV than anything else since he started working with Skydance and its CEO David Ellison on the Paramount acquisition months ago.
After Shell called BET “a pretty important building block of our of our streaming strategy,” Ellison confirmed that the network, which, along with VH1, BET Studios and BET+ had been shopped multiple times over the past several years, is not going anywhere as Ellison plans to keep the promise he gave Shari Redstone awhile back.
“We had this conversation with Shari when we had our first meeting actually about the company that our intention is to keep the company together and invest through the lines of a long-term commitment,” he said.
While the immediate goal is to get Paramount’s three streaming services — Paramount+, Pluto TV and BET+ — onto a single tech stack to improve efficiency, the integration could go further than that, Ellison told Deadline, with BET+ eventually becoming a tile on Paramount+ a possibility.
As the Paramount executives also stressed at a similar press event in New York last week, the goal will be to “reimagine” the company’s cable brands, though that is not one of the top three priorities for Paramount right off the bat, according to Shell. Those Day 1 priorities include rebuilding the Paramount content machine beyond CBS and Taylor Sheridan that he gave as examples of things that work really well — with the $7.7 billion UFC deal and Paramount Pictures’ aggressive bid for the James Mangold-Timothée Chalamet package High Side being part of that — as well as getting the cost cuts done and scaling up Paramount+.
In the meanwhile, “we have to balance the economic reality and desire to keep the brands alive until we can reimagine them,” Shell said.
That’s a challenge into itself as “we have to take a hard look at what kinds of content we can support in a linear model, and it’s not much,” he said, noting that MTV’s current slate of originals consists largely of Ridiculousness and the VMAs.
“That’s not good for the brand long-term; you don’t want the brands to die,” he said.
###
From Deadline:
Paramount’s New President Jeff Shell On Board With Theatrical & Windows; DTC Chair Cindy Holland Not Prioritizing Streaming Pics
Paramount‘s new President Jeff Shell might have experimented with windowing at NBCUniversal during the pandemic and after it, specifically dabbling in the controversial day-and-date strategy. However, the exec said Wednesday at the new conglomerate’s media event that he’s “100%” on board with theatrical.
“That’s what makes a movie a movie, and we’re all united in that,” Shell said, referring to his co-executives, CEO David Ellison, Motion Picture Co-Chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, and DTC Chair Cindy Holland, who were among the top brass sitting with him today on the dais.
“Do I believe you can maximize value in windows? Absolutely, and we’re going to be looking at our windows across each thing,” he added.
“I don’t think each movie is created equal. Different movies deserve different windows sometimes. I think we’re pretty united up here in terms of theatrical being critical and it has to be part of the equation, but we’re also going to be much more diligent about looking at the value,” said Shell.
As Peacock was coming into existence and the industry was emerging out of Covid, Shell, then CEO of NBCUniversal, put a downstream waterfall in place at Universal Pictures whereby theatrical films went to Premium VOD depending on their box office performance after 17 to 30 days, followed by an exclusive window on the streamer, and then a window on either Amazon’s Prime Video or Netflix (depending on whether the pic was animated or live-action). The model was a means of making money on a movie in its home entertainment window.
Meanwhile today, former Netflix Head of US Scripted TV Cindy Holland exclaimed, “Made-for-streaming movies are not a priority for me.”
Speaking separately with Deadline at today’s post-event lunch, Shell told us that when it comes to all streamers making money and talent receiving back-end, the industry is bound to go “back to the future” — meaning each streaming service would ultimately license to the other and not keep their content solely siloed to their service. That was Shell’s prognostication.
As he starts his new job at Paramount, he’ll be looking closely at hammering out solid pay-one deals for the studio. Currently, Paramount Pictures has a shared pay-one that’s exclusive to Paramount+ and Prime Video.
In underscoring the new Paramount’s commitment to cinema, Ellison said today, “The movies we make will be made for theatrical.”
###
From Deadline:
Jeff Shell On Future Of CBS’ 10 PM Hour & Cancellation Of ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’
Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount Global put former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell back in charge of a broadcast network. As President of the newly merged Paramount, he oversees the day-to-day operations of the conglomerate’s media businesses, including CBS.
Just before he exited NBCU in April 2023, Shell had been actively exploring getting NBC out of the 10 p.m. hour, the part of primetime most impacted by people’s changing viewing habits that has them migrating to streaming in large numbers.
At a Los Angeles press event Wednesday with top Paramount executives, Deadline asked Shell about his plans for CBS’ 10 p.m. hour just as we did at the last NBCU press event before his departure.
“Same question, different answer,” Shell said, noting that CBS’ 10 p.m. is “healthier.”
Admitting the challenges broadcast networks face at 10 p.m., he noted that programs scheduled in the hour are judged on how they perform both on the linear network and on streaming, adding that CBS’ 10 p.m. dramas are doing well in both departments, so cutting the hour is not on the table right now.
Blue Bloods is a prime example of a CBS drama that thrived in that time slot for its 14-season run, something CBS is looking to replicate with the upcoming offshoot Boston Blue, scheduled in the same Friday 10 p.m. time period. Comedic crime drama Elsbeth, which currently occupies the Thursday 10 p.m. hour, has been among CBS’ best multi-platform performers.
“The 10 p.m. dramas are good business for CBS from a performance and P&L standpoint, as well as the value they bring to Paramount+,” George Cheeks, who continues to oversee CBS as Chair of TV Media for Paramount, told Deadline in May. “These dramas also provide a powerful lead-in for late local news for our affiliates and O&O’s.”
As Deadline reported at the time, Shell reportedly did bring up the idea about dropping the 10 p.m. hour with CBS executives earlier this year, but the topic was put to rest after he was presented with detailed arguments — and data — why programming the time slot makes financial sense for the network.
“Eventually, that could happen, for sure,” Shell told Deadline today about trimming CBS’ primetime to two hours, echoing comments he had made back at NBCU about “reallocating resources” toward growth areas of the company. But he reiterated that CBS will continue to program the 10 p.m. hour for the time being.
The problem with late-night
Just a couple of weeks before Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount Global was completed, CBS announced that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end in May 2026, with The Late Show franchise canceled altogether.
While Shell said he was not involved in the decision as it happened ahead of the transaction, he supported it and called it the right move as late-night in its current form is not working.
“Late-night has a huge problem right now,” he said.
Shell noted that Colbert’s viewership is on par with that for his Late Show predecessor, David Letterman, meaning that it remains popular and culturally relevant.
“The problem is that 80% of the viewership and growing is on YouTube,” he said.
With YouTube paying “45 cents on the dollar,” “you can’t make it work economically anymore,” Shell added.
###
Shop Paramount+ at ParamountShop.com
Stream a Mountain of Entertainment, including your Nickelodeon favorites on Paramount+! Try it FREE at ParamountPlus.com!
Originally published: August 14, 2025.
H/T: TradingView, What's on Paramount+.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Have your say by leaving a comment below! NickALive! welcomes friendly and respectful comments. Please familiarize with the blog's Comment Policy before commenting. All new comments are moderated and won't appear straight away.