114.8.16(六)Samedi 16 août 2025
For the past decade, Paramount has been
outgunned in the streaming wars, trying to keep up as tens of millions of
people migrated from movie theaters and cable television and toward on-demand entertainment
via the internet.
Now the company, which owns CBS, Comedy
Central, MTV and the movie studio behind ‘’The Godfather” and “Top Gum,” will
finally get much-needed reinforcements.
The $8 billion merger of Paramount and
media company Skydance closed early Thursday morning, catapulting new power
players to the top of Hollywood and ending a tortuous process that had lasted
well over a year. Gone are the Redstones, whose family controlled CBS and
Paramount Pictures for decades. In are the Ellisons. Skydance is controlled by David
Ellison, a movie producer and the founder of the company who is the son of
Larry Ellison, the tech titan and one of the world’s richest men.
The new owners give Paramount stronger
financial wherewithal and have ushered in a set of new executives to call the
shots. The result, if Skydance has its way, will be a reinvigorated competitor
in an entertainment landscape that has mostly settled into place—Netflix and YouTube
at the top, Disney and Amazon in the second tier, and everybody else scrambling
for steady profitability, relevance or survival.
The merger could also usher in a new period
of dealmaking, including future corporate mergers or streaming bundles.
The challenges, however, for the newly
combined company, officially called Paramount, a Skydance Corp., are significant.
Paramount derives much of its revenue from its cable networks, which are in
free fall. The company’s new leaders said they want to find more than $2 billion
in cost savings, a considerable challenge given that the company has gone through
numerous rounds of job cuts and budget reductions. And the coming disruption from
artificial intelligence raises a new series of challenges.
Much of the entertainment industry is breathing a sign of relief that the merger is finished. Paramount will remain a stand-alone studio, and the Ellisons could potentially offer the promise of greater investment in a period when production has slowed sharply and the Peak TV era is alone gone. (John Koblin and Benjamin Mullin)
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