Paramount CBS, the owner of Network 10 in Australia, has finally come under the control of television and movie production company Skydance which has a plan to revive the old school media company.
The $US8 billion deal will mean big changes under the leadership of David Ellison, the founder of Skydance, a movie producer and the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
Seeking to exceed the already stated $2 billion in efficiencies, he plans to use savings to build the streaming businesses and upgrade the company’s technology systems.
“The coming months will be defined by a series of focused efforts to reengineer how our company operates, produces its creative content and goes to market,” Ellison said.
He wants what he describes as a tech-forward company that blends the creative heart of Hollywood with the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley.
The merged group will be split into three divisions: Studios, Direct-to-Consumer and TV Media.
“On the TV Media side, our challenge is to reinvent our portfolio of brands for a non-linear world,” Ellison said in a letter to staff.
“We will redirect resources toward what matters most: delivering a greater volume of high-quality films, television series, sports, news and games to audiences worldwide.”
The new wave of restructuring is expected to mean more headcount cuts on top of those leading to the sale.
In the latest results from Paramount, the June quarter, the company posted a 1% rise in revenue to $US6.85 billion.
TV Media fell 6% to $4.01 billion, including a 4% drop in advertising revenue.
Revenue at Direct-to-Consumer, which includes streaming platform Paramount+, increased 15% to $2.16 billion. Revenue at Paramount+, with 77.7 million subscribers, grew 23%.
The Paramount sale was given approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US, with unusual conditions. The new owner had to promise to end “discriminatory” DEI policies, to route out bias in news reporting and appoint an ombudsman.
Paramount last month agreed to pay $US16 million, destined for the Trump Presidential Library, to settle a lawsuit by president Trump who alleged the CBS News program 60 Minutes had edited an interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris to make her look better.
Critics also point to the axing of CBS’s The Late Show whose host Stephen Colbert has been a frequent critic of the Trump regime. The Writers Guild of America described the decision as a “bribe” to keep in with Washington.
One of three FCC commissioners, Anna M. Gomez, after the deal was approved two for and one against, said the American public will ultimately pay the price for the “reckless” approval.
“In an unprecedented move, this once-independent FCC used its vast power to pressure Paramount to broker a private legal settlement and further erode press freedom,” she said.
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