Arrayed casually on a line of stools on a low stage at Paramount Global’s Times Square headquarters, new leadership of post-merger Paramount greeted a few dozen journalists and opened the floor, immediately bombarded with questions about Donald Trump’s PSAs (fact or fiction?), the CBS ombusdman, Late night TV, looming layoffs and the future of linear television as two of its largest rivals split in half.
Chairman-CEO David Ellison mostly skirted political questions but did say the company “will be a fierce defender of talent and always has been.” The merger closed only hours ago, he noted a number of times.
He was flanked by President Jeff Shell, Andy Gordon, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer Andy Gordon, George Cheeks, Chair of TV Media and Gerry Cardinale, founder of RedBird Capital, a big Skydance investor and partner in the Paramount deal.
The combined company is looking for $2 billion in synergies and that will requires layoffs. But Shell acknowledged you can’t “cut a company into growth” and promised they would not be a slow drip and would be hand in hand with significant investments in growing businesses.
Gordon promised the new Paramount will have specific strategy announcements by the next quarterly earnings call in November.
There are no plans to split off linear television since CBS is doing well and Par’s cable assets are a smaller percentage of its overall business now than at Comcast or WBD. “Not all linear television is created equal,” said Shell.
Cheeks reiterated that ending The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was a purely financial decision with timing driven by the limitations of the schedule.
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