At the new Paramount following the completion of the Skydance acquisition, the scripted production operations overseen by departing Paramount Global co-CEO Chris McCarthy are being folded into the newly formed Paramount TV Studios, overseen by Dana Goldberg, Co-Chair of Paramount Pictures and Chair of Paramount Television, and expected to be run by Skydance TV President Nick Thunell. With one exception, South Park, which is produced by South Park Digital Studios, a joint venture co-owned by Paramount and series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Park County. It will be part of the portfolio of fellow Paramount Global co-CEO George Cheeks, who has been named Chair of TV Media at post-merger Paramount.
In his role as president of Showtime/MTV Entertainment, McCarthy led both MTV Entertainment Studios, which produces series for streaming, and Paramount’s side of the South Park studio. In one of his last acts at Paramount, he worked on Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s new five-year overall deal with Paramount Global and South Park Digital Studios’s exclusive five-year license deal with Paramount+.
In his new role as Chair of TV Media, Cheeks will oversee Paramount’s broadcast and cable television businesses, including the CBS Network, CBS News & Stations, CBS Sports, and CBS Studios — as well as BET Studios, Nickelodeon TV Studios, See It Now Studios, and Paramount Media Networks, home to MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and BET.
The scripted TV production split has been done based on destination, with the units under Cheeks making shows largely for linear networks while the one under Goldberg catering primarily to streaming. While South Park is a streaming juggernaut — explaining the $1.5M Paramount+ just committed for exclusive rights over the next five years — South Park‘s original run is on a linear cable network, Comedy Central, which is why its studio fell with Cheeks, keeping the network and production side of the animated series under the same top executive.
With that, Cheeks will be adding two shows that have been taking shots at President Donald Trump, South Park and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show (especially the Monday edition with Jon Stewart), to his ongoing oversight of the departing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which also has been critical of the President, and CBS News, which was sued by Trump, leading to the recent controversial settlement that was followed quickly by FCC’s approval of the Skydance-Paramount merger.
