{"id":68046,"date":"2025-08-14T03:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T03:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/68046\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T03:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T03:29:07","slug":"paramount-leadership-on-not-spinning-off-cable-networks-bet-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/68046\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Leadership On Not Spinning Off Cable Networks, BET & BET+"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere 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<\/a>. The first two are both in the process of spinning off the majority \u2014 or all \u2014 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<\/a>, the company\u2019s leadership stressed at a press event Wednesday in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s no question it\u2019s super challenging business,\u201d said George Cheeks<\/a>, Paramount\u2019s Chair of TV Media division that encompasses all linear networks, CBS as well as Paramount Media Networks\u2019 MTV<\/a>, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET<\/a>, among others. \u201cBut, the cable group, the content group, has created these incredibly iconic franchises, and we\u2019re all seeing the pay cable business shifting over to streaming. So there\u2019ll be a lot of conversations about what iconic franchises we want to continue, shift maybe to streaming, etc. We\u2019re seven days in, but I do feel like there\u2019s a lot to preserve there. There\u2019s a lot of great, iconic franchises.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing up on that, Paramount President Jeff Shell<\/a>, who later gave a thumbs-up to his former company NBCUniversal\u2019s decision to spin their cable assets into Versant<\/a>, explained why Paramount won\u2019t be doing that.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur cable portfolio is a little bit different than some of the other companies that are spinning and doing that stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cWe 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\u2019s going to be a pretty important building block of our of our streaming strategy. So we\u2019re thinking about the cable networks not as declining linear assets that we need to spin off or deal with somehow. We\u2019re thinking of them as brands that we have to redefine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount COO Andy Gordon added Nickelodeon to the list, stressing that \u201ckids and family is so important to the world, and making sure that we\u2019re doing the right thing for Nick and that whole cadre of the content is critically important to us as well,\u201d while Cindy Holland, Chair of Direct-to-Consumer, gave South Park as \u201ca great example\u201d of show which, 27 seasons in, continues to debut on cable network Comedy Central before moving to streaming, currently on Paramount+ globally.<\/p>\n

\n\tGoing back to Cheeks\u2019 comment about \u201ciconic [cable] franchises we want to continue, shift maybe to streaming,\u201d 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<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n\tUnderlining 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<\/a> on the Paramount acquisition months ago.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Shell called BET \u201ca pretty important building block of our of our streaming strategy,\u201d Ellison confirmed that the network, which, along with VH1, BET Studios and BET+<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the immediate goal is to get Paramount\u2019s three streaming services \u2014 Paramount+, Pluto TV and BET+ \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the Paramount executives also stressed at a similar press event in New York last week, the goal will be to \u201creimagine\u201d the company\u2019s 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 \u2014 with the $7.7 billion UFC deal<\/a> and Paramount Pictures\u2019 aggressive bid<\/a> for the James Mangold-Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet package High Side being part of that \u2014 as well as getting the cost cuts done and scaling up Paramount+.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the meanwhile, \u201cwe have to balance the economic reality and desire to keep the brands alive until we can reimagine them,\u201d Shell said. <\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s a challenge into itself as \u201cwe have to take a hard look at what kinds of content we can support in a linear model, and it\u2019s not much,\u201d he said, noting that MTV\u2019s current slate of originals consists largely of Ridiculousness and the VMAs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s not good for the brand long-term; you don\u2019t want the brands to die,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are three media companies that own a movie studio and a TV studio, a streamer and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1875,49,48,18027,75,42887,42888,18471,9489,348],"class_list":{"0":"post-68046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bet","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-david-ellison","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-george-cheeks","14":"tag-jeff-shell","15":"tag-mtv","16":"tag-paramount","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}