dex14

And there it is...

https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wa...ks-1235847958/

Alan Smithee

Then merge with Universal and bought out by Disney to create ClusterFuck Entertainment, International!

fujishig

The one thing I wouldn't ever have imagined happening is Cartoon Network and Nick sharing the same roof, but under Zaslav that childhood dream probably means one getting shuttered or something worse. Ugh.

Deftones

Combining would create a company with $58B in debt. Oooof

GoldenJCJ

A few more billion and Elon Musk will want to buy it.

fujishig

We haven't seen this kind of synergy since Sears and Kmart!

All joking aside, it's amazing how much value Paramount has lost in such a short amount of time.

DJariya

Most people think that movie studios are unlimited ATM machines. But, last I checked, Paramount/CBS was crippled with debt and their stock price has dropped significantly. Even Top Gun Maverick wasn't going to save them from being in the red.

I don't know about this potential merger. And it's going to cost thousands of jobs if it does happen.

RocShemp

Whatever happened to the rumours that Universal was looking to buy Warner Bros?

stingermck

Is any studio making money anymore? Studios without streaming services to support, maybe?

Noonan

That's my thought. Feels like we're one debtor pulling out away from the whole media complex crashing to the ground.

Giantrobo

Great, whatever. So what's in it FOR ME?

lwhy?

I think Netflix is the only one making money (1.7 billion dollars in profit in Q3 of 2023). ESPN makes some money for Disney, but the parks are probably what really helps to keep them afloat right now. The best way they made money was through the multi-channel cable bundles and that's came to an end. They spend a lot of money on marketing the streaming services to combat subscriber churn.

TomOpus

Another app. Maybe. If they don't combine existing apps.

Toddarino

I can’t wait for Ethan Hunt to join the DCEU.

PhantomStranger

Each studio keeps hoping Apple or Amazon will bail them out of debt by buying them out. This is a last resort in a desperate bid for a relevant streaming service. Hollywood studios are slow, lumbering beasts these days. The easy money days are over as foreign markets are less lucrative and audiences aren't always buying what Hollywood is selling.

If it has reached this stage, both studios are in bad shape.

DJariya

Some of you may or may not know that Paramount Global, who owns Paramount pictures, CBS and some other Viacom entities is crippled with debt and has been rumored to be on the market for a possible sale awhile now.

Paramount + while getting better in my opinion has been operating in the red since launch.

Thought it would be better to compile everything together here.


David Ellison, who owns Skydance made an offer last week: https://deadline.com/2024/01/skydanc...al-1235804196/

and Byron Allen’s corporation has made an offer.



and of course there were the Paramount and WBD merger talks rumor from December: https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wa...ks-1235847958/


and Paramount is expected to announce massive layoffs any day now: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/25/para...s-layoffs.html


What a mess. Top Gun Maverick apparently couldn’t save this company.

Brian T

Honestly, I never thought I'd see the day when the Byron Allen from the last season or two of TV's REAL PEOPLE back in the 80's would be an entertainment mogul. His TV shows over the last twenty years or more — and they are legion — are living definition of disposable filler.

Decker

I didn’t know any of that. I do kind of remember him from Real People. What are his shows?

Brian T

He’s had something like eight of those half hour ‘Judge’ shows (America’s Judge with Judge Ross - 500+ episodes, Justice For All with Judge Cristina - 200+ episodes, and so on) that are all still running as far as I can tell, and all of which use nobody actors to portray supposedly real life cases.

All of his stuff is syndicated, and fills in weak time slots super cheap.

Over the holidays at relatives’ houses I caught late-night reruns of something he hosted/created several years ago called Comics Unleashed, on which he holds court over four real comics and sets each one up to do a bit. Sometimes the bits were funny, but Allen was so ridiculous running out and pumping his fists at the opener to an audience that probably didn’t know who he was, and lobbing dumb questions that each comic just happened to have a pre-written anecdote about from their routines.

That show led to the game show Funny You Should Ask, which was kind of a modern take on the old Match Game show, but with often fading comedians instead of has-been actors and sitcom regulars of the 70’s.

He’s produced barely-seen gossip talk shows (Gossip Queens - 68 episodes), car talk shows (Cars TV - 187 episodes), celebrity ass-kiss shows (Entertainers With Byron Allen - 174 episodes [this was his first production, filmed on the cheap at press junkets]), sports shows (like The American Athlete - 154 episodes), pet shows (like Pets TV - 45 episodes), travel shows (MyDestination TV - 139 episodes) and on and on. He’s literally been a factory for the blandest daytime and super-late-night bargain knockoff programming for over 20 years. Some stuff he hosts, but most of it he produces.

And most people have probably never seen any of it unless they’re channel hopping at the worst hours (like me, apparently), and more likely on cable/satellite because that’s where there’s been a drain of viewers to streaming, so those channels are desperate for cheap content to pad the schedules in between all of the better known reality shit they’re playing in perpetuity nowadays.

This MOR fodder eventually got him into movies, where his company Entertainment Studios eventually produced poorly-received fare like FRIEND REQUEST, HURRICANE HEIST, ARCTIC DOGS, REPLICAS, and the surprisingly not-bad HOSTILES and both 47 METERS DOWN movies.

I guess all of this, plus the various networks and stations he’s acquired over the years, has made him a billionaire with enough leverage to buy Paramount. Go figure. (I think he previously tried to buy ABC, or something like that).

Sarah Purcell and the late Skip Stephenson would undoubtedly be proud that it all began here. Or something:

tanman

Skydance is in a position to buy out Paramount?! Wow, that is certainly surprising.

Rob V

Feels like eventually all these streaming services are going to merge into a single entity and become.... cable.

Brian T

I saw an interview with Allen (unrelated to this) in which he talked about all of his network and station acquisitions in the age of streaming and how the big driver for him was still advertising, and how companies needed outlets to hawk their products (which goes without saying, obviously). And seeing how so many streamers have been forced to put ad breaks into the mix, it’s not hard to see that the once-touted utopia of endless ad-free, subscriber-funded content just wasn’t sustainable, and has indeed become cable, an arena Allen, among others, has been flooding with low-cost ad-filled ‘content’ for decades.

IBJoel

I don't think DVDTalk had so much of an issue with ads, but FlyerTalk had a TON of ad complaints and they always asked us why we couldn't set up an ad-free premium membership. It would have needed to be priced at $30/month

PhantomStranger

I suspect the eventual destination is for the few remaining surviving streaming services...to merge with telecommunication/tech entities. Verizon Disney, that sort of thing. It's all up to whether the Federal Government will allow that possibility.

Deftones

We had that with ATT and WB and look how that turned out...