Paramount has a new boss and leadership team following the merge with Skydance Corporation. David Ellison, the 42-year-old son of the billionaire co-founder of Oracle Corporation, takes over as chief executive of Paramount, which includes Paramount+, Pluto TV, the CBS network, pay television networks including MTV and Nickelodeon, and somewhere among them the British public service broadcaster Channel 5, now known simply as 5. How that fits in is unclear.
David Ellison said that they will transform Paramount Skydance into a “tech-forward company that blends the creative heart of Hollywood with the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley.”
“We have the resources, talent and strategic clarity we need to build the world’s next generation media and entertainment company,” he said. “At the same time, we recognize that sustained, profitable growth is not achievable in today’s relentlessly dynamic market without far-reaching changes that will make us a leaner, faster, smarter, and more agile company.”
Paramount will be organised into three business units: studios, direct-to-consumer, and television media, where he said: “our challenge is to reinvent our portfolio of brands for a non-linear world.”
The new Paramount is already planning cost savings of $2 billion that will inevitably involve painful cuts through what they call “synergies”.
The change in ownership of 5 has taken place with barely a mention. The future of the broadcaster is uncertain. The channel has found a niche providing programming that is comfortably British and would not look out of place on the BBC, like a remake of All Creatures Great and Small, attracting a loyal older audience of traditional television viewers, with a growing sense of its own identity. It is even planning to revive the Play for Today idea of a single drama. It is unclear how that will sit with the producers of Top Gun and Star Trek.
Some consolidation among broadcasters in the United Kingdom seems inevitable. What is less certain is whether Channel 5 will be up for sale, be used as a vehicle to make acquisitions, or end up as a shop window to promote Paramount+.