1. Paramount’s Brave New World
David Ellison has had his victory lap and now it’s time to govern. In the next month or so we will see his vision for Paramount take shape and whether it leaves the legacy media company in better, worse or similar shape is an open question.
To date, there have been four big developments:
- Taylor Sheridan, creator of the Yellowstone franchise, departed for NBCU, having reportedly felt dissed by Ellison.
- Bari Weiss was hired to take over CBS News, much to the dismay of Bluesky, where she is considered the living embodiment of Satan on Earth. (Though to be fair, the Rumble crowd doesn’t view her any more favorably.)
- Ellison announced he’d be firing around one thousand workers this week—we will soon know which departments have been most impacted.
- Ellison has made an offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery—all of Warner Bros. Discovery—three times, only to be rejected each time.
That is likely just the start.
Ellison has been big on discussing the infrastructure issues, the fact that Paramount has multiple tech stacks and the inefficiency of maintaining them.
Which I am sure is true, it’s just not clear how fixing that problem will make Paramount able to compete with Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.
Why It Matters
Like most legacy companies, Paramount is a Frankenstein creation of sorts, made up of multiple once-successful companies whose corporate cultures and missions rarely lined up.
So creating a new Paramount culture is not a bad thing.
It’s sort of what newly formed nation-states like Germany and Italy had to do in the 1800s, as they tried to combine a range of loosely related formerly independent kingdoms together and forge a national identity, one that played to everyone’s strengths, a process that happened in fits and starts and benefitted from a strong popular ruler.
(We love a good historical analogy at TVREV.)
The issue here is that Ellison has a steep learning curve, coming as he does from the movie and PE worlds.
He’s also coming in as a conquering foreigner, not a native-born hero.
So winning over the populace will not be so easy.
There’s a fine line between “moving fast and breaking things” and “moving fast and screwing things up permanently."
Take Sheridan.
His franchises have been a boon for Paramount, but beyond that, they’ve helped to define Paramount+ as being a service that caters to a more mainstream (the NYT referred to it as “Red State”) audience than say HBO or Hulu.
So his departure means that Paramount will need to find a different way to define both itself and its audience.
It’s possible that Sheridan represented a direction that Ellison did not find compatible with the rest of the CBS/Viacom legacy and the move was purposeful.
Though it is more likely that he just misjudged the situation and/or was poorly advised.
Hiring Weiss is a more interesting move.
She is largely unknown outside of certain politically-engaged media circles, and to those on the outside, the griping about her mostly sounds like professional jealousy mixed in with no small amount of antisemitism. (Having prominently resigned from the New York Times for being the target of The Woke, she went on to start a Substack that became the very successful The Free Press, the website that Ellison bought for something allegedly close to $100 mil.)
What Weiss may be able to do is bring attention to CBS News (both good and bad) at a time when people have largely grown tired of mainstream news and skeptical as to its capacity for truth-telling.
That’s a tall order though.
Axios manages to maintain an air of impartiality largely by not saying all that much: their “smart brevity” articles don’t go into a whole lot of detail, thus making it easy for them to avoid seeming like they’re taking a stand.
They’re also a print publication and that is a very different animal than TV.
Which is the other question about Weiss.
Having only worked in print journalism, does she have the institutional knowledge necessary to run an international news organization?
Maybe.
It really depends on how much she is willing to admit what she doesn’t know and rely on people who do.
Regardless, people who don’t normally care about CBS and shows like 60 Minutes are going to start paying attention, if only to hate watch,
Which is still a step in the right direction.
As I have noted before, CBS News, with its Walter Cronkite-steeped history and deep local coverage may be able to step into the gap between the clearly partisan cable news networks in a way CNN can only dream of.
It’s just that I don’t think it’s particularly likely. At a time when we get all the news we want updated as often as we want, TV news seems a lot like an ancient artifact.
The firing workers thing is sad. It disrupts lives. Creates bad PR. And so much of mass firings like that is political. In the internal politics sense. Not the national one.
I suspect it is necessary though.
Big companies like Paramount, especially big merged companies, tend to have a lot of overlap and a lot of duplicated roles.
So here’s hoping that Ellison does this in a humane manner.
The final bit to analyze is the bit about buying Warner Bros. Discovery.
Especially given that the proprietor of the under construction White House has Truthed that he is in favor of such a deal.
As am I.
But for very different reasons.
You see, I think that any and all combinations of legacy media brands is a good thing. For their shareholders, anyway.
Because eventually, they will all be swallowed up by the big tech companies. And whether they are still solo entities or combo ones will not matter.
Though they are likely to fetch more money as a combo offering.
Hence shareholders.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are David Ellison or anyone else running the show at Paramount, you’ll need to accept that being swallowed up by Big Tech is your ultimate fate.
That absent some dinosaur-meteor level event, you’re likely to wind up as Google chow.
And so you need to plan for that.
In the interim, treat your staffers kindly, especially when you’re firing them. Realize that the world has changed and creators aren’t going away and figure out how to incorporate them into your world view, because you will, in fact, be far more valuable to Google or Amazon if you are able to do so.
Finally, put your efforts towards making more good shows.
Because at the end of the day, a bakery is judged on its bread and cakes.
Not its ovens and display cases.
2. Tubi Hearts Creators
While many media companies are making noise about working with creators, Tubi is actually doing something about it.
In August, they announced that they were bringing in content from a number of prominent creators, including MrBeast, Alan Chikin Chow, Jomboy Media, Celina Myers and Steven He.
This week, they announced a deal with Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat to produce four feature-length films featuring creators from the company.
At one level, this is not, as I have noted before, all that different than studios creating sitcoms around up and coming comedians.
Sometimes you get Seinfeld. Mostly you don’t.
Which is a risk it seems Tubi is willing to take as it seeks to differentiate itself from the mass of other FAST services, something it’s been doing an excellent job of, even if it doesn’t actually run many linear channels, relying on AVOD instead.
Why It Matters
There is no guarantee that any of these shows will be successful on TV. But there never is.
For Tubi, it’s a smart bet, as the creators come with a built-in international fan base of millions of users, many (most?) of whom rarely watch actual TV.
So if they can get them to come to the platform, even if it’s just once or twice, the hope is that they might find something on Tubi that they’ll come back for.
That’s the worst case scenario.
The best case is that they’ll stay, they’ll bring their friends and Tubi will become the “cool” FAST service.
The truth though is we’ve been here before.
There have been prior attempts to make TV series with creators.
Back in 2014—eleven years ago—Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines created a series called “Royal Crush” with Awesomeness TV, a noted MCN back when those three letters meant something, featuring creators like Meghan Rosette, Oli White, and Arden Rose.
It ran for three seasons, and the first episode has 7.8MM views, which is not nothing.
It’s also part of the great TV-ification of YouTube, which appears to be gathering steam: Janko Roettgers reports today that YouTube is redoing its TV app to look more like Netflix, with series organized in an orderly tile-based fashion to encourage binge viewing and the like.
Which I suspect will encourage far more people to view YouTube as an alternative to traditional TV, interface being one of the more underappreciated aspects of the TV viewing experience.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are Tubi, keep on keeping on. Bringing on creator content is a very wise move for all the reasons stated above. You are still just looking for awareness with much of that young audience, and this is a very smart way to do so.
If you are one of the other FAST services, be like Tubi. I mean it’s not like there is a shortage of creators out there. Most all of whom would love to be on TV.
If you are YouTube and Janko is correct (he almost always is), then VERY well done. A TV-like interface will help to silence many of your industry critics, but, more than that, it will make it easy for older audiences to decide YouTube is one of their options when they turn on their TV.
Being set in their ways and all that, these things matter.
Good luck!
Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at the consulting firm TV[R]EV. He is the author of the best-selling industry primer, Over The Top: How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk frequently speaks about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.
Week in Review is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.