The new regime at Paramount Skydance spent part of their first week after closing the $8 billion transaction making the rounds with media business journalists in New York and Los Angeles. CEO David Ellison and others fielded questions in separate sessions at Paramount’s Times Square digs and on the Paramount studio lot in Hollywood.
So what were the vibes? What was the vision articulated by Ellison, Paramount president Jeff Shell and the key lieutenants running film, TV and streaming? In today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, host Cynthia Littleton and Variety business editor Todd Spangler compare notes on the New York and L.A. Q&A sessions.
“The messaging that we came away with was David Ellison saying, look, we’re going to bring in some Silicon Valley expertise, which this company has been lacking, but we’re going to remain true to our creative roots or Paramount’s creative roots,” Spangler observes. “And then you had Gerry Cardinale who’s a big investor and head of RedBird Capital saying ‘Look, we are professional managers. We’re coming in and we’re going to manage these assets better than they had before.’ ”
In Los Angeles, the message was very similar with an emphasis on the resources that the new owners stand ready to pour into infrastructure, technology and content.
“I spoke to Gerry at our event and he was very emphatic. ‘We will invest,’ ” Littleton notes. “They all pledged to significantly up the investment to make Paramount+ a contender alongside Disney+ and HBO Max. You and I both know that’s gonna take a lot of money if they’re serious about that.”
Another area of focus for the merged company will be family friendly content. That’s a natural for the company that owns Nickelodeon, which remains a content engine for the company even as the linear cable business slides.
“Another thing that stood out to me from our questioning was that David Ellison and Dana Goldberg, who is going to have a very big hand in steering film and TV there, both made a very strong pledge to support family programming, programming for children,” Littleton says. “Obviously, they have Nickelodeon, they have a studio that does family features, but they both emphasize that this is a market that is very important to them. David Ellison has two young daughters at home, and that is going to influence the way he pilots this company, no doubt.”
Also in the episode, Jenelle Riley, Variety‘s deputy awards and features editor, tells the backstory of Variety‘s 10 Storytellers to Watch feature. Riley says the looser definition of “storyteller” made for an eclectic mix of contenders to consider.
“We had a lot of discussions about what is a storyteller? And how it encompasses so much and things you might not have normally thought of,” Riley says. “This year, we have Heather Christian who is a theater artist who writes books, music, lyrics, also performs, does scores for Adult Swim programs.”
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