Paramount Global: Sad Last Days!

If all these studios were struggling why the hell were they holding out during the strike?

Doesn't Paramount have Star Trek and Mission Impossible? Wouldn't call that nothing. Those are underutilized franchises with potential.

I believe it allowed them to trim a lot of fat in terms of content deals, like a crash diet.

If your franchises are Star Trek and Mission Impossible, IP which is so old that it was originally produced by DesiLu, you are in deep shit.

If it weren't for me there wouldn't be any Paramount Studios.

True, Gloria.

It's so weird to see glamor studios like MGM and Paramount losing to the likes of Universal, home of B-movie and Deanna Durbin.

…or the company with the rodent as the mascot.

Interestingly following the expected Comcast acquisition of Warner Bros., Paramount would be the last of the big five left. (What is MGM now has almost no link to the old studio.)

Someone bring back RKO!

Republic stands forever.

Hal Roach Studios, now and forever!

Bidding war to dismantle Paramount Global!

Layoffs! Shari has decided to sell!

Apollo just wants Paramount. All other considerations secondary. Crew expendable.

By Jessica Toonkel

(Wall Street Journal) -- Private-equity firm Apollo Global Management has made an $11 billion offer to buy Paramount Global's film and TV studio, according to people familiar with the situation.

The bid comes as an independent committee of the company's directors is reviewing another offer from Skydance Media to merge with all of Paramount, which also owns CBS, Nickelodeon and a number of other cable networks.

Paramount's studio has long been an acquisition target. Netflix was among a number of companies that expressed interest over the past few years in buying the studio, which is behind such movies as "Top Gun: Maverick" and "A Quiet Place," according to other people familiar with the situation.

But Paramount Global's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, and other board members have resisted selling the studio, which they consider the crown jewel of the company. Redstone, who is open to selling Paramount in its entirety, would have to agree to breaking up the company and allowing a sale of the studio to proceed.

Apollo's offer is more than the entire market capitalization of Paramount Global, which is currently around $7.7 billion. While the studio business is attractive, given its vast library and the demand for fresh programming in the streaming industry, Paramount's TV networks are declining as the cable business contracts.

Bloomberg and Axios earlier reported on Apollo's interest in Paramount.

Meanwhile, Skydance Media, the production company run by David Ellison, has made an offer to buy Paramount parent National Amusements and merge Skydance into Paramount.

Redstone controls National Amusements, which owns almost 80% of the voting shares of Paramount.

The details of that offer couldn't be learned. Ellison is the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, who is expected to help fund any deal.

In evaluating the offers, Paramount's directors have to determine whether the deal would be good for all shareholders, not just its controlling shareholder, National Amusements.

It has been months since news of the Skydance interest in National Amusements first surfaced late last year. So far this year Paramount's stock has dropped more than 20% and is trading around $11 per share.

Paramount has also had discussions with Warner Bros. Discovery about a merger, and has discussed a streaming partnership or joint venture with Comcast, The Wall Street Journal reported last month.

The daughter of media mogul Sumner Redstone, Shari Redstone reunited the family's media empire by merging Viacom and CBS in 2019, later renaming the resulting company Paramount Global.

--Miriam Gottfried and Laura Cooper contributed to this article.

Junk stock today.

[quote]Junk stock today.

This...seems like a big deal?

The entire entertainment industry being in a quiet state of turmoil is a story that seems to be flying under the rating. Is Warner Bros. Discovery next to get thrown in the junk pile?

No, Warner Bros Discovery is dismantled. Comcast buys Warner Bros, Apple buys HBO.

Looks like Skydance

[quote] Can anyone remember a time when six large companies dominated a single industry, and then something really BAD happened which made them lose a lot of money, and everybody panicked, so then the six companies all paired off and became three really large companies that are still around today?

Somewhat similar to what happened with mobile-cellphone companies.

After the AT&T divestiture, each of the six Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC's) and GTE had their own mobile/cell companies. With the drive to open up the mobile-cell market to competition, a new spectrum with licenses was eventually instituted and sold by the FCC, which also meant that the RBOCs and GTE could go outside their own geographic boundaries.

The bad thing - at least financially - happening to these phone companies is that they started to bleed landline customers, and that business had always been their steady cash cow. .. What ended up happening were mergers between them, selling-trading areas, as well as having international carriers like Vodafone and Deutsche-Telecom entering the U.S. market. So what you have now on the cellphone front is basically The Big Three consisting of of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

What of Monogram Pictures, on Poverty Row??

My dressing room key doesn’t seem to work anymore.

“Trying to sweep the poor little widow under the carpet?”

R20 i was thinking about the six legacy airlines merging after September 11 but your example also fits

Paramount folds, THEN Louis Gossett Jr. of their release “An Officer and a Gentleman” dies?

[italic]Coincidence?

I’ve been listening to industry podcasts and Sherry waited entirely too long to sell Paramount. She has been stuck in her own “feels” rather than face the reality that the entire industry is facing a massive overhaul, and doesn’t work on “feels” anymore. The golden era of Hollywood, awards ceremonies, and influence of stars ended well over 20 years ago.

Much of what was created decades ago would never see the light of day or made it out of diversity, ethics and woke critics. .

They can also now measure for how long and which actor your eyeballs stare at. When viewers become disinterested. They count episodes people give up on. Something like 80% of the catalog on Netflix isn’t watched by more than a few thousand people.

NONE of this info was available a decade ago, and if it was it wasn’t as accessible or shared as it is now among industry.

I believe unless there a crop of terrific storytellers appear, the future is a diluted, regurgitated and repetitive mess of media where no one takes any risk that isn’t carefully calculated frost.

[quote] I believe unless there a crop of terrific storytellers appear, the future is a diluted, regurgitated and repetitive mess of media where no one takes any risk that isn’t carefully calculated frost.

I think that was the founding statement when Charlie Chaplin , Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and DW Griffith founded United Artists.

Well, at least Paramount won't merge with Warner Discovery, or whatever crazy idea was floated a few months ago.

I actually do think there is a possibility of merging the linear television assets of WarnerBros Discovery with the linear TV assets of Paramount Global.

This would combine CBS, CNN, TNT, TBS, and the various dying cable channels. It would allow a successor company to streamline linear television and eliminate a lot of legacy flotsam.

Bakish to resign.

Shari gets 2 billion dollars

David Ellison would move into Bakish’s role with Jeff Shell as President.

I do wonder if the goal in this is trim Paramount down to a movie and streaming company and a television company. The ultimate goal would be to merge the movie and streaming company with Netflix. Netflix would buy a movie studio, they would not but a television network. Make a new company of CBS and the remains of MTV/Showtime and sell it someone like Charter.