As the Emmy Awards arrive, CBS is catching its breath.
The Eye network was dragged through the mud and the courts as part of Skydance Media’s long process of acquiring CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global. Now that the ugly fight with President Donald Trump and the Federal Communications Commission over CBS News’ “60 Minutes” is settled, the network that has the task of staging and televising the live Emmy kudocast on Sept. 14 is extra busy regrouping and getting to know its first new owner in 25 years.
It’s early times for the marriage of Skydance and Paramount (the deal formally closed on Aug. 7), but one thing has been clear to CBS and Paramount veterans since Day 1: David Ellison brings a new vision for the future, a new management style and different priorities from the Redstone regime. And this is a welcome change for all those CBS executives and staffers who are finally exhaling.
We spoke with a dozen insiders across CBS, CBS Studios and the newly reconstituted Paramount TV Studios, and one phrase came up repeatedly: cautious optimism. Or, as one insider succinctly put it, “It certainly couldn’t have gotten much worse, so it’s all up from here.”
Ellison and Paramount president Jeff Shell have yet to articulate a broad vision for CBS and its place in fast-changing TV marketplace. Skydance takes over Paramount Global at a time of immense disruption for the entire pay TV sector. CBS is part of the fabric of American television, but it needs a road map for how its core business operations — the broadcast network, studio operations, and news, sports and local TV — will operate in the age of streaming.
There will be movement in the coming weeks as Paramount prepares for post-merger layoffs that could rise as high as 2,000 or more. The Ellison regime promised investors it would deliver $2 billion in cost-cutting savings after the deal closed. That’s going to require a fundamental realignment of existing resources and priorities. How those decisions affect CBS will send the strongest signals as to how it fits into the big picture at Paramount.
But even as CBS braces for more change, the network is enjoying a measure of autonomy and consistency that other Paramount units are not. As an alumnus of Fox and NBCUniversal, Shell knows
the broadcast TV business well. And CBS chief George Cheeks is the only one of Paramount Global’s previous trio of co-CEOs to stay at the helm of his division. It’s a sign that Ellison’s team sees CBS as “the least broken” of the assets that Skydance just bought, says a veteran media CEO.
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Amid the tumult of the past few years, CBS has been on a hot streak of launching successful scripted series that draw viewers to the mothership network as well as to the Paramount+ streaming platform. “Matlock,” a procedural remake of the vintage Andy Griffith starrer, has gone so far as to earn an Emmy nomination for star Kathy Bates in its freshman year. However, CBS was also squarely on the firing line during the fight with Trump and the FCC over his baseless $20 billion lawsuit against “60 Minutes” involving the editing of an October 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. That litigation held up FCC approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger, which spurred controlling shareholder Shari Redstone to advocate for what became a $16 million settlement with Trump, as Redstone told The New York Times.
For CBS staffers, the long slog of the merger came on top of internal frustration over a long period of uncertainty about the direction of the company and whether or not it would be sold. The cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was another blow. Frequent rounds of layoffs took a hard toll. Redstone’s lack of forceful support for “60 Minutes” — the crown jewel of CBS News — was widely seen as a betrayal of the news division’s editorial integrity.
“I believed it was always in Paramount’s best interest to settle,” Redstone told the Times. “We may not like the world we live in, but a board has to do what’s in the best interest of shareholders.” In a separate interview with the Times, Redstone asserted: “This case was never as black and-white as people assumed.”
Redstone’s father, Viacom mogul Sumner Redstone, acquired CBS in 2000, six years after he bought Paramount Pictures. Redstone was a World War II veteran who was 77 when he took over CBS. On the other hand, the new boss of the Melrose lot is Hollywood’s first millennial to own a major studio. Ellison, 42, hails from a family of great means as the son of Larry Ellison, the prominent tech billionaire who founded software giant Oracle. David Ellison also brings an entirely different generational mindset when it comes to the creative and commercial priorities for Paramount. Insiders at Paramount and CBS say that shift is becoming evident.
“David really seems like he wants to make Paramount as a whole mean something again,” one source says. “He certainly doesn’t need the money, so I don’t think he’s coming in to pump up the stock and then bail out.”
Sources say that CBS Sports is expected to be spared in the layoff wave. Live sports is a linchpin for CBS in the pay TV ecosystem. Among the biggest assets that CBS brought to the table in the merger is its NFL TV rights package that runs through 2033. Skydance Media has also been invested in sports content and docuseries, which pairs nicely with CBS Sports’ infrastructure. Days after the merger closed, Paramount made a statement about its willingness to invest in sports by landing a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal for UFC rights as a marquee live-event property for Paramount+.
The CBS Entertainment programming and production division is the place where there will be the most overlap with Skydance’s existing TV and film activities. CBS insiders are hopeful that Ellison will take on a “don’t fix what isn’t broken” approach. Despite enormous competition, CBS continues to field some of the most-watched scripted series in all of TV, including “Tracker,” “Fire Country,” “NCIS,” “Matlock,” “FBI,” “Ghosts” and “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” as well as reality stalwarts “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race.” All of those series are returning to the lineup for the 2025-26 television season, which gives CBS a strong bench to launch more new series.
The post-merger management structure established two large TV production operations — CBS Studios, run by longtime president David Stapf, and Paramount Television Studios, headed by Skydance veteran Matt Thunell. Stapf is highly regarded in the creative community and skilled in the procedural format that has defined CBS’ signature shows. Skydance Television made its mark mostly with streaming series, including Amazon’s “Cross” and “Reacher” and Apple TV+’s “Foundation.”
“Skydance doesn’t really do broadcast shows,” one source says. “The hope is that [Ellison] will let the experts take the lead.”
Sources say that the creative community is still trying to figure out exactly what will differentiate the two divisions. According to one source, Paramount TV Studios will primarily focus on developing and producing shows for Paramount+ as well as outside streamers, but it may still develop for broadcast. Paramount TV Studios will remain the home of Taylor Sheridan, the prolific creator behind “Yellowstone” and other series, including the spinoff “Y: Marshals” for CBS next year.
CBS Studios is home to the “Star Trek” universe of series produced since 2017 for Paramount+. It is also behind the “Little House on the Prairie” reboot in the works for Netflix and the comedy series “Murderbot,” which bowed in May on Apple TV+ and has been renewed for a second season. CBS Studios will primarily develop for broadcast but continue to keep a foot in the streaming world.
Leaders of the newly merged company face a long-list process and personnel decisions in the coming months as Paramount and Skydance become one. For CBS, one of the most encouraging signs of the new regime’s interest in the core business of the Eye network — broadcast TV — has come from an unexpected place: local weather reporting.
In June, CBS-owned stations KCAL-TV and KCBS-TV Los Angeles debuted — with great fanfare — a cutting-edge virtual reality/augmented reality studio for weather coverage. The technology upgrade allows weathercasters to guide viewers through three-dimensional visuals that help explain weather news and trends that are increasingly urgent given the pace of climate change.
Skydance didn’t take possession of Paramount Global until August. The weather studio upgrade process started in 2023 with a CBS station in San Francisco. The plans to roll out this VR/AR tech to CBS stations in L.A., Dallas and other markets would have been disclosed to the Skydance regime as part of the merger. Nixing it could have been a way to find quick cost savings. But in fact, the local weather initiative has been cited as a good example of the company harnessing technology to enhance the value of CBS’ local TV stations.
At the start of the summer, as the Trump and FCC battle dragged on, there was skepticism in the industry and on Wall Street about whether Skydance and Paramount would be able to complete their nuptials after all. Within CBS, gallows humor prevailed, morale was low and there was talk of the Eye’s best days being behind them. One month into the Skydance era, the mood is better and the picture is brighter. Ellison is clearly invested, a CBS source observes, pointing to the splashy deals that the CEO has unveiled to acquire UFC rights and adapt the Activision video game “Call of Duty” as a feature film.
“They’ve got money and they’re spending it,” the source says.
From Variety US