Redstone -era for Paramount and CBS ends with little fanfare (column)
For the Redstone clan the end came with Paramount Pictures much as it started 31 years ago -the victory achieved after a long, bitter and very public fight for a Hollywood institution.
This time the victory for Shari Redstone was the opportunity to sell Paramount Pictures, CBS, Paramount+, MTV, Nickelodeon and other Legacy Cablers to David Ellison’s Skydance Media. The battle was at major costs, especially for CBS.
Skydance paid a total of around $ 8 billion for Paramount Global. In 1994, after a 10-month slog of outman-making rival lover with Barry Diller, QVC, John Malone and the then Telco Bellsouth-Sloot Sumner Redstone the deal only for Paramount Pictures only for $ 9.5 billion that is $ 19.5 billion in the dollars.
A generation ago, Sumner Redstone was clearly ratified and encouraged by the obstacles he overcame to protect his prize to have one of Hollywood’s fundamental studios. For his daughter Shari Redstone, the transfer to Skydance Media came with much less fanfare. And it came Five years almost until the day after the death of Sumner Redstone at 97.
The company where Skydance has just been purchased is endowed Sui generis Assiva – in particular Paramount Pictures and CBS, brands that have been part of the media factory of the nation for more than a century. They are iride. But the company that ended its run as a paramount global is the macro -economic changes that all media and entertainment have rocked. No one is more disturbed than the Legacy Studios that defined the first century of Hollywood. And no more, for so many reasons, than Paramount Global.
The timing of the sale brings a book aid in the decade that Shari Redstone spent cleaning the very large mess that her father made at the helm of his Viacom -Rijk in his decreasing years. Sumner Redstone, who started with a chain film theaters in New England, acquired CBS in 2000 and placed it under the umacom of Viacom. Six years later, Sumner changed his mind and decided that Viacom and CBS should work separately, albeit under his strong control.
The trip from Sumner Redstone to buy Paramount Pictures had just started when he was the Deal Sloot in September 1993. The price force would climb with more than $ 1 billion after the bidding wars were done.
In the fall of 2015, Shari Redstone came into the picture in a large way when her 90-year-old father went into the physical decline at Beverly Park Compound. According to many accounts – including the excellent report in the book ‘Uncripted’ from 2023 by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams – Shari stepped in a storyline that was worthy of ‘Dallas’ or ‘Dynasty’. Girlfriends, questionable business partners, a fleet of lawyers and consultants who, and a lot of other jockeying around the Fortuin van Sumner Redstone and his business empire. With all this internal drama it was no wonder that Paramount started to suffer from neglect and a lack of vision.
Listen: A deep look at Paramount Pictures – what is the next step for the house that Adolph Zukor built and David Ellison has just bought (Podcast “Daily Variety”)
Shari Redstone’s methodical march because of the obstacles in her way of resolving the future of the empire of her family is now an important part of the Redstone Family Legend. (See this timeline that we published in 2016 about the events of the previous 12 months.) In that process, Shari was convinced that she had to reunite Viacom and CBS because of the company. She reached this in 2019 and sent more than a few roadblocks around. They include the fierce opposition of the former CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, before being forced in 2018 in the midst of a wave of accusations of sexual harassment from his past.
With the advantage of retrospect, it is crystal clear that CBS could stay better in itself, even if it was just a more attractive acquisition objective for a strategic buyer. I know that I am not the only one in the BIZ who wonders about what the industrial landscape would look like today if Time Warner CBS had taken over in circa 2016 instead of selling itself to AT&T.
Now, after a new Shakespeareean -Drama cycle with President Trump, “60 minutes” and an FCC chef on a Maga mission, Shari Redstone has handed the keys to the new ownership regime led by David Ellison.
Ellison, not in contrast to Sumner Redstone, has skydance media expertly put in the vehicle to gain a much greater care. Part of what he bought was Shari Redstone’s with iron covered control over Paramount Global. David Ellison and his father, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison own around 70% of the equity in the newly beaten Paramount Skydance, and they control 100% of the voting power. The Melrose lot is now the playground of the Ellisons.
The Ellison family had the means to help CBS to be high against the deserving court case against “60 minutes” that President Trump used the company in the past year. They could have risen for the truthfulness of the content that Sumner Redstone has appreciated so much that he declared famous ‘content is king’. Not this time. To clear the road for FCC approval, Paramount Global Trump wrote a $ 16 million check to arrange the suit. Like a lifelong CBS views, it was difficult to see how the powerful eye was bruised by business essentials.
After he formally closed the deal on August 7, David Ellison made his first stop as the new boss of the activities of CBS News on West 57th Street. That was a smart move, for optics and different. It shows that Team Ellison acknowledges the seriousness of what happened for CBS News.
Because a new king of content takes the Paramount Throne, here hopes that Ellison understands the lessons that must be drawn from the recent past of Paramount and CBS, now that he has been entrusted to lead their future.
(Shown Top: Sumner Redstone, Shari Redstone and David Ellison)
