• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 8, 2025

Having secured the blessing of the King of all Media in the White House by whatever means necessary, Skydance Media and Paramount Global have finally merged.

The completion of the deal was announced Thursday with a press release plus a companion “open” letter to the world from Skydance’s David Ellison, newly minted chairman and CEO of the new company, officially named “Paramount, a Skydance Corporation” -- or just “Paramount,” for short.

The release and the letter were composed of the usual airy verbiage. They were filled with words and phrases common to all such announcements.

But what lies beneath the clichés? The topic that came immediately to mind: what will happen to legacy media -- CBS and basic cable -- at the new Paramount?

Basic cable is a particular problem for all the big TV companies that still carry portfolios of these properties whose value has been plummeting for years.

Paramount is saddled with a ton of them, many with spin-off channels, including MTV plus five other MTVs, BET with four others, Nickelodeon Group with six.

Also in the Paramount stable: VH-1, Smithsonian Channel, Paramount Network, Logo TV, TV Land, Comedy Central and CMT. These are drags on the company and everybody knows it.

Elsewhere, basic cable proved to be so incompatible with the rest of Warner Bros. Discovery that the company just unmerged into two halves.

The Discovery half is now to be challenged to sink or swim on its own with the company’s portfolio of moribund cable channels.

NBCUniversal did much the same thing when it decided to place its basic-cable holdings at an arm’s length from the rest of the company. NBCU created a new basic-cable holding company called Versant. Good luck with that.

The newly merged Paramount revealed very little in the letter or the press release about what it will do now.

But reading between the lines, it is possible to pick up hints, however vague, of how the new company will be structured where the future of basic cable is concerned.

One hint may be in the announcement that the company will be reorganized into three business units -- Studios, Direct-to-Consumer and TV Media.

Studios refers to all the production capabilities and facilities of Skydance and Paramount, which are formidable.

Direct-to-Consumer is streaming.

TV Media is the likely place where basic cable will be sectioned off, and also CBS.

Ellison’s open letter said, “On the TV Media side, our challenge is to reinvent our portfolio of brands for a non-linear world.”   

“We plan to invest appropriately based on the future business opportunity, thereby maximizing cash flow so we can reinvest in our growth businesses,” he said.

This sounds like the company will take a look at the properties held under its TV Media umbrella to try and determine which ones have a future and invest in those properties accordingly.

In the event that no future opportunities present themselves in the basic-cable space, the TV Blog would not be surprised if Paramount tries to sell some of them or devise a plan to wind them down.

“Challenging decisions and difficult trade-offs lie ahead,” said Ellison’s letter. These challenges were not spelled out, but the future of cable TV just might be one of them.

Ellison’s letter also gave some lip service to CBS News. Addressing its “news partners,” the letter said the company “recognizes” that it has been “a challenging period” for CBS News.

“We take immense pride in CBS News’ legacy of impactful journalism and look forward to continuing to foster a newsroom culture where journalists are empowered, trusted, and equipped to do their best work,” it said. This sounds like gobbledygook.

Earlier in the letter, CBS News was included in a rundown of the company’s “unique assets.”

“CBS News [is] home to one of the most storied American broadcast journalism legacies in America, including ’60 Minutes,’ with a long tradition of impactful reporting led by seasoned journalists committed to accuracy, integrity, and public trust,” the letter said.

The two sentences about CBS News each included the word “legacy.” In the context of this new company, being grouped among the company’s other “legacy” media is not necessarily a good thing.