• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

The Paramount Saga

Looks like the Paramount Saga is over. National Amusements has accepted the bid from SkyDance to buy the company.


Has Shari Redstone publicly come forward and accepted the bid? Because multiple prior stories of "Paramount has accepted a bid" have fallen apart after she rejected them. So I'll believe it when I see it.

In any event, I doubt Larry Ellison's money is going to be able to save a company filled with declining assets, particularly the cable channels.
 
Looks like the Paramount Saga is over. National Amusements has accepted the bid from SkyDance to buy the company.



Yeah...and now it's on to the fate of CBS, the linear cable channels, whether Paramount+ continues as a stand-alone, etc....
 
Has Shari Redstone publicly come forward and accepted the bid? Because multiple prior stories of "Paramount has accepted a bid" have fallen apart after she rejected them.

In any event, I doubt Larry Ellison's money is going to be able to save a company filled with declining assets, particularly the cable channels.

There's a link in paragraph one of that article that leads to yesterday's story in the Times about the board (including Shari) accepting:


Paramount Global board members on Sunday afternoon approved the bid by Ellison’s Skydance Media and its backers to buy the Redstone family’s Massachusetts holding firm, National Amusements Inc. The companies announced their deal later that night.

“Given the changes in the industry, we want to fortify Paramount for the future while ensuring that content remains king,” said Shari Redstone, Chair of Paramount Global and Chief Executive of National Amusements in a statement. “Our hope is that the Skydance transaction will enable Paramount’s continued success in this rapidly changing environment.”
 
Yeah...and now it's on to the fate of CBS, the linear cable channels, whether Paramount+ continues as a stand-alone, etc....

Running linear 24/7 TV channels is not consistent with Ellison's goal of being a media & technology company.

 
Who'd want cable channels in a cord-cutting world

The people who work there:


This is the best way to handle it. The current management knows the business and knows what they're buying.
 
Running linear 24/7 TV channels is not consistent with Ellison's goal of being a media & technology company.

Which is fine except selling CBS will be a lot harder than it looks... unless unfettered deregulation becomes a thing.
 
The people who work there:

Unless the IP is included (as past rumored deals distinctly excluded) then it's highway robbery and those buyers are total fools.
 
More, including speculation that in addition to BET, the non-network stations that CBS owns (KCAL, Los Angeles, KMAX, Sacramento, KPYX, San Francisco, WBFS, Miami, WTOG, Tampa, WUPA, Atlanta, WBXI, Indianapolis, WSBK, Boston, WKBD, Detroit, WLNY, Long Island, WPSG, Philadelphia, WPKD, Pittsburgh, KTXA, Dallas and KSTW, Seattle) could be sold off:

 
More, including speculation that in addition to BET, the non-network stations that CBS owns (KCAL, Los Angeles, KMAX, Sacramento, KPYX, San Francisco, WBFS, Miami, WTOG, Tampa, WUPA, Atlanta, WBXI, Indianapolis, WSBK, Boston, WKBD, Detroit, WLNY, Long Island, WPSG, Philadelphia, WPKD, Pittsburgh, KTXA, Dallas and KSTW, Seattle) could be sold off:

Who'd be able to buy them when the industry already rapidly consolidated and the available pool of buyers is totally depleted? Nexstar, Tegna and Scripps are unavailable, Apollo is disinterested in Cox, and Sinclair can't sell a whole bunch of small-market stations they've had on the block for months. Utterly ridiculous.

Given how much these boards devolve into insane wishcasting at the expense of the sanity of the mods and other members like myself, I would rather not speculate over an unsubstantiated rumor clearly written to drive website traffic over to The Hollywood Reporter.
 
Who'd be able to buy them when the industry already rapidly consolidated and the available pool got depleted?

Given how much these boards devolve into insane wishcasting at the expense of the sanity of the mods and other members, would rather not speculate at all.
The advantage to spinning the indies as opposed to the network stations or the network itself is that it's much easier to do in small bites with multiple smaller operators---guys who couldn't swallow CBS whole or even the owned stations group.

Last year, Hearst paid $220.54 million for an NBC affiliate in Fort Meyers (market 55). So let's just spitball one-third of that as an average for the CBS independents (because the individual stations here would differ in price). That's $72.73 million apiece times 14 stations, and that's $1.018 billion.
 
The advantage to spinning the indies as opposed to the network stations or the network itself is that it's much easier to do in small bites with multiple smaller operators---guys who couldn't swallow CBS whole or even the owned stations group.
There is no reason for anyone to buy a station that has long been the junior station in a duopoly with the CBS owned-station or have been uncompetitive so as not to interfere with the non-CBS-owned affiliate. Sell KCAL? Great, you could make a fortune, only KCBS loses their news department because it was long ago merged into KCAL. WPKD could be sold but they'd lose a good chunk of their programming thanks to all those KDKA overflow newscasts.

And again, KSTW, WUPA and WTOG can't be sold because there are no buyers. Nexstar is not going to magically swoop in and buy them, nor is Tegna or Scripps or Sinclair or Apollo or anyone.
Last year, Hearst paid $220.54 million for an NBC affiliate in Fort Meyers (market 55).
Hearst did that as an insane vanity purchase and should not be seen as a benchmark for anything. Good grief.
 
Last edited:
There is no reason for anyone to buy a station that has long been the junior station in a duopoly or have long been combined into the CBS owned-station. Sell KCAL? Great, you could make a fortune, only KCBS loses their news department because it was long ago merged into KCAL.

The KCAL News thing is a branding move. It just becomes CBS2 News again and CBS keeps the news organization.

WPKD could be sold but they'd lose a good chunk of their programming thanks to all those KDKA overflow newscasts.

So? That’s the new buyer’s problem. They can solve that by paying KDKA to continue producing newscasts for them, which is then an additional revenue stream for CBS.

And again, KSTW, WUPA and WTOG can't be sold because there are no buyers. Nexstar is not going to magically swoop in and buy them, nor is Tegna or Scripps or Sinclair or Apollo or anyone.

You’re ignoring even smaller operators, including ethnic and religious.

Hearst did that as an insane vanity purchase and should not be seen as a benchmark for anything. Good grief.

Which is why I cut that number by 66% and spread it as an average across 14 stations.
 
The KCAL News thing is a branding move. It just becomes CBS2 News again and CBS keeps the news organization.
So what happens to KCAL? No one would pay for a station with massive gaps in their schedule because they lose all the news programming. Insanity.
So? That’s the new buyer’s problem. They can solve that by paying KDKA to continue producing newscasts for them, which is then an additional revenue stream for CBS.
Assuming there's a sucker out there that wants to overpay for a station like that, then would pay exorbitant fees to CBS over and over again. Just throw money into an incinerator, it's better off that way.
You’re ignoring even smaller operators, including ethnic and religious.
That's if CBS wanted to sell those stations at substantial losses.
Which is why I cut that number by 66% and spread it as an average across 14 stations.
Which removes said smaller operators (if there are any left) and ethnic and religious broadcasters. So that leaves the big chains that can't (Nexstar, Tenga, Sinclair, Scripps and Gray) or won't (Apollo, Hearst and Graham) buy anything.
 
The advantage to spinning the indies as opposed to the network stations or the network itself is that it's much easier to do in small bites with multiple smaller operators---guys who couldn't swallow CBS whole or even the owned stations group.

Last year, Hearst paid $220.54 million for an NBC affiliate in Fort Meyers (market 55). So let's just spitball one-third of that as an average for the CBS independents (because the individual stations here would differ in price). That's $72.73 million apiece times 14 stations, and that's $1.018 billion.

Et tu, Michael? I've seen posts on RD, Facebook and X by people who've actually visited and even vacationed in that city who still misspell it. It's Fort Myers, and has been since the 1850s, when it got its current name. I'm not sure there's another commonly misspelled city that stumps even people who've been there.
 


Back
Top Bottom