Employees of Paramount Global have been through the wringer over the last year and a half. And the uncertainty hanging over their heads is far from over.
After M&A talks with Skydance Media that started in late 2023 whipped back and forth, the parties in July 2024 announced they had reached a deal to merge. Then Paramount endured another year of waiting before the FCC finally cleared the deal on Thursday. It was, to say the least, a politically fraught process. Critics accused the media conglomerate of having “bribed” President Trump with a $16 million payment to settle what experts deemed a meritless lawsuit targeting “60 Minutes.” CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” announced a week before the FCC OK’d the Skydance transaction, appeared to many to be another concession to Trump (who said “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” prompting an f-bomb riposte from the late-night host); CBS has maintained it was “purely a financial decision.”
To meet the FCC’s approval, Skydance said it would ensure diversity, equity and inclusion programs are dead at Paramount and that DEI would not return to the newly merged company. Furthermore, it agreed to install an ombudsman at CBS to vet and act on “bias” complaints in its news and entertainment programming — a pledge that Anna Gomez, the FCC’s single Democrat commissioner, said represented the Trump administration “imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.”
Through all of this, Paramount, parent of CBS, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+ and Pluto TV, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET, has undertaken several rounds of layoffs — and there are certain to be more job cuts coming when Skydance officially takes control of the company, expected within the next few weeks.
As of Friday morning, neither Paramount nor Skydance had publicly commented on next steps in their merger, including when it’s expected to close or details about restructuring.
In a July 2024 presentation to investors after the Skydance deal with Paramount and Shari Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. was announced, Jeff Shell (the former NBCU CEO who is set to become president of “Paramount Skydance Corp.”) said the Skydance team working with consulting firm Bain & Co. had identified at least $2 billion in potential annualized cost savings at the combined company.
Shell indicated much of those cost cuts will come from its linear TV business: “We know that linear is challenged and declining. We like these businesses, particularly CBS. We think it is a very, very, very strong business with more reach than any other business… However, I think a lot of us in the business know, we got to run these businesses in a different way as they decline.”
Where will those cost savings come from? Shell didn’t explicitly say so, but it’s obvious that major layoffs would be needed to get to a $2 billion annualized number.
Prior to Shell’s comments, the trio of co-CEOs running Paramount — George Cheeks, Brian Robbins and Chris McCarthy — announced a plan to slash $500 million in annual costs. Earlier this month, they said they achieved that. That was largely through layoffs and restructuring that cut 15% of its U.S. headcount, affecting about 2,000 employees through cutbacks last summer and fall. Last month, the company cut another 3.5% of its domestic staff, representing several hundred more pink-slips.
As of Dec. 31, 2024, according to Paramount’s most recent 10-K, the company had about 18,600 full- and part-time employees in 32 countries worldwide (so the headcount is lower today). Two years earlier, Paramount’s headcount was 24,500. Meanwhile, Skydance says on its website that it has “more than 500” employees.
Even if, for the sake of argument, you subtracted the $500 million in cost cuts claimed by Paramount’s co-CEOs from Shell’s $2 billion figure, that still indicates a very large number of layoffs that could be coming under the new regime. The cuts could number in the hundreds and some Paramount employees expect it to run into the thousands, sources say.
Leadership changes at Paramount are already underway: Chris McCarthy, head of Showtime & MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks, is set to leave the company following the Skydance merger close. Paramount Pictures chief Brian Robbins is expected to exit as well, while CBS CEO George Cheeks is expected to stay on.
Upon the deal’s closing, Skydance and its financial partners are set inject $1.5 billion in cash into Paramount. However, that’s intended to go toward reducing Paramount’s long-term debt ($14.16 billion as of Q1 of 2025) to help stabilize its balance sheet.
“Now that the long, drawn-out sale process is finally nearing its end, Skydance leadership is poised to take control,” MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman wrote in a research note Thursday. “With that, the real work begins — rebuilding Paramount, addressing the critical strategic questions ahead, and charting a path toward a more sustainable and competitive future.”
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