Paramount, A Skydance Corporation, will now be Paramount, an L.A.-based operation.
After the $8.4 billion merger of Paramount and Skydance formally closed on Thursday, company leaders visited New York for a press conference. One detail to emerge from that 90-minute gathering was the fact that Paramount, whose corporate predecessors, Paramount Global, Viacom and CBS Corp., were all strongly identified with New York, will now be headquartered in L.A.
Plans call for the company’s official base to be on the fabled Melrose lot, executives said, though the press conference was held mere hours after the deal’s close, meaning plenty of decisions are still at a formative stage. As it sets up shop in that century-old Hollywood redoubt, Skydance Media would also preserve Santa Monica base. Hundreds of employees work at the Olympic Boulevard site in divisions focused on sports, animation and other areas.
Where companies are officially headquartered is not as significant as it was in the pre-digital age. Thanks to technology, shareholder meetings and other corporate functions can be handled by a number of remote offices, of which the newly-merged Paramount has several. Yet the main corporate address of any company can be a defining characteristic. Just ask people in Battle Creek, MI about breakfast cereal.
With the move, Paramount would become the largest L.A.-based media company apart from Disney. Skydance brass were already mostly based in L.A., so the move makes sense in that way. Advertising sales, investor relations and numerous other corporate functions will still be New York-based.
In the company’s current Times Square digs, which has seen multiple renovation projects over the years, changes could well be coming. The building, at 1515 Broadway (site of MTV’s Total Request Live as well as late corporate founder Sumner Redstone’s home away from home at various stages of empire-building), could soon be in the media rear-view mirror. Already, CBS had vacated “Black Rock,” its longtime offices on West 52nd Street and Avenue of the Americas, when the previous regime decided to sell the building. A Caesar’s Palace casino has been proposed for the Times Square building, which could be a little too on-the-nose for staffers placing bets on the fortunes of film, TV and streaming hopefuls.
Speculation has it that the CBS News production facilities along West 57th Street on Manhattan’s Far West Side could be a nexus for the new Paramount’s New York operations. With news and sports talent coming and going there, and with corporate brass mostly in L.A., there is a logic to fortifying the site. It’s hard to find many blocks in New York City that are in need of an upgrade as rents and real estate values continue to surge, but certain pockets of 57th Street around 10th and 11th Avenues surrounding the CBS building have seen better days. City officials may want to hear out Paramount’s ideas for an expanded presence in the neighborhood, which is in a lower-profile pocket north of Hudson Yards but also south of the Upper West Side.
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