• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, May 6, 2024

How will it play out if Paramount Global goes it alone?

The seemingly never-ending Paramount saga continues -- although now there is a bit more clarity.

The complex Skydance Media offer is now going away as the exclusive negotiation period with the company ends.

But there is still much that is in flux. Over the past four weeks, four board members have announced their departure. The CEO has resigned. The board instituted an unusual three-executive “Office of the CEO.”

In addition, the Skydance offer involved two different prices for Paramount's two classes of stock, which upset more than a few investors.

Now the board will consider a more straight-ahead $26 billion offer -- including the assumption of $15 billion in debt -- from Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management. 

While the combination of two big movie-TV studios makes sense when it comes to bolstering entertainment business, at its core is the key question of the future of Paramount+ -- as well as the Paramount Global group of cable TV networks -- in terms of their future prospects.

Richard Greenfield, LightShed Partners media analyst, maintains that Paramount should revamp its focus -- which to an extent means going back to being more of a TV/movie supplier, licensing content to all networks and streaming businesses.

He also calls for the company to strongly consider some asset sales such as the BET Media Group, for which the company already turned away offers that were priced at around $3.5 billion.

At the same time, Greenfield thinks the Sony-Apollo deal is not all that great either, specifically because  there can be regulatory hurdles concerning studio and TV station consolidation and foreign ownership -- a process that could take at least 12 months to complete.

He also feels that Paramount Global's controlling shareholder National Amusements would not want to break up the company under a Sony-Apollo ownership.

Other issues, according to some analysts: 

-- Theatrically, the overall movie business is still another year or two in recovering. What happens in the meantime?

-- Is there a short- or long-term plan for linear TV networks going forward?

Would they be part of any big asset sale? And if so, how does that affect the Paramount+ operation going forward? 

-- Does Paramount keep CBS around given its still strong industry leading reach among U.S. consumers when looking at all linear TV networks? 

Going it alone? Everyone still needs close business/partners friends -- somewhere.

Perhaps there are other efforts on the way.