The influential analyst says the CEO is to blame for Paramount Global’s money-losing streaming strategy.
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish, acknowledging the takeover rumors swirling around his media conglomerate, sent a memo to staffers urging them to focus on execution, and laid out his strategies for driving earnings growth by increasing revenue and controlling costs. He warned staffers that the company will be looking to streamline operations and reduce the size of its workforce.
“We stand united against all acts of terror and hate,” Shari Redstone and Bob Bakish told employees amid the Israel-Hamas war via an internal memo.
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish said the Disney-Charter carriage dispute took a “notable” financial toll on many pay-TV stakeholders, but he touted his efforts to “modernize” the company’s distribution relationships for the streaming era. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Tech Conference, Bakish said last Friday was “obviously a notable day for the industry.” That was the first trading day after 18 Disney cable networks and eight ABC stations went dark on Charter’s Spectrum TV service. It brought a collective $15 billion hit to the market value of a number of programmers and operators, Bakish estimated, as the carriage impasse “was interpreted as a negative” by investors. Nevertheless, he continued, “all companies are not of the same point of view” when it comes to co-ordinating their efforts across linear TV, streaming and other lines of business.
Paramount CEO Bob Bakish’s compensation for 2022 was $32.05 million, up from $20.06 million in 2021, according to a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bakish received a stock award of $16 million. He did not receive a stock award in 2021. He got a $16 million stock award in 2020, when his compensation was $39 million. Paramount also announced the addition of Dawn Ostroff as an independent, non-executive director.
Showtime has been going through downsizing and recalibration since the November ouster of longtime CEO David Nevins and the premium network’s inclusion in Paramount Media Networks President Chris McCarthy’s portfolio. There have been layoffs, series cancellations and an executive restructuring as McCarthy articulated the plans for the network, which will soon be rebranded as Paramount+ with Showtime. They include multiple TV universes built around some of Showtime’s biggest series, including multiple Dexter and Billions offshoots. During the Morgan Stanley conference Wednesday, Paramount CEO Bob Bakish addressed the strategy and indicated that other Showtime series could be revisited too.
Exclusives
Paramount’s Bakish Looks For Ad Recovery Later This Year
The CEO said: “2023 will be another year of content momentum. Our ’23 film stream is strong. And CBS’s momentum is only getting stronger. The network is on the verge of achieving No. 1 status for the 15th straight broadcast year. And we see great stability in its schedule, with very few slots to fill.”
Paramount Global President and CEO Bob Bakish has warned that the company’s fourth quarter advertising revenue is now expected to come in “a bit below” the 2% decline in the third quarter. “The current market is challenging and we’re in it every day and we see it. That challenge is both on the linear side and the digital side,” he told the UBS Global TMT Conference on Tuesday. “As we navigated leading into this point, we had looked for some improvement in some sectors, but we haven’t seen that.”
The company also disclosed that it extended the contracts of government relations chief DeDe Lea and chief people officer Nancy Phillips, keeping them with Paramount well into 2025.
Bob Bakish tells annual shareholder meeting “we have made tremendous progress,” adding that the firm was on track to exceed its targets for merger synergies.
ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish saw his pay increase slightly in 2020 to $38.9 million in 2020, according to an SEC filing on Friday. Bakish pulled in $36.6 million in compensation for 2019, which was split between his duties as CEO of Viacom before the merger with CBS toward the end of 2019.
ViacomCBS leadership has set a tentative timeline for employees to return to the media giant’s numerous offices, though in limited capacity, as coronavirus vaccines continue to rollout across the country and around the world. In a Thursday memo from CEO Bob Bakish, the executive outlined plans to return as early as just after the upcoming July 4 holiday.
CEO Bob Bakish and his team have started getting credit for acquisitions, and sales of non-core assets, at attractive price tags that have transformed the company beyond the big merger that created it. In early 2021, it will detail how all its assets fit into its streaming strategy.
ViacomCBS is looking ahead to a post-coronavirus world, one in which approximately 70% of its more-than-20,000 employees will work at least partly from home, according to an internal memo from CEO Bob Bakish.
ViacomCBS won’t be offering merit increases to salaried employees this year due to the economic hit of COVID-19, CEO Bob Bakish told staff at a town hall meeting Wednesday. A source at the company also confirmed that Bakish told staffers the company’s offices will not be opening in January. In a memo update several months ago, he had said offices could be opened in January at the earliest but clarified that today so employees could plan, the person said.
ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish was investigated over an accusation of sexual misconduct. An outside investigation was completed and “did not support the allegation,” the company said.
Bob Bakish, president and CEO of ViacomCBS, says the upfront advertising market is going well, although he offered few details. “On the upfront, things are very, very far along,” said Bakish, speaking at a Bank of America virtual media conference on Wednesday. “We always thought it would take longer and it did.”
ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish detailed changes to CBS All Access, including 15,000 hours of new Viacom and CBS programming and sports content, as he discussed a planned relaunch in 2021 of the streaming service on Tuesday. “The second part of our strategy is to transform All Access into a super service,” Bakish told the Credit Suisse Annual Virtual Communications Conference during a session that was webcast.
As chief Bob Bakish installs a new tier of toppers and cuts costs, No. 2 Joe Ianniello might exit even sooner than many expect.
Nobody in the vast media universe is more excited to see the new year dawn than Bob Bakish. The president-CEO of ViacomCBS is eager to get moving on growth initiatives that have been on the drawing board for months. The biggest change to come from the reunion of Viacom and CBS Corp. — two halves of the Redstone family empire that formally merged on Dec. 4 — is that the company is streamlining all advertising sales, content licensing and distribution activities under three key revenue-generating leaders.
The executive sent the email to staff after Viacom and CBS completed their merger following the close of the stock market.
Viacom and CBS aim to prosper in the streaming arena by covering both ends of the marketplace, blending Viacom’s focus on ad-supported platforms with CBS’s strong head start on subscribers for CBS All Access and Showtime. ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish and incoming CFO Christina Spade outlined the combined company’s vision for how it will best monetize the $13 billion in content spending across the two companies that are expected to complete the merger agreement announced last month by year’s end.
CBS and Viacom appear to have settled the question of who will run the combined entity when the Great Reunion finally occurs, perhaps as soon as next Thursday. Bob Bakish, currently CEO of Viacom, is in line to head the merged company, sources familiar with the proposed structure tell Deadline. Joe Ianniello, who has been acting CEO of CBS, will continue to run the CBS assets in a senior role.
“We are active in the OTT space,” Viacom CEO Bob Bakish said Wednesday. “We are also active in the SVOD space through our third-party production business.” A growing part of this strategy will be to lean into mobile, said Bakish. “Mobile distribution really is the catalyst that will turn this whole decline of television argument on its head.”
Viacom boss Bob Bakish has set a target for Paramount Television to become a billion dollar business over the next few years. Bakish claimed that the television production division is set to grow from a $400M in 2018 to a $600M in 2019 and has set plans to almost double this in a “few years.”
Since taking over as Viacom’s chief executive last year with the blessing of powerful shareholder Shari Redstone, Bob Bakish has been working to win over Wall Street with moves meant to stabilize the embattled entertainment giant. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports, Bakish is contemplating what would be his boldest bet yet: an acquisition of rival media outfit Scripps Networks Interactive. Members of the Scripps family are expected to meet Tuesday to discuss a potential sale, according to people familiar with the matter. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.
Viacom is in advanced discussions with at least one MVPD to be part of a low-cost, entertainment-only channel package designed to help bring younger consumers into the pay TV ecosystem and to keep others from leaving.
Viacom CEO Bob Bakish and A+E Networks CEO Nancy Dubuc will add some executive star power to the lineup for NATPE Miami 2017, to be held Jan. 17-19. Each will deliver keynotes at the annual gathering for dealmakers in production, advertising, distribution and music.
Viacom announced Monday that Bob Bakish will stay on as the permanent president CEO of the media conglomerate. Bakish took over the position on an interim basis in November.
Viacom CEO Bob Bakish unequivocally squashed the rumor that Viacom was interested in buying an interest in Vice. Speaking Monday at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, Bakish said Viacom has “no interest” in the pursuing a deal. “We’re not going to do it,” Bakish said.
Viacom’s new chief executive, Bob Bakish, is joining a conga line of big media companies weighing a plan to acquire an interest in Vice, the millennial-focused news and pop culture destination that has been expanding around the globe.
Viacom CEO Vows To Accelerate Growth
In his first appearance on a Viacom quarterly earnings call, soon-to-be acting CEO Bob Bakish says he’s optimistic about the company’s “very strong footing” even though it faces “challenges.” He vowed to “accelerate our evolution while building a long-term vision for our future,” even as directors weigh a merger with CBS.
