ViacomCBS

National Amusements, ViacomCBS Inc.’s parent company is losing some of its ability to borrow money at a time when its key revenue drivers — movie theaters, new film releases and live-sports broadcasts from the CBS network — have ground to a halt because of the coronavirus. The company has reached a deal with Wells Fargo & Co. to restructure its credit facilities.

ViacomCBS could see a $350 million hit this quarter on the cancellation of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, says one media analyst. David Miller from Imperial Capital has cut earnings forecasts for the company and his price target for the stock, which is down 16% Wednesday.

Both CBS and NBCUniversal have canceled their upfront presentations that were scheduled in New York for mid-May. Both companies will present their upcoming slates digitally.

Kelli Raftery, a veteran CBS communications executive who has worked in many different roles over more than two decades at the company, is poised to leave, one of several executives departing in the wake of the company’s recent merger with Viacom.

ViacomCBS will look to offload its Simon & Schuster publishing unit, Bob Bakish said Wednesday during an investor conference. The ViacomCBS CEO added that the publishing unit “is not a core asset. It is not video-based. It does not have significant connection for our broader business.”

ViacomCBS Inc.’s Pluto TV is launching an ad campaign to attract viewers as the competition in free and ad-supported streaming TV intensifies. Pluto TV said the campaign is the first step in a plan to spend $30 million this year on advertising.

CBS EVP Marketing Anne O’Grady is leaving after more than three decades at the network. Her last day is today. O’Grady’s departure is believed to be her decision and not part of the recent second round of layoffs at the newly re-merged ViacomCBS. It comes amid a changing of the guard in CBS’ marketing department.

Facing heightened competition in ad-supported streaming video, ViacomCBS-owned Pluto TV has launched a new branding campaign — its biggest to date — with plans to spend $30 million on the effort in 2020.

Media stocks and all major U.S. stock market indices were slammed Monday morning as coronavirus concerns heightened. Walt Disney was down 3.8% to $133.71, while ViacomCBS lost 4% to $27.13 and Sinclair Broadcast Group fell 5% to $27.47. In digital media, Google gave up 3.7% to $1,430, while Facebook was off 3.6% to $202.64, Amazon was down 3.5% to $2,022, Netflix sank 3.4% to $367.48, Apple was off 3% to $303.53, and Roku went backwards 3.6% to $115.09.

ViacomCBS CFO Christina Spade says strong 4Q retrans/reverse comp will continue as growth drivers this year, along with political advertising. And President-CEO Bob Bakish was extremely bullish on streaming opportunities.

ViacomCBS saw revenue dip 2% and swung to red for the last three months of the year, which CEO Bob Bakish called a “transitional” fourth quarter that is the first for the company since it merged in December. The company said merger-related expenses and various operating items weighed on the numbers but are expected to be mitigated through the benefits of the combination.

ViacomCBS’s Pop TV basic cable network will carry exclusive next-day encores of CBS’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the most watched program in latenight. Starting next Tuesday, Feb, 25, the previous night’s episode of The Late Show will air on Pop at 9 a.m. ET/PT.

ViacomCBS is planning two rounds of layoffs, an individual with knowledge of the plans tells TheWrap. The first round could of cuts could come as early as Feb. 26 — ViacomCBS is set to hold its first earnings call as a combined company next Thursday — with the second round of layoffs coming at the end of March. The first batch of layoffs could affect as many as 100 people.

Newly combined ViacomCBS is working on combining media assets for a new streaming service that will build on CBS All Access, according to people familiar with the matter. While ViacomCBS executives haven’t made any firm decisions, they are considering creating a service with advertisements that will combine CBS All Access with Viacom assets including Pluto TV, Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures.

ViacomCBS is letting go of staff amid a reorganization of its corporate diversity and inclusion department. Sources tell Variety that the cuts are concentrated in CBS’s legacy corporate-diversity department.

ViacomCBS has made it official today: Joe Ianniello, chairman and CEO of CBS, will be leaving the company. George Cheeks has been appointed president and CEO of CBS Entertainment Group, effective March 23.

Longtime CBS executive Deborah Barak will leave the network at the end of the year. Barak, president of business operations for CBS Entertainment, CBS Television Studios and CBS News, will exit the company after more than 30 years in the latest change to the network’s management structure.

CBS CEO Joe Ianniello is expected to depart from ViacomCBS in the spring, according to two individuals familiar with the situation.

As chief Bob Bakish installs a new tier of toppers and cuts costs, No. 2 Joe Ianniello might exit even sooner than many expect.

Programming executives Sarah Rabineau and Keith Cox have been promoted to new roles within ViacomCBS’s Entertainment & Youth Group. Rabineau has been upped to head of Comedy Central Content and Creative Enterprises, overseeing all development for the cable channel and its expanding roster of podcasts, games and other endeavors. Cox has been named president of Entertainment & Youth Studios, in addition to his role as president of originals for Paramount Network.

ViacomCBS reorganized its ad sales team a month after Viacom and CBS combined and top sales executives from units including Pluto TV, Pop and Smithsonian Channel will be leaving the network. Jo Ann Ross, who had been with CBS before the merger and was given the top job at the combined company over Viacom’s Sean Moran, will continue to have former CBS executives David Lawenda, John Bogusz, Linda Rene, Dave Morris and Chris Simon reporting to her.

George Cheeks, vice chairman of NBCUniversal Content Studios, has stepped down after nearly eight years with the company and is poised to join ViacomCBS as a successor to Joe Ianniello as the head of CBS’s operations within the newly merged company.

ViacomCBS said today it reached a new carriage agreement with Comcast that includes retransmission consent for 23 CBS-owned TV stations, including CBS-owned CW affiliates. The deal covers CBS’s cable properties and will make the streaming service CBS All Access available to Comcast customers via the Xfinity X1 and Flex platforms later this year.

Newly minted ViacomCBS is in talks to take a minority stake in the Miramax library, an asset that Viacom had previously kicked the tires on prior to its recent merger with CBS, insiders confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.

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 media company behind Showtime and Nickelodeon is swinging the ax at CBS’s finance department, which is housed in the network’s Midtown Manhattan “Black Rock” headquarters, according to sources.

CBS has joined Open AP, the audience-targeting alliance working to accelerate the emerging advertising practice known as “audience buying.”

Three days after the long-awaited merger of CBS and Viacom closed, the combined company has decided to sell off the fabled headquarters building of CBS known as Black Rock. Bob Bakish, CEO of ViacomCBS, confirmed the company is proceeding with the divestiture during an appearance at the UBS TMT Conference in New York.

ViacomCBS marked its first day as a merged company with a celebrity-studded appearance on the floor of the Nasdaq Market Site in New York’s Times Square and a town hall meeting overflowing with optimism. Front and center at the stock exchange were New ViacomCBS President-CEO Bob Bakish and Chairman Shari Redstone, as well as CBS News’s Gayle King.