Paramount Global

• 1. Introduction

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  Paramount Global closed its doors on the 7th of August 2025, absorbed into a new entity called New Paramount through a merger that had taken more than a year to finalize. In the weeks before that closing date, the company settled a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump for $16 million, then cancelled one of late-night television's most prominent programs. The sequence raised a pointed question about what a century-old media empire was willing to give up to survive. Behind those final weeks lay a story that stretched back to 1912, a story of studios and networks that split apart and rejoined, of family dynasties and corporate power struggles, and of a streaming age that forced every traditional broadcaster to reckon with its own future.

• 2. Century of Mergers

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  Paramount Pictures was founded in 1912 as the Famous Players Film Company. CBS came into existence in 1927, and within two years Paramount Pictures held a 49% ownership stake in the broadcaster. That early link between film and radio did not last; by 1932 the stake was gone. The two companies would not share a corporate roof again for nearly seven decades. The thread connecting them ran through a syndication unit CBS created in 1952 to manage the distribution rights to its own television library. That division changed names four times: CBS Television Film Sales, then CBS Films in 1958, then CBS Enterprises in January 1968, and finally Viacom in 1970. The name was an acronym for Video and Audio Communications. In 1971, new FCC rules forbidding networks from owning syndication companies forced CBS to spin the division off entirely. The rules that created Viacom as an independent company were themselves abolished in 1993. In 1986, the newly independent Viacom purchased MTV Networks and Showtime/The Movie Channel from Warner Communications and American Express. A year later, in 1987, theater operator National Amusements acquired Viacom, beginning a family-controlled era that would define the company for decades to come.

• 3. The Redstone Era

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  Viacom's appetite for acquisition grew considerably in the 1990s. Paramount Pictures had passed through the hands of Gulf and Western Industries after a 1966 acquisition; that conglomerate rebranded itself Paramount Communications in 1989, and Viacom bought the whole operation in 1994. Then, in 1999, Viacom announced plans to merge with CBS Corporation, the renamed successor to Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The merger closed in 2000, reuniting CBS with the very syndication arm that had been spun away from it three decades before. The combination did not hold. On the 31st of December 2005, Viacom was split into two separate publicly traded companies: a second CBS Corporation and a second Viacom. The family behind National Amusements retained control of both. In September 2016, National Amusements wrote to both subsidiaries encouraging them to merge again. That attempt was called off in December 2016. The idea did not die. On the 12th of January 2018, reports emerged that Viacom had re-entered merger talks with CBS Corporation, partly in response to the announced combination of AT&T and Time Warner and Disney's then-proposed acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox's assets. Viacom and CBS faced mounting competition from Netflix and Amazon. The path to reunion proved difficult. On the 30th of March 2018, CBS Corporation made an all-stock offer that Viacom rejected as too low, requesting an additional $2.8 billion and insisting that Bob Bakish be maintained as president and COO. CBS chief Les Moonves described the Viacom cable channels as an "albatross" and preferred alternative targets including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate, or Sony Pictures. On the 9th of September 2018, Moonves exited CBS following multiple accusations of sexual assault. His departure cleared the largest obstacle to the reunion, and National Amusements agreed to hold off on proposing any new merger for at least two years from the date of the settlement.

• 4. ViacomCBS Is Born

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  On the 30th of May 2019, reports surfaced that CBS Corporation and Viacom would formally explore a merger in mid-June. CBS's board had been revamped with directors open to the deal. The two companies reportedly set August 8 as an informal deadline and CBS announced plans to acquire Viacom in a deal valued at up to $15.4 billion. On the 13th of August 2019, the merger was officially announced, with the combined company to be named ViacomCBS and Shari Redstone serving as chair. Bob Bakish was named CEO of the combined entity; Joseph Ianniello, president and acting CEO of CBS Corporation, would oversee CBS-branded assets. The deal required approval from the Federal Trade Commission, which came on the 28th of October 2019. That same day, National Amusements announced the deal would close in early December, and the recombined company moved its shares to Nasdaq under the symbols VIAC and VIACA. ViacomCBS officially began operating on the 4th of December 2019. Within days, Bakish announced plans to divest Black Rock, the building that had served as CBS's headquarters since 1964, saying it was "not an asset we need to own." By the 20th of December 2019, the company agreed to acquire a 49% minority stake in the film studio Miramax from beIN Media Group for $379 million, giving Paramount Pictures exclusive distribution rights to the Miramax library and first-look agreements on new projects.

• 5. Rebranding and Restructuring

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  On the 15th of February 2022, during an investor presentation, ViacomCBS announced it would rename itself Paramount Global the following day. A memo to staff framed the change as a way to reflect the company's identity and aspirations through what it called an "iconic global name." The parent company took the paramount.com domain, while Paramount Pictures shifted its website to paramountpictures.com. The renamed company simultaneously worked through a series of asset sales that had begun under the ViacomCBS banner. In September 2020, the company had sold the CNET Media Group, which included CNET, ZDNet, GameSpot, Metacritic, and Chowhound, to Red Ventures for $500 million. In August 2021, it sold the CBS Building to Harbor Group International for $760 million, leasing the space back under a short-term arrangement. In November 2021, it agreed to sell CBS Studio Center to Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management for $1.85 billion. A plan to sell publisher Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for $2.175 billion was blocked by U.S. federal judge Florence Y. Pan; the company eventually sold Simon & Schuster to private equity firm KKR for $1.6 billion in cash, closing the transaction on October 30 of the following year. In August 2022, Nexstar Media Group acquired a 75% majority stake in The CW network, with Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery each retaining 12.5%.

• 6. The Skydance Pursuit

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  In January 2024, National Amusements began exploring a possible deal, with Skydance Media considering an all-cash bid of roughly $2.5 billion. Paramount simultaneously announced it would lay off 800 employees. Warner Bros. Discovery had briefly entered discussions but halted talks by the 27th of February 2024. Sony Pictures and Apollo Global Management submitted a non-binding all-cash offer of $26 billion in May 2024. By that time, Warren Buffett, speaking at a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, disclosed that he had sold all of his Paramount shares at a substantial loss. Bob Bakish stepped down as president and CEO on the 29th of April 2024; the Los Angeles Times characterized it as an ouster by Shari Redstone over his reported opposition to the Skydance deal. Three executives, Brian Robbins, George Cheeks, and Chris McCarthy, assumed leadership as a collective office of the CEO. By the 3rd of June 2024, Paramount and Skydance had agreed to merger terms, but on June 11, National Amusements announced the deal had fallen apart. Redstone was reportedly displeased with revised terms that reduced her payout and required her to absorb potential legal liability from shareholder lawsuits. She considered alternative buyers including Edgar Bronfman Jr., Bain Capital, Patrón Tequila founder John Paul DeJoria, and Barry Diller. Skydance returned to the table. On the 2nd of July 2024, the two sides reached a preliminary agreement. On July 7, Paramount's board approved a final deal with an enterprise value of $28 billion. Under the terms, David Ellison would become chairman and CEO of the merged company, former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell would become president, and Redstone would receive $2.4 billion for her National Amusements stake. If Paramount found a superior offer during a 45-day window, Skydance was entitled to a $400 million breakup fee. In August 2024, Paramount announced a layoff of approximately 2,000 employees, representing 15% of its U.S. workforce, tied to a $6 billion write-down on its cable television networks. The merger was approved on the 24th of July 2025, and closed on the 7th of August 2025.

• 7. Late Show and a Settlement

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  In July 2025, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump over CBS News's editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, conducted in October 2024. On July 15, Late Show host Stephen Colbert publicly called the payment "a big fat bribe" to Trump. Three days later, Paramount announced the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, though later reporting indicated Colbert's talent manager had been informed of the cancellation as early as June 27. The Writers Guild of America East and West called on New York attorney general Letitia James to investigate whether the cancellation represented an exchange of free speech for regulatory goodwill as the company sought merger approval. The episode illustrated how the pressures of completing a $28 billion transaction could intersect with the editorial and creative decisions at a company that had spent more than nine decades in the business of shaping American culture.