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CBS and Viacom seeking to merge... again


The Frog

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Is this really a good idea?  I think this merger will backfire on them. CBS Corp has the better properties of the two it just seems as if Viacom doesn't have much of anything worth merging for. 

 

Case in point below:

CBS Corp has: CBS, The CW, CBS Sports Network, Decades, CBS Films, CBS All-Access, CBSN, CBS Money Watch, CNET, TV.com & CBS Television Stations Inc.  

Viacom has: CMT, MTV, MTV2, VH1, TV Land, Comedy Central, Paramount Network, Nickeloden, BET, & Pluto TV. 

 

Of the viacom networks I only watch Paramount Network on a regular basis because it has Bar Rescue. I don't watch any of the other networks they own.   I watch CBS & CBS Sports Network & their CBSN Streaming service... 

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That's the thing... Viacom is hoping CBS could make their combined company better by including their assets with their poorer assets... and then using the better assets to improve the poorer assets.

 

I know that CBS' properties will do well but I'm hoping that the merger will at least better Viacom properties... I know Paramount Pictures could use it.

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So what does this mean for Paramount? They've become more and more desperate for a big money making movie since they lost the MCU and the Transformers ran out of gas. Don't believe me? Why else would they be making live action Dora and Sonic movies?

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15 minutes ago, hmaxhanson said:

So what does this mean for Paramount? They've become more and more desperate for a big money making movie since they lost the MCU and the Transformers ran out of gas. Don't believe me? Why else would they be making live action Dora and Sonic movies?

That might be the reason why CBS/Viacom is looking at potentially targeting Sony (which would include Columbia Pictures) if they're that desperate for Paramount to make money

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/if-cbs-viacom-reunite-more-mergers-could-be-way-n1036476

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On 8/3/2019 at 4:44 PM, DENDude said:

Is this really a good idea?  I think this merger will backfire on them. CBS Corp has the better properties of the two it just seems as if Viacom doesn't have much of anything worth merging for. 

 

Case in point below:

CBS Corp has: CBS, The CW, CBS Sports Network, Decades, CBS Films, CBS All-Access, CBSN, CBS Money Watch, CNET, TV.com & CBS Television Stations Inc.  

Viacom has: CMT, MTV, MTV2, VH1, TV Land, Comedy Central, Paramount Network, Nickeloden, BET, & Pluto TV. 

 

Of the viacom networks I only watch Paramount Network on a regular basis because it has Bar Rescue. I don't watch any of the other networks they own.   I watch CBS & CBS Sports Network & their CBSN Streaming service... 


The single most valuable component of Viacom is Paramount -- the studio, not the channel. Most of those channels are on borrowed time, and everyone knows it. If the whole merger turns out to be a "Save MTV" scheme, something is definitely wrong.

 

Mike

 

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On 8/3/2019 at 3:58 PM, hmaxhanson said:

So what does this mean for Paramount? They've become more and more desperate for a big money making movie since they lost the MCU and the Transformers ran out of gas. Don't believe me? Why else would they be making live action Dora and Sonic movies?

I'm a big Sonic fan and find it hard to believe the upcoming Sonic movie is going to be live-action. No way will it be a big money maker if the 1993 Mario movie failed. Even though Disney (okay, Hollywood Pictures) made the 1993 Mario movie, I'm sure Disney of today would know better than to make a live-action Sonic movie, given Sonic's appearances in Wreck-It Ralph.

 

Also I don't like the way Sonic will look in the movie so much.

 

What happened to Paramount? This isn't the same Paramount from 10 years ago and I'm curious if something bad happened that made them worse than they once were. Must a lot of their movies now be performing poorly?

 

Also curious if Universal improved under Comcast, based on the fact that once weak NBC has improved over the past 6 years (and is benefiting from CBS' decline lately) and that under Comcast quite a few Universal movies were big moneymakers (compared to were they were they were in the late 2000s with mostly poorly performing movies).

 

Sony Pictures Entertainment isn't all that great. A lot of their movies are performing poorly.

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On 8/5/2019 at 10:09 PM, Conrad said:

What happened to Paramount? This isn't the same Paramount from 10 years ago and I'm curious if something bad happened that made them worse than they once were. Must a lot of their movies now be performing poorly?

 

They lost everything, basically. Circa 2008 they had it made. Iron Man and the Marvel Cinematic Universe it would spawn, Crystal Skull, the live-action AND animated DreamWorks studios (they owned the former and inked a distribution deal with the latter after Viacom bought DreamWorks, LLC)...they pushed Spielberg, Geffen and Stacey Snider (the live-action DreamWorks principals) out, they lost Marvel and Lucasfilm to Disney, and ended up pushing away DWA even before its sale to Comcast. Paramount was ahead of the game and yet Viacom didn't capitalize. (Indeed, I don't think they could have afforded Marvel, given that it was 2009, Sumner's personal debt needed to be paid, and money was tight in general)

 

Also the loss of the previous TV division and its library to CBS hurt quite a bit. Because not only did Viacom seem to own half the American TV shows ever made, the rights to Star Trek were jumbled with the split. CBS owns all the Star Trek shows, trademarks, character likenesses and such, but the movies and the rights to make more at still at Paramount and have probably been on borrowed time since the split (which may be why there was such a sense of urgency that led to the movies released in 2009, 2013, and 2016). If Paramount isn't trying to get a Trek movie made at all times, the rights may revert to CBS.

 

If Paramount is reunited with CBS Studios and its library then it will be a tremendous shot in the arm for them. TV is a much more reliable business than feature films, and the CBS Studios library is chock-full of venerable syndication mainstays.

 

I think the only other highlight of Viacom's portfolio, for CBS, is Nickelodeon. Children's television, and Nick as an organization, have seen better days, but it's a very difficult market to enter and Nickelodeon is one of the few widely-recognized kids'/family brands out there. Plus their '90s heyday is now potently nostalgic for today's young adults, meaning that there is a multigenerational component there now that wasn't before. I'm not sure how many of today's kids are getting into stuff like Rugrats or Rocko's Modern Life through their parents, but I see a lot of young adults wearing '90s Nick shirts. Nickelodeon is a sleeping giant, and they should have fired Zarghami way before they did.

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Only grief first: the name doesn't jibe well to me and sounds better the other way. CBSViacom.

 

Now the positive:

I for one am happy to hear of the remerger. Both CBS and especially Viacom are hitting their strides to some good successes recently, and this merger was much needed for both (again especially Viacom). They have who I think are the right people to lead the ship and I'm very interested and intrigued to see where things go from here. Hopefully much bigger, sustaining successes (both small/short-term and large/long-term) to come.

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I'm hoping this can be a boost for the Viacom networks. Most of them -- CMT, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and BET -- have had a sharp decline in original programming in the past few years, settling for the same crop of dozen movies repeatedly or lackluster six-hour rerun marathons.

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17 minutes ago, nickp said:

Now that CBS and Viacom will be one company, they can finally do that Nickelodeon version of Big Brother

 

That wouldn't work because I don't think kids would handle being away from their parents with no communication with the outside world for 3 months. Plus, nobody would pay to see a live feed of kids.

 

But then again, Celebrity Big Brother went for 2 weeks...

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11 minutes ago, Georgie56 said:

 

That wouldn't work because I don't think kids would handle being away from their parents with no communication with the outside world for 3 months. Plus, nobody would pay to see a live feed of kids.

 

But then again, Celebrity Big Brother went for 2 weeks...

 

@nickp is probably kidding...

 

I hope...

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34 minutes ago, Georgie56 said:

 

That wouldn't work because I don't think kids would handle being away from their parents with no communication with the outside world for 3 months. Plus, nobody would pay to see a live feed of kids.

 

But then again, Celebrity Big Brother went for 2 weeks...

 

I'm tempted to make a joke about a Nickelodeon version of Big Brother on Jeffrey Epstein's Island.

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4 hours ago, Action Newsroom said:

Only grief first: the name doesn't jibe well to me and sounds better the other way. CBSViacom.

 

Now the positive:

I for one am happy to hear of the remerger. Both CBS and especially Viacom are hitting their strides to some good successes recently, and this merger was much needed for both (again especially Viacom). They have who I think are the right people to lead the ship and I'm very interested and intrigued to see where things go from here. Hopefully much bigger, sustaining successes (both small/short-term and large/long-term) to come.

I agree. Actually, what would be even better is just calling it what it was before the split (Viacom). ViacomCBS reminds me a little of NBCUniversal (and yes, without the space specifically).

 

As I heard on NPR today, Viacom CEO Bob Bakish would be CEO of the combined company. That tells me that Viacom may be the nominal survivor. I may be wrong though. As CBS is the "old" Viacom and the "new" Viacom is the spin-off, maybe CBS will be the nominal survivor. I don't know (at least yet).

 

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the CBS network. This historically strong network has gone downhill in the past 5 or so years. Will the combined company make it even worse given that many Viacom cable networks basically over the past 9 years have been in bad shape, or what?

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2 hours ago, Conrad said:

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the CBS network. This historically strong network has gone downhill in the past 5 or so years. Will the combined company make it even worse given that many Viacom cable networks basically over the past 9 years have been in bad shape, or what?

Personally, I think if CBS wants to catch up, they need to start making better strides in courting younger audiences. Yes, that is partly what they have half of The CW for, but CBS has historically had a reputation as an old person's network, from the 60s days of The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction, to the greed-fueled dramas in the 80s (think Dallas), to the current crime-heavy lineup, and we all know about the revulsion the coveted 18-34 demographic feels towards stuff that's popular with the elderly.

 

There were two exceptions to this. The first was in the early 70s with the infamous Rural purge. Say what you will about the cancellations and whether or not the move was fair, but it led CBS into a new era of success, keeping the network on top. Of course, it wound up relapsing when NBC and ABC doubled down in the 80s, sending the Tiffany network to 3rd place, ahead of only the nascent Fox. Now, I realize that those were completely different times, and the 70s didn't have the deluge of other media distractions for the broadcast TV industry to contend with, but many of the same principles still stand. Also, there was the 2000s, where big sitcoms and reality shows made it #1, but of course, now they're back to having an older demographic.

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4 hours ago, TennTV1983 said:

 

That should be obvious.

 

 

It'll be weird seeing the Paramount part of the name at the end of syndicated shows like Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, and Inside Edition (as those even in the first Viacom era were not distributed by Paramount, they were distributed by King World) but I think they'll be fine and they will adjust to it eventually but for the first few months it'll probably look weird seeing the Paramount name on an ex-King World distributed show

 

As for the jingle I would do 3 options...

 

Either keep the current jingle they've used since 2007, use the jingle they used in the final months as CBS Paramount Television or bring back the 1987-2006 Paramount Television jingle

 

The choice is up to ViacomCBS

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