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    ViacomCBS renames itself as it plays catch-up with Paramount+, its streaming service.

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    On Tuesday, Shari Redstone staged her second hourslong investor presentation in two years. Both events were designed for the same purpose — to reposition her old-line media company, ViacomCBS, as a streaming giant in the making, one capable of competing head-on with Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video, despite a late start.This time, there was less snickering.“Some of you thought we were on an impossible mission,” Robert M. Bakish, the chief executive of ViacomCBS, said during the presentation on Tuesday. “It’s not only possible. It’s happening.”To highlight the importance of its fast-growing Paramount+ streaming service, Ms. Redstone, the company’s chair, announced that ViacomCBS would rename itself Paramount Global.Paramount+ had 32.8 million subscribers worldwide at the end of its most recent quarter, up from fewer than 19 million a year earlier. In the three months that ended on Dec. 31, Paramount+ added 7.3 million customers, the result of offerings like “1883,” the prequel to “Yellowstone”; “Clifford the Big Red Dog”; and National Football League games. (A year earlier, ViacomCBS was adding about a million streaming subscribers a quarter.)The company’s streaming portfolio (Paramount+ and niche services from Showtime, BET and Nickelodeon) now has about 56 million subscribers. Mr. Bakish said that number would grow to 100 million by 2024, more than the roughly 70 million the company had previously forecast. The company also raised its 2024 streaming revenue goal to $9 billion, from $6 billion.Streaming brought in about $4.2 billion last year, including advertising sales from the free Pluto TV service.Paramount+ unveiled a barrage of additional programming to fuel continued growth. The expanded lineup will include fresh content from franchises including “Yellowstone,” “Beavis and Butt-Head,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Real World,” “Dora the Explorer,” “NCIS,” “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Transformers” and “South Park.” Paramount+ will be the exclusive first stop after theatrical distribution for all Paramount Pictures movies beginning in 2024. (Many previously went to Epix, a premium cable channel.)Starting this summer in the United States, Paramount+ subscribers will be able to upgrade to receive Showtime content, including the new hit drama “Yellowjackets” and older series like “Billions.”ViacomCBS shares declined about 6 percent in after-hours trading. Richard Greenfield, a founder of the research firm LightShed Partners, cited investor concern about Mr. Bakish’s “meaningfully stepping up spending” on content.It may be growing quickly, but Paramount+ continues to lag behind competitors like Disney+, which added 11.8 million subscribers worldwide in its most recent quarter to reach 129.8 million. Netflix has about 222 million. More

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      New Paramount chairman continues to clean house, showing another executive the door.

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      Regime change at Hollywood studios is almost always bloody. A new king or queen arrives and those loyal to the previous court lose their jobs.But the guillotine has been dropping at Paramount Pictures with surprising speed, creating something of a panic inside the 109-year-old film company.ViacomCBS, which owns Paramount, ousted Paramount’s chairman, James N. Gianopulos, on Sept. 13 and replaced him with Brian Robbins, a children’s television executive. By Sept. 17, Chris Petrikin, the studio’s respected executive vice president of global communications and corporate branding, had been shown the door. Emma Watts, president of the Paramount Motion Picture Group, was dismissed last week. And on Thursday, Paramount parted with its animation president, Mireille Soria.Paramount declined to comment on the departures.The speed with which Mr. Robbins is making changes reflects his personal style — forward charge! — and the vulnerable position in which Paramount and its corporate parent find themselves.Paramount was once the most powerful studio in Hollywood, delivering culture-defining films like “The Godfather,” “Grease,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Forrest Gump” and “Beverly Hills Cop.” But severe mismanagement in the 2010s left it on life support. Mr. Gianopulos pulled it back from the brink, but the studio remains an also-ran, with many analysts viewing it as unequipped to compete with franchise-rich competitors like Disney and Universal.Similarly, ViacomCBS ranks as a small player in the streaming business that has come to dominate the media industry. Mr. Robbins, who has online entertainment experience on his résumé and little attachment to calcified Hollywood business models, was installed at Paramount because ViacomCBS wants the studio to prioritize streaming distribution for films — in particular, feeding content to Paramount+, the conglomerate’s nascent streaming service. More

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      Head of Paramount Pictures is ousted as ViacomCBS focuses on streaming.

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      In 2017, Viacom turned to one of Hollywood’s most seasoned and respected executives, James N. Gianopulos, to revive its flatlining Paramount Pictures operation. Mr. Gianopulos quickly stabilized the 1910s-era studio — repairing relationships with filmmakers and producers, building a thriving television division from near-scratch, and restoring Paramount to profitability.He was ousted on Monday, with his status as the consummate Hollywood insider having curdled into a liability, at least to ViacomCBS, the conglomerate that owns Paramount, where streaming, streaming, streaming is the new currency of the realm.Brian Robbins, 58, who runs Viacom’s children’s television business, will succeed Mr. Gianopulos, 69, as chief executive of Paramount Pictures, ViacomCBS said. Emma Watts, 51, the president of Paramount’s Motion Picture Group, was notably passed over for the job.The reversal of fortune for Mr. Gianopulos, who had two years left on his contract, did not shock the movie capital, where speculation about his standing inside ViacomCBS had been gossiped about for months. Shari Redstone, who controls the company, had signaled in private that Mr. Gianopulos had become a frustration. In particular, he had, at times, resisted a ViacomCBS effort to prioritize the Paramount+ streaming service at the expense of ticket sales and theaters. Big-screen releases remain of crucial importance to studio partners like Tom Cruise, who stars in Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible” series and coming “Top Gun” sequel.Shari Redstone, the chair of ViacomCBS, in July. She has been pushing the company to prioritize streaming.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesBut the ouster rattled the film business nonetheless. It was seen by some as barbarous — tradition holds that senior statesmen get to write their own endings. And it added to a changing of the guard: Ron Meyer, a longtime film power at Universal, left last year amid a sex scandal, and Alan F. Horn, the chief creative officer at Walt Disney Studios, is widely expected to retire in the coming months.Bob Bakish, the chief executive of ViacomCBS, said in a statement that the leadership change would “build on Paramount’s strong momentum, ensuring it continues to engage audiences at scale while embracing viewers’ evolving tastes and habits.” He said Mr. Robbins was an “expert” at developing franchises by “leaning into the unique strengths of new and established platforms.”Mr. Bakish called Mr. Gianopulos “a towering figure in Hollywood” and thanked him for revitalizing Paramount. In the same statement, Mr. Gianopulos recounted a list of major changes he had successfully navigated over his nearly 40-year career — such as the introduction of VCRs and online film rentals — and wished Mr. Robbins “all the very best success.”For many film industry stalwarts, Mr. Robbins is an affront to their identities; he comes from television, said while holding one’s nose. Mr. Robbins has experience as a movie producer and director. But much of the Hollywood establishment also looks down on that part of his résumé, which includes “Norbit,” a commercially successful but critically reviled Eddie Murphy vehicle from 2007. Not exactly Oscar bait.Mr. Robbins gained fame as a young actor in the 1980s by playing a mulleted rebel on the ABC sitcom “Head of the Class.” In the 1990s and 2000s he worked as a television producer (“Kenan & Kel” on Nickelodeon, “Smallville” on the WB) and a film director (“Norbit,” “Varsity Blues”).By 2009, however, Mr. Robbins started to become disillusioned with Hollywood. Younger audiences — his specialty — were living online. He began experimenting with low-budget films starring YouTube personalities like Lucas Cruikshank (a.k.a. Fred Figgelhorn) and started a YouTube channel, AwesomenessTV, aimed at teenage girls. In 2013, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was then running DreamWorks Animation, bought AwesomenessTV for about $33 million. (Mr. Katzenberg remains a mentor.)“There is no movie business anymore!” Mr. Robbins was quoted by Fast Company as saying in 2013. “The model’s broken, and I see that as an opportunity.”Mr. Robbins was named president of Nickelodeon, which is also owned by ViacomCBS, in 2018. He has become known inside Viacom as a plain-spoken, never-say-die futurist who believes that Paramount+, the company’s relatively small streaming service, must be supercharged. Mr. Robbins has eagerly rerouted new children’s programming toward Paramount+ and away from Nickelodeon’s traditional cable channels. One such show, a reboot of “iCarly,” has been a hit for the streaming service.Mr. Gianopulos, or “Jim G” as everyone in Hollywood refers to him, will remain a consultant until the end of the year, ViacomCBS said. “Jim is nothing less than legendary in this business, and I am humbled and grateful to him for his years of mentorship and friendship,” Mr. Robbins said in a statement.Mr. Robbins will continue to lead Nickelodeon, ViacomCBS said. But he will not get all of Mr. Gianopulos’s portfolio; Paramount Television Studios will now report to David Nevins, the chairman and chief executive of Showtime Networks. More

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      Can Paramount+ Succeed? One Producer Hopes to Make It So.

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      Like so many other writer-directors, Alex Kurtzman grew up worshiping film.But he is adaptable — and in the streaming era, that is a very lucrative trait.Mr. Kurtzman, the onetime writer of the “Transformers” movies and the director of the 2017 film “The Mummy,” recently renegotiated his deal at CBS Studios into one of the richest there. Under the $160 million, five-and-a-half-year agreement, he will continue to shepherd the growing “Star Trek” television universe for ViacomCBS’s Paramount+ streaming platform.He will also create shows, including a limited series based on “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” which he will direct for Showtime, and the long-awaited adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.” That limited series is likely to be sold to an outside streaming service.Mr. Kurtzman’s deal is the latest in a string intended to give prolific producers, like Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy for Netflix and Jordan Peele with Amazon Studios, free rein to create content that can feed insatiable consumer appetites and hopefully boost subscriptions for streaming. This one puts the ambitions of CBS Studios — the production arm for the networks and channels under the ViacomCBS umbrella — squarely in the hands of the 47-year-old Mr. Kurtzman.“From the first meeting I had with Alex, it was so obvious to me that he’s our future,” George Cheeks, the president and chief executive of the CBS Entertainment Group, said in an interview. “The guy can develop for broadcast. He can develop for premium streaming, broad streaming. He understands the business. He’s got tremendous empathy. He’s creatively nimble.“When you make these investments,” Mr. Cheeks continued, “you need to know that this talent can actually deliver multiple projects at the same time across multiple platforms.”“Star Trek: Discovery” is one of five “Star Trek” shows that Mr. Kurtzman has produced.Michael Gibson/CBSThe road ahead won’t be easy for ViacomCBS. Its fledgling Paramount+ was a late entry into streaming, and is essentially a rebranded and expanded version of CBS All Access. The company promotes the service’s news and live sports, including National Football League games, along with “a mountain of movies.” (“A Quiet Place 2” debuted on it on July 13.) But Paramount+, in combination with a smaller Showtime streaming offering, had just 36 million subscribers as of May.While it hopes to reach 65 million to 75 million global subscribers by 2024, that’s still a far cry from Netflix’s worldwide total of almost 210 million and the nearly 104 million for Disney+. Even NBCUniversal announced on Thursday that it had 54 million subscribers for its Peacock streaming service, thanks to an Olympic push.And with consolidation mania consuming Hollywood, many analysts are not confident that ViacomCBS will be able to continue to compete with the larger companies on its own.“I think it’s hard to imagine any of these companies going it alone; I think they are all too small,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners. “The challenge, whether it’s Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+ or Hulu, is that all of these companies are still conflicted over what do they put on linear TV, what do they put in a movie theater and what do they put on streaming.“Netflix, Amazon and Apple do not have that debate every day,” he added. “All their assets go into one thing. Here, they have to balance, and that makes all of their streaming services suboptimal.”Those corporate considerations don’t seem to bother Mr. Kurtzman. Rather than bemoaning the diminished state of movies or anguishing over the lack of viable buyers as the market shrinks, he said he was finding the current climate to be creatively invigorating and remarkably fluid.Mr. Kurtzman said he wanted to make the “Star Trek” universe as expansive as the Marvel universe.Philip Cheung for The New York Times“I do believe that the line between movies and television is gone now, and that to me is a tremendous opportunity,” he said in an interview. “For me and for showrunners like me, we can tell stories in a new way. We are not limited by the narrow definition of how you tell a story — something must be told in 10 hours, or something must be told in two hours.”Mr. Kurtzman began working with CBS in 2009 when he developed the reboot of “Hawaii Five-0” with his former writing partner, Roberto Orci. In 2017, he began reimagining the “Star Trek” universe for the company, building on his familiarity with the franchise after co-writing the two J.J. Abrams-directed “Star Trek” movies several years earlier.Since then, he has produced five shows in the universe initially imagined in the 1960s by Gene Roddenberry, and all will be on Paramount+. They are “Star Trek: Discovery”; “Star Trek: Picard”; “Star Trek: Lower Decks”; “Star Trek: Prodigy,” which will debut in the fall; and “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” set for release in 2022. ViacomCBS says “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Picard” are among the most watched original series on Paramount+.Also in the works are “Section 31,” starring Michelle Yeoh, and a show built around the “Starfleet Academy,” which will be aimed at a younger audience.But how much “Star Trek” does one planet need?“I think we’re just getting started,” Mr. Kurtzman said. “There’s just so much more to be had.”He recently finished a four-month shoot in London for the first half of “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” a 10-episode series based on the 1976 David Bowie film. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a new alien character who arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution.Mr. Kurtzman said he loved the experience of working on the series, buoyed by the fact that the pandemic allowed him and his writing partner, Jenny Lumet, the opportunity to complete all the episodes before production began.“I would absolutely not be doing anything differently if we were making this as a film,” he said. “I’m working with movie stars in three different countries, shooting sequences that are certainly not typical television sequences, all of which I can only do because of my experience working in films.”Ms. Lumet met Mr. Kurtzman in 2015. He requested getting together after seeing the film “Rachel Getting Married,” which she wrote. Ms. Lumet said she was surprised that this “sci-fi robot guy in khakis” was interested in meeting her at all.“All he wanted to do was talk about tiny moments, tiny real moments in movies and tiny moments in television shows, and he was so gentle and willing to listen,” she said. “Usually, the robot guys aren’t willing to listen to anything, and that’s all he wanted to do. It was really cool.”The two have worked on everything from “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” to the short-lived “Clarice” and “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” Next, they plan to tackle the story of Ms. Lumet’s grandmother Lena Horne in a limited series for Showtime.Those around Mr. Kurtzman credit his early experience in television (“Alias,” “Fringe,” “Sleepy Hollow”) for giving him the ability to manage multiple projects at one time without appearing to be overwhelmed. “He has an almost supernatural ability to keep separate train tracks in his head, this show, this show and this show, and he can jump from one to the other,” Ms. Lumet said. “He is one of the few people who can keep all the trains running.”His work as a film screenwriter began on Michael Bay’s 2005 film, “The Island.” Soon, he and Mr. Orci were being called “Hollywood’s secret weapons” for their ability to crack scripts on lucrative existing properties that others couldn’t (like “Transformers”). That led him to consider “Star Trek” in the same expansive terms that Marvel Studios views its cinematic universe. It’s a strategy that CBS Studios thoroughly endorses.Mr. Kurtzman wrote two “Star Trek” films with Roberto Orci, right. J.J. Abrams, middle, directed both.Zade Rosenthal/Paramount PicturesDavid Stapf, president of CBS Studios, points to “Star Trek: Prodigy” as an example. The animated show, one of the first animated “Star Trek” shows geared at children, is set to debut in the fall on Paramount+ before moving to Nickelodeon.“It obviously builds fans at a much younger generation, which helps with consumer products,” Mr. Stapf said. “But it’s also a smart way to look at building an entire universe.”To Mr. Stapf, who has overseen CBS Studios since 2004, the “Marvelization” of “Star Trek” can mean many things.“Anything goes, as long as it can fit into the ‘Star Trek’ ethos of inspiration, optimism and the general idea that humankind is good,” he said. “So comedy, adult animation, kids’ animation — you name the genre, and there’s probably a ‘Star Trek’ version of it.”That’s good news to Mr. Kurtzman, who wants to get much weirder with the franchise, which will celebrate its 55th birthday this year. He points to a pitch from Graham Wagner (“Portlandia,” “Silicon Valley”), centered on the character Worf, that he calls “incredibly funny, poignant and touching.”“If it were up to me only, I would be pushing the boundaries much further than I think most people would want,” he said. “I think we might get there. Marvel has actually proven that you can. But you have to build a certain foundation in order to get there and we’re still building our foundation.” More

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      Stephen Colbert Returns to ‘Late Show’ Stage Before Vaccinated Fans

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      In a sign of life going back to normal, a capacity crowd at the Ed Sullivan Theater — face masks optional — roared for the highest-rated late night host.There was a hug for the bandleader, Jon Batiste, without any need for social distancing. There were chants of “Ste-phen! Ste-phen! Ste-phen!” And a standing ovation that lasted a minute and a half.“So how ya been?” Stephen Colbert said to a roar of laughter from a crowd of more than 420 people — all vaccinated, most of them maskless — at the Ed Sullivan Theater in Midtown Manhattan.The CBS late night host was back in his element on Monday, connecting with a capacity crowd 460 days after the coronavirus pandemic had emptied the theater where he has worked since 2015. He was reveling in the moment.“I am proud to say that we are the first show back up on Broadway,” Mr. Colbert said, adding a profane taunt of “The Lion King.”The return to the stage of late night’s highest-rated host was one of the clearest signs yet, in television and in New York cultural life, that things were starting to get back to normal.During an interview in his office last week, Mr. Colbert sounded eager to get back in the spotlight. “I’m like a dog who’s got his head out the window and can smell that we’re near the farm,” he said. “I’m ready to be out of the cage.”There were 213 audience-less episodes of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” broadcasts that came with off-camera chuckles from his executive producer, Chris Licht, and his wife, Evie, in place of big laughs from a packed hall. The usually buttoned-up host ditched his suit and grew out his hair.The remote version started in March 2020, when Mr. Colbert returned to TV with a surprise monologue from a bubble bath at his home. In recent months, he has put on the show from a retrofitted supply closet above the Ed Sullivan Theater.During an episode last week, he appeared to have had enough of the small-scale version. He broke away from his monologue to complain about Mr. Licht’s hovering presence — “I can’t escape him!” — and other annoyances of lockdown television production. The rant was filled with bleeped-out words and ended with him shaking a fist at the heavens and crying, “What you got, old man? Is that all you got? Give it to me — I can take it!”Describing the screed, Mr. Licht said in an interview that the host had “kind of lost his mind.” Mr. Colbert likened the on-air moment to an “emotional breakdown.”He started pushing for a return on March 18, the day he taped a sketch backstage, surrounded by staff members. It was, in Mr. Colbert’s telling, a lot of fun to be with his colleagues in the building again. He summoned Mr. Licht.“That’s when I said to Chris, ‘It’s really important we get back,’” Mr. Colbert said.He continued: “I think we’ve done the show the best we can in this isolated circumstance. I think the best way to do the show now is to find a way to get back in front of the audience, because it feels more honest to the national experience right now.”Jon Stewart was a guest on Monday night’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”Scott Kowalchyk/CBSMr. Colbert set strict conditions for the return: There would be a full studio audience; there would be no mask requirement; and there would be no social distancing between him and Mr. Batiste.“We made a conscious decision that really was following his lead as a performer, which was, ‘I don’t want to go halfsies back into that room,’” Mr. Licht said.For three months the host regularly nudged his producer on how close he was to standing face to face with an audience again. “At the end of every day, I would say: ‘Chris, so what’s the answer? I mean, the answer can be no, but I just want an answer,’” Mr. Colbert said.Mr. Licht worked with ViacomCBS to get the necessary clearances. By mid-May, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted indoor regulations for mask use among vaccinated people, the show was well on its way to a return. Approval from New York State came May 22, Mr. Licht said.After Mr. Colbert announced, three weeks ago, that he would soon be back onstage, others followed suit, including Bruce Springsteen, who said his “Springsteen on Broadway” show would return to the St. James Theater on June 26. Mr. Colbert’s NBC rival, Jimmy Fallon, welcomed back a full audience of just under 200 people for “The Tonight Show” last week, though attendees have been required to wear masks in his 30 Rockefeller Plaza studio.The Ed Sullivan Theater, built in 1927, has hosted a number of dramatic moments in broadcast and New York history, including landmark performances by Elvis Presley and the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and David Letterman’s return to broadcasting six days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.It was restored to its former glory after CBS bought the building, for $4 million, as the venue for Mr. Letterman’s program in 1993. When Mr. Colbert succeeded him in 2015, the network refurbished it anew at a cost of $18 million. Until Monday, the last “Late Show” broadcast from its stage took place March 12, 2020, when the host delivered his lines to empty seats.Mr. Licht said he was concerned about finding enough people willing to show up for the Monday taping so soon after pandemic restrictions had been lifted, a worry that proved unfounded. Twenty minutes after tickets were made available online, the show had received 20,000 requests, the producer said.The vast majority of those who saw the return had their masks on their laps or in their pockets. There was even the sound of scattered coughing, and no one seemed shaken up by it.Mr. Colbert with Evie, his wife, at the end of his monologue. Scott Kowalchyk/CBSAs Mr. Colbert wrapped up his monologue, he brought out Evie, his wife, who became a mainstay of the show during his remote broadcasts. “Audience, he’s all yours now,” she said. “Don’t forget to laugh, because he really needs it.”Mr. Colbert then did a remote interview with the comedian Dana Carvey, who offered his impersonation of President Biden, before welcoming his former “Daily Show” colleague Jon Stewart to the guest chair.“Can I lick these people?” Mr. Stewart said, looking at the packed house.To close the show, Mr. Batiste performed a new song of his with his band, Stay Human, and a group of gospel singers. Mr. Colbert joined everyone else onstage and danced.The song was called “Freedom.” More

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      How ViacomCBS's Content Deals Cost U.S. Taxpayers $4 Billion

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      A new report details ViacomCBS’s use of a labyrinthine tax shelter to sell rights to its shows and films overseas.Dismissed by critics and devoured by fans, “Transformers: Age of Extinction” was the top box office film in 2014, bringing in $1.1 billion, with more than three-quarters of those dollars coming from overseas. More

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      ViacomCBS stock tanks, losing more than half its value in less than a week.

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      Shares of ViacomCBS, the media goliath led by Shari Redstone, took a nosedive this week, with the company losing more than half of its market value in just four days.The stock was as high as $100 on Monday. By the close of trading on Friday it had fallen to just over $48, a drop of more than 51 percent in less than a week.There’s no better way to say it: The company’s stock tanked.What happened? Several things all at once. First, it is worth noting that ViacomCBS had actually been on a bit of a tear up until this week’s meltdown, rising nearly tenfold in the past 12 months. About a year ago, it was trading at around $12 per share.That rally came as the company, like the rest of the media industry, had made a move toward streaming. It recently launched Paramount+ to compete against the likes of Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and others. The service tapped ViacomCBS’s vast archive of content from the CBS broadcast network, Paramount Film Studios and several cable channels, including Nickelodeon and MTV.That shift matters because ViacomCBS has been hit hard by an overall decline in cable viewership. The company’s pretax profits have fallen nearly 17 percent from two years ago, and its debt has topped more than $21 billion.But the stock rose so much that Robert M. Bakish, ViacomCBS’s chief executive, decided to take advantage of the boon by offering new shares to raise as much as $3 billion. The underwriters who managed the sale priced the offering at around $85 per share earlier this week, a discount to where it had been trading on Monday.You could say it backfired. When a company issues new stock, it normally dilutes the value of current shareholders, so some drop in price is expected. But a few days after the offering, one of Wall Street’s most influential research firms, MoffettNathanson, published a report that questioned the company’s value and downgraded the stock to a “sell.” The stock should really only be worth $55, MoffettNathanson said. That started the nosedive.“We never, ever thought we would see Viacom trading close to $100 per share,” read the report, which was written by Michael Nathanson, a co-founder of the firm. “Obviously, neither did ViacomCBS’s management,” it continued, citing the new stock offering.Streaming is still a money-losing enterprise, and that means the old line media companies must still endure more losses over more years before they can return to profitability.In the case of ViacomCBS, it seemed to hasten the cord-cutting when it signed a new licensing agreement with the NFL that will cost the company more than $2 billion a year through 2033. As part of the agreement, ViacomCBS also plans to stream the games on Paramount+, which is much cheaper than a cable bundle.As the games, considered premium programming, shift to streaming, “the industry runs the risk of both higher cord-cutting and greater viewer erosion,” Mr. Nathanson wrote.On Friday, an analyst with Wells Fargo also downgraded the stock, slashing the bank’s price target to $59.But the market decided it wasn’t even worth that much. It closed on Friday barely a quarter above 48 bucks. More

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      Why Oprah’s Meghan and Harry Special Won’t Have a Streaming Home

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The British Royal FamilyInterview and FalloutWhat Meghan and Harry DisclosedWhat We LearnedMemories of DianaAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Oprah’s Meghan and Harry Special Won’t Have a Streaming HomeThe three participants’ ties to Netflix and Apple, along with Ms. Winfrey’s desire to reach a big live-viewing audience, paved the way to an old-school deal with CBS.Oprah Winfrey’s interview of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry was a rarity in the age of streaming: a cultural event powered by network TV.Credit…Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesEdmund Lee and March 9, 2021, 6:28 p.m. ETOprah Winfrey pulled off what has become a rare television event: the tell-all interview that turns into a cultural moment. On Sunday, an audience of more than 17 million watched bombshell revelations tumble out of the mouths of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry as they described their lives under the palace gaze in a two-hour CBS special that rivaled any of the royal dramas on the Netflix series “The Crown.”Social-media discussion of the show has continued since the credits rolled, leaving many people who missed it wondering where they could stream it. For the next 30 days, the special will be available on CBS.com and the CBS app. But after that, it will not have a home on any streaming platform.That’s because, from the start of negotiations, Ms. Winfrey’s company, Harpo Productions, the owner of the program, envisioned the special as something suited to a big broadcast network, three people with knowledge of the deal said. Harpo did not even attempt to sell the streaming rights to Netflix or Paramount+, the streaming platform owned by CBS’s parent company, ViacomCBS, the people said.Harpo’s old-school strategy of avoiding subscription-video-on-demand services came about partly because of the complications presented by Ms. Winfrey’s deal to make programs for Apple’s streaming platform, AppleTV+, the people said. Ms. Winfrey’s AppleTV+ deal includes an interview series, “The Oprah Conversation,” which has featured Barack Obama, Dolly Parton and Mariah Carey. Another wrinkle was the roughly $100 million production deal that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Prince Harry struck last year with Netflix, the people said.Ms. Winfrey’s company also did not approach cable networks when seeking the right venue for the special, the people said. Hoping for the greatest possible reach, she sought a deal with one of the major broadcast networks, which do not require a subscription and consistently draw the largest audiences for live viewing. Harpo also liked the idea of appearing in the Sunday night slot after “60 Minutes,” the highly rated CBS News show where Ms. Winfrey was a special correspondent in 2017 and 2018, the people said.As part of the $7 million deal, ViacomCBS won something valuable: the rights to broker international distribution on behalf of Harpo. The program aired Monday on ITV in Britain and will be available in more than 80 countries.Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, cut a deal with Ms. Winfrey in 2019 to produce a series on mental health. Credit…Joe Pugliese/Harpo ProductionsMs. Winfrey revealed during the interview that she had spent about three years trying to land the exclusive. Along the way, she went into business with Meghan and her husband. Adding to the jumble of media alliances, the couple in 2019 cut a deal with Ms. Winfrey to produce a documentary series about mental health that is scheduled to stream on AppleTV+.Some industry observers were surprised by the CBS deal because of another corporate entanglement: Ms. Winfrey’s long relationship with Discovery Communications, the cable giant that invested in her cable network, OWN, over a decade ago. David Zaslav, Discovery’s intensely competitive chief executive, decided to continue the investment even after OWN experienced growing pains early on. The company now controls the network, which has become a ratings success. Discovery also recently launched its own streamer, Discovery+, where Ms. Winfrey hosts an interview series, “Super Soul.” (The company bought advertising time on the CBS special and provided a commercial featuring Ms. Winfrey.)It turns out that digital television, originally meant as a convenient alternative to clunky cable, can be just as knotty and cumbrous as the business it’s trying to replace.The morning after her interview with the Sussexes, Ms. Winfrey appeared on “CBS This Morning,” a program anchored by her close friend, Gayle King, where she presented extra material that didn’t make the special. CBS announced on Tuesday that it will show the special again Friday night at 8.John Koblin More