Paramount TV Studios is done amid massive cost cutting venture [Updated]

[Update August 13, 1:30 pm]: Amid the news of today’s layoffs, Paramount Television Studios is also shutting down by the end of the week. President Nicole Clemens will also be leaving the company, and every project in development at Paramount TV will move under CBS Studios, per The Hollywood Reporter. Paramount TV has been the studio behind, or has co-produced, shows like 13 Reasons Why, The Offer, Station Eleven, Reacher, Interview With The Vampire, and Time Bandits. As of this writing, it sounds like upcoming series Murderbot, Cross, and Before are still moving forward.

[Original story]: You didn’t think all of that fuckery with erasing the digital archives of Comedy Central and MTV News was the last of it, did you? No, we’re all way too wise to this game by now. The entertainment industry is in flux, and instead of coming up with creative, generative solutions (or, y’know, redistributing their own obscene salaries), studio bosses inevitably turn to slashing and burning through content and the workforce instead. So it goes with Paramount Global’s goal to cut $500 million in costs by the end of the year, as announced on Tuesday. 

In a statement (per Variety), Paramount’s interim co-CEOs George Cheeks, Brian Robbins, and Chris McCarthy said that the cost-cutting “process will take place in three phases, starting today and continuing through the end of the year. We expect 90% of these actions to be complete by the end of September.” So start with the easiest first: the big bosses have already indicated that $300 to $400 million of this reduction is going to come from layoffs; the company “expects to eliminate around 2,000 positions,” approximately 15% of the U.S.-based workforce and predominantly from the marketing and communications teams. 

Meanwhile, a deal is in place for Skydance Media to acquire Paramount Global, and in its evaluation of the company Skydance identified $2 billion in cuts. This round of $500 million is a mere fraction of the total cost-cutting measures, meaning no one at Paramount can feel safe in their jobs for… well, forever, it seems. Does anyone working in media have actual job security? Does anyone anywhere? 

Because the entertainment industry, ubiquitous as its products may be in our lives, is not on solid ground. Studios are being more cautious about investing in original content and jobs for creatives are drying up. The other legacy studios are in more or less the same boat as Paramount; Warner Bros. Discovery (which once flirted with merging with Paramount) has enacted many of the same measures, i.e. taking massive write-downs on its cable networks and wiping digital archives. 

Meanwhile, each company’s individual streaming service is an insatiable beast. Paramount’s streaming business turned a profit for the first time this quarter (per Variety), but the success of streaming comes at the expense of every other facet of the entertainment business—broadcast, cable, and theatrical. The more resources poured into streaming, the less these companies will make in those other areas, like trying to plug one hole while three other leaks spring up. Directing folks from the now-barren Comedy Central website to check out Paramount+ probably nets the company pennies, but that’s the level of desperation we’re dealing with these days. Expect it to get worse before it gets better—because what does better even look like now?