George Cheeks May Level Up in David Ellison’s TV Empire
The last surviving Paramount Global co-CEO is likely to ascend in a new chapter of the company.
George Cheeks, who currently oversees the CBS Studios portfolio and Paramount’s linear TV channels, is said to be poised to add oversight of Skydance‘s television studios, including Warner Bros. TV studios and Paramount TV studios, when the deal closes next week. In November of last year, Paramount Skydance reworked its linear TV business under Cheeks, chair of TV media at Paramount, adding cable outlets BET, Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon to Cheeks’ portfolio alongside CBS.
In the previous Shari Redstone regime, Cheeks was part of a trio titled “the office of the CEO” along with Brian Robbins and Chris McCarthy on an interim basis after CEO Bob Bakish was ousted amid a sale process that ultimately went in the direction of David Ellison’s Skydance Media.
Cheeks’ goal will now be stability, reorganization and to milk those titles for cash, with wide cuts expected across the company as it seeks to harvest the revenue from carriage fees and redistribute to other priorities, like streaming, and paying down debt.
The combined company, notably, also will have to abide by a consent decree negotiated with the 12 states that sued Ellison’s team. That includes having the Paramount and Warners cable channels (Comedy Central-MTV-BET-Nick and HGTV-Food Network-TNT-CNN-Discovery, respectively) negotiate affiliate agreements separately.
On Friday, after Ellison shared on X that once Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery combine they will take on the name Skydance, it was also reported Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were exiting.
Deadline first reported Cheeks’ elevation.
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