Bob Bakish Says Showtime Will Lean Into Franchises; Promises Brand “Still Matters” Amid Integration With Paramount+

Paramount Global CEO Bakish said Tuesday that while it “didn’t make sense to run Showtime as a 100% stand-alone organization,” he wanted “to make it clear that the [Showtime] brand still matters, and the slate is going to matter even more.”

The label will “lean into franchises,” he told the UBS media conference. “We have not announced anything. But you will see that as we move into 2023.”

Bakish spoke broadly about moves within the company lately, which include layoffs and restructuring, to create a lower-cost, streamlined business. “It’s hard work. It’s transformational. It does affect people. But it unquestionably will produce superior financial results and strategic results,” he said.

“We are embarking on a set of initiatives that we were planning on anyway because they are strategic, but we are definitely accelerating and using the current market as a catalyst,” he said. High content costs, soft ad revenue and a cloudy economic outlook have media companies cutting workers, realigning divisions and in some cases (Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, AMC Networks, Lionsgate) announcing impairment and other charges.

Paramount’s latest efforts include “some work around Showtime, both on the network side and the streaming side” which Bakish called “consolidation economics” — a way to unlock “cost synergies with the broader portfolio.”

“We’ve done a bunch of work around the studio side,” as well. he noted, “which isn’t about changing the creative-facing capabilities of the studio but is very much about creating scale and associated economics.” Marketing is under the microscope too.

Paramount+ and Showtime in August were combined into a single streaming app, the latest move to bundle Paramount’s brands on the Par+ platform. The company has also explored shuttering Showtime’s streaming service and folding its content into Paramount+.