The Billionaire Blueprint to Buy Paramount

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Puck’s Bill Cohan to discuss the latest reports about Paramount Global’s potential sale, specifically looking at David Ellison’s pitch to acquire the media empire by purchasing National Amusement, Paramount’s parent company. Matt and Bill discuss Shari Redstone’s willingness to now engage, the financial problems as well as complications and high risk involved with the potential deal, what Ellison could do with the assets he doesn't want, and what the future holds for Paramount Global if no deal is made. Matt finishes the show with a prediction for the opening weekend of ‘Mean Girls’. For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! thetown@spotify.com Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Bill Cohan Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Issa Kwona and I'm Ryan Hunt and we co-host Stadio, a football podcast on the Ring of Podcast Network.
0:06.6	If you like soccer or football, make sure you search for Stadio, a football podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:15.8	It is Friday, January 12th. We've known for a while that the Paramount Global Media Empire is for sale.
0:24.0	It's the smallest and the weakest of the traditional entertainment conglomerates, and we are in
0:28.5	an age of consolidation. I think they're going to have a hit this weekend with the Mean
0:32.8	Girls musical. Sherry Redstone, the heir to her father Sumner's company that includes the Paramount
0:38.0	movie studio, Paramount Plus streamer, a bunch of declining cable networks like MTV and Comedy
0:43.6	Central. She's been talking to anyone and everyone that will make her an offer, but so far she's
0:48.7	rejected them all. I reported in my Puck newsletter last month that David Ellison and his financial
0:54.1	backers are trying to put together an offer for national amusements, which is the parent company of Paramount, also controlled by the Redstones.
1:02.0	Ellison, of course, is the son of Larry Ellison, who founded Oracle and is worth about $150 billion.
1:08.5	The dude literally owns one of the islands of Hawaii.
1:11.5	David has had a nice run in Hollywood lately with Skydance Media, his company.
1:15.3	They co-financed and produced a bunch of stuff, including Top Gun Maverick and the
1:19.1	Mission Impossible movies at Paramount.
1:21.3	The Wall Street Journal followed up on my report on Wednesday and said that the
1:24.7	Ellison offer could be an all-cash offer for national amusements,
1:29.3	with the goal of first gaining control of the parent company, then merging Paramount with Skydance,
1:34.4	giving Ellison full control of the studio. That sounds great, but it's complicated,
1:39.3	because Paramount has a dual-class share structure. The Redstone's have 77% of the voting interest in Paramount via national amusements,
1:48.4	but they only own about 10% of the economic interest in the company. That means there's a whole
1:53.6	group of shareholders, including Warren Buffett, who might not love it if Sherry sells control of the
	...

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