Paramount Television Studios Shutting Down Amid Cutbacks

[AmishParadise]

Excerpt from the August 13, 2024 article over at Deadline.com by Nellie Andreeva...


There have been two major rounds of layoffs at Paramount Global this year, with Paramount Television Studios as a primary target in both. After its team was gutted in the February 13 cuts, as part of today’s reductions, the division is being shuttered altogether. It will cease operations after 11 years at the end of this week. Paramount TV Studios President Nicole Clemens and CBS President and CEO George Cheeks, who oversees the division, announced the decision in separate memos.

(Click here to read the full article.)

[Member-839946]

Inconceivable. Paramount course corrected from outdated, old fashioned, primitive content to a slate of offerings much more in tune with the world we live in today. I, for one, simply do not understand how this is possible.

[steve_dave]

For those who won’t click the link:

“To be clear, this is not a decision based on how PTVS performed. This move is the result of significant changes in the TV and streaming marketplace and the need to streamline our company,” Cheeks said. “Under Nicole’s leadership, this studio consistently punched above its weight in attracting top storytellers and stars to create best-in-class series. I want to thank every PTVS employee for shepherding a slate of shows that helped usher Paramount into the streaming era.”

The active projects will also move to CBS Studios which will still exist.

[Member-839946]

Originally Posted by steve_dave

“To be clear, this is not a decision based on how PTVS performed.

Thanks. The official denial confirms the original hypothesis.

[RetroRobert]

Does this also affect physical media? I've noticed lots of the CBS/Paramount tv-on-dvd sets are getting scarce depending on the title. Many have been out of stock or on backorder. Wondering if those will be discontinued at some point.

[Member-839946]

Originally Posted by RetroRobert

Does this also affect physical media? I've noticed lots of the CBS/Paramount tv-on-dvd sets are getting scarce depending on the title. Many have been out of stock or on backorder. Wondering if those will be discontinued at some point.

Do you know of any list(s) that would have info like this? I've been trying to think of what I might want, but it's a tedious process ("I wonder if this is on dvd. Oh, it is. Who has it?")

[RetroRobert]

Originally Posted by ReedSolomon

Do you know of any list(s) that would have info like this? I've been trying to think of what I might want, but it's a tedious process ("I wonder if this is on dvd. Oh, it is. Who has it?")

Not that I know of. They have a lot of titles in their catalog. Many have gone out of print but are still easily available by 3rd party sellers. But then there are some that go for higher costs because they are getting hard to find and sellers are aware of it. Man, it's like the end of an era. I know it's been coming for a while with many saying DVD has been dead for years. But seeing it come down to this point, it's just difficult to understand why the general public gave away their control to the companies by jumping onto streaming. Many still swear by "stream this" and "stream that" but I just don't like it. Never have.

[steve_dave]

Originally Posted by RetroRobert

Does this also affect physical media? I've noticed lots of the CBS/Paramount tv-on-dvd sets are getting scarce depending on the title. Many have been out of stock or on backorder. Wondering if those will be discontinued at some point.

No. This actually belongs in the TV section, all this affects are the employees who lost jobs. Active or soon to be active projects move to CBS Studios, Paramount Home Entertainment handles home media for titles coming from
the shuttered Paramount Television Studios.

[RetroRobert]

Originally Posted by steve_dave

No. This actually belongs in the TV section, all this affects are the employees who lost jobs. Active or soon to be active projects move to CBS Studios, Paramount Home Entertainment handles home media for titles coming from
the shuttered Paramount Television Studios.

Good to know. Sadly, all of these constant changes and sales end up affecting regular everyday working people.

[bigshot]

Paramount is being sold and it's cashing out. TV and cable is dying. They're getting out while they still can. There will be more divisions shuttering in the near future. It'll take a year or two to dissolve it all, but eventually Paramount will just be a licensing brand without production any more.

[IndyMLVC]

Originally Posted by bigshot

Paramount is being sold and it's cashing out. TV and cable is dying. They're getting out while they still can. There will be more divisions shuttering in the near future. It'll take a year or two to dissolve it all, but eventually Paramount will just be a licensing brand without production any more.

The state of the entertainment industry breaks my heart.

[milojthatch]

Originally Posted by IndyMLVC

The state of the entertainment industry breaks my heart.

Don't totally disagree. At this point, I just want as much from the past I care about on a disc and I should be good entertainment wise going from there.

[CarbonUnitM78]

Originally Posted by ReedSolomon

I need to step up my "get my favs before they're gone" effort. Funny how time changes slowly on this side of the change, and it seems like overnight on the other side. Leads to complacency.

I'm in the same boat. There are a lot of releases that I dragged my feet on purchasing thinking that they will be available forever. Only to find out that they have quietly gone out of print and are either hard to come by or are insanely expensive.

Originally Posted by RetroRobert

Stuff is still available but then for some reason, certain seasons of a series are hard-to-find or discontinued. So those end up being more expensive if you can find a seller who selling a used or new copy they have in their possession. Good luck!

I have noticed that usually the later seasons of TV shows on DVD get more scarce and expensive than earlier seasons because the studio makes less of them due to declining sales and declining quality of a show. Other times it may be that a series is out of print and a particular season happens to sell out sooner with no new production planned.

Originally Posted by milojthatch

Don't totally disagree. At this point, I just want as much from the past I care about on a disc and I should be good entertainment wise going from there.

I agree. Of course, hoping that the disc doesn't fail at some point, which we are finding out is happening to certain releases. That's what concerns me. I'm thinking of backing up certain titles to a hard drive but that might take up a lot of space. Blu-ray upgrades is also an option.

[bigshot]

When physical media is gone, it will be collectors with disc collections that will digitize them, curate, and share them with other collectors. That is where we’ll get our fix of old entertainment. The streaming moguls won’t care because that old stuff doesn’t sell.

[CouncilSpectre]

Originally Posted by bigshot

When physical media is gone, it will be collectors with disc collections that will digitize them, curate, and share them with other collectors. That is where we’ll get our fix of old entertainment. The streaming moguls won’t care because that old stuff doesn’t sell.

Streaming could die tomorrow and I'd barely bat an eyelid or care. Probably one of, if not THE defining factor in the decline of physical media. People didn't suddenly lose interest in watching old movies/television, streaming just changed how most of us consume it. Remove those platforms and it's back to studios either releasing this stuff themselves or licensing it out again if they want to continue making $$$ off of it.

[Deadend45]

Posted in the wrong thread.

Originally Posted by CouncilSpectre

People didn't suddenly lose interest in watching old movies/television, streaming just changed how most of us consume it.

I dont know how you missed it but for over a year streaming services have greatly cut-back on the number of (short-lived) shows they carry and many of the studios who made those shows have shutdown or severely reduced staff.
And yes that includes diseny and netflix, amazon, etc. etc, plus they all announced more plans to cut-back on new productions

[UHDLoverForever]

Originally Posted by Deadend45

I dont know how you missed it but for over a year streaming services have greatly cut-back on the number of (short-lived) shows they carry and many of the studios who made those shows have shutdown or severely reduced staff.
And yes that includes diseny and netflix, amazon, etc. etc, plus they all announced more plans to cut-back on new productions

What happened is simply that streaming services overloaded people with new stuff coming out, creating a tiring oversaturation. Nevermind the pandemic temporarily increasing the demand, and studios didn't realize that it would fall once the pandemic ended.

[bigshot]

Originally Posted by CouncilSpectre

People didn't suddenly lose interest in watching old movies/television, streaming just changed how most of us consume it.

Most people in their early twenties have no interest in physical media nor old movies. Star Wars is an old movie to them… and it is. 1977 was an awful long time ago. Old movies are aging out the way old time radio and singing cowboys aged out after my dad’s generation. Time marches on. Some stuff will be remembered, but less and less of it will be a part of the consciousness of the general public as each year passes. It’ll just be old people and curates eventually.

[UHDLoverForever]

Originally Posted by bigshot

Most people in their early twenties have no interest in physical media nor old movies. Star Wars is an old movie to them… and it is. 1977 was an awful long time ago. Old movies are aging out the way old time radio and singing cowboys aged out after my dad’s generation. Time marches on. Some stuff will be remembered, but less and less of it will be a part of the consciousness of the general public as each year passes. It’ll just be old people and curates eventually.

Popular culture has always been about the newest and shiniest thing. The mainstream is like that. But classic old works will find an audience. Casablanca has found fans in every generation since then, and it's over 80 years old. It's simply a great film, and great art from every era deserves to be celebrated. Works of art can last centuries or more after they were made, but they become a niche for fans of that artform. The average person hasn't read Shakespeare's plays and the vast majority of well-established classics, but there is always an audience for them. That's the definition of classic. There will always be an audience for Hitchcock and Hawks' films decades and centuries from now, they left an indelible and huge mark of cinema, and their films are simply great films if one gives them a chance, even if nearly all of said audience to them in the decades and centuries from now will be composed of film fans, not the average person (which is already true to some extent). The audience of Beethoven and Mozart is a niche now, and has been for many decades, centuries really. Because the truth is: the average person is not as deeply invested in any artform, learning about it and broadening their horizons and tastes the way we are, and that's fine, it's true for every area of human knowledge, just as most people are not really interested in physics. Hence why a film like Tár, perhaps the best of 2022, was never going to find popular appeal, and it's always going to be a film mostly for hardcore cinephiles, with the average person easily dismissing it as just "boring" and "hard to understand". Another important thing is that often people when they get older become more open minded to older works. Young people, by the nature of being young, immature and pursuing trends, have always been more likely dismissive of what came before them, and of anything outside their usual tastes really, it's not just about old movies. And stuff like Ingmar Bergman, Tarkovsky, Fellini, or the books of Franz Kafka, have always been niche and always will be.
Considering the work you do, you certainly believe in the importance of preserving and promoting art works for future generations. Otherwise, why even bother preserving anything if you don't believe it has value or merit, if you don't believe it can and will outlast you? The Looneu Tunes cartoons are fantastic. And plenty of old movies are easily available on digital and stream platforms, sometimes even at 4K, such as Singin' In The Rain, to just give only one of many examples. I love Singin' In The Rain, and I'm 25 years old. My favorite singer is Frank Sinatra, and I listened to nearly all of his albums for Capitol in the 50s.

Random question: I am not sure that Paramount will be fully dismantled like you believe (Discovery didn't do so with Warner). But do you think I should worry about Avatar Studios? They are part of Nickelodeon.

[bigshot]

Originally Posted by UHDLoverForever

Popular culture has always been about the newest and shiniest thing. The mainstream is like that. But classic old works will find an audience. Casablanca has found fans in every generation since then, and it's over 80 years old.

There are always a small subset of old stuff that survives. People know Casablanca and Wizard of Oz, but twenty-somethings may have never seen a silent film or the Marx Brothers. There are a lot of things that were cherished by boomers, but it hasn't made it to the following generations.

Originally Posted by UHDLoverForever

Considering the work you do, you certainly believe in the importance of preserving and promoting art works for future generations. Otherwise, why even bother preserving anything if you don't believe it has value or merit, if you don't believe it can and will outlast you?

I don't archive old animation for the cartoons themselves. I believe that they contain valuable information about how *new* animation should be made. I'd like to see modern cartoons made with old techniques and new characters and ideas. That's what I'm working towards. To be perfectly honest, content-wise a lot of old animation doesn't have a lot of relevance to modern audiences. But there were a lot of brilliant film making techniques being employed in the past.

Originally Posted by UHDLoverForever

But do you think I should worry about Avatar Studios? They are part of Nickelodeon.

Yes. That goes for all of the Paramount owned broadcast and cable networks. Streaming at Disney and Warner has surged in the past six months since they cut all the fat. They aren't losing massive amounts of money any more. Viewership of broadcast and cable channels on the other hand has plummeted, and the studios are taking massive write offs on them. You'll see a lot of divesting of those networks by all the studios in the coming year. There won't be any cable TV eventually and those big channels will just be brands as part of big streaming libraries and no production arm. My guess is that all of Paramount TV will be broken up and parceled out. I'm betting that the lot will be sold off for its real estate too.