Jeff Shell is about to lead Paramount. He may have runway to make bold changes he couldn't at NBC

suimt — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 13:00:42 +0000

Jeff Shell, CEO of NBCUniversal, speaks during a conference at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France, June 22, 2022.

Eric Gaillard | Reuters

Less than two years after NBCUniversal fired Jeff Shell for alleged sexual harassment, the former CEO is close to finding himself back in the saddle leading a storied media company.

The longtime media executive is primed to help run the day-to-day media operations of Paramount Global as president of the company when its merger with Skydance Media closes in the first half of 2025, assuming regulatory approval. He’ll report to current Skydance CEO David Ellison, who will take the top job as the combined company’s CEO.

While neither Shell nor Ellison has publicly declared specific intentions for Paramount Global due to regulations banning “gun-jumping” in pending mergers, Shell’s recent tenure as the CEO of Comcast’s NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC, offers clues to what may be in store for Paramount.

CNBC spoke with a dozen people who worked closely with Shell during his tenure as CEO from 2019 to 2023. They described Shell as a person with big ideas and a willingness to make bold moves but with a style that depends on those around him to talk him out of decisions that may not make sense. Some of Shell’s boldest ideas — such as giving NBC’s 10 p.m. hour over to affiliates, merging with a rival, and turning CNBC primetime into a Fox News facsimile — never played out.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts chose Shell to replace Steve Burke as NBCUniversal CEO in 2019. Shell had consistent success running a variety of different divisions within Comcast and NBCUniversal, including NBCU International and Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.

Colleagues told CNBC they found Shell to be a good listener and a collaborative decision-maker with a predilection for sometimes saying too much. His departure from NBCUniversal was sudden. In April 2023, a Comcast investigation corroborated allegations from a former CNBC reporter of sexual harassment. Shell joined private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners in February. RedBird backed the Skydance-Paramount merger and will assume a minority equity stake.

Soon, Shell, 59, will be at the helm of Paramount and paired with Ellison, who has already expressed his desire to transition Paramount into a more modern media company. That may set up a dynamic where Paramount’s CEO and president both want bold change.

welcome gaining the hour as a way to boost advertising revenue.

During a 2022 CNBC interview, Shell confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that he was considering ceding the hour to local affiliates to shift resources from linear broadcast TV toward streaming.

“If we’re being prudent operators, which we try to be, if you’re allocating a bunch of resources to one side of the business, you have to look at the allocation of resources to another,” Shell told CNBC’s David Faber at the time. “We make a lot of money at 10 o’clock. We still have a lot of viewers at 10 o’clock. There’s no question throughout the day as linear declines, you’re going to have to make some tradeoffs, and we’ll be looking at that as our investors would want us to look at.”

The 10 p.m. hour on broadcast networks still serves as a time slot for scripted dramas — a genre that’s largely gone to streaming and, in turn, has seen ratings struggle on traditional TV. CBS’ 10 p.m. programming includes “NCIS: Origins,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” “Elsbeth,” and “Blue Bloods,” which is in its 14th season.

Paramount Global co-CEO George Cheeks, who runs CBS, told Deadline in late 2022 that he was “committed to 10 p.m. and continuing our ratings success in that time period.”

Shell ultimately backed off giving up 10 p.m. for NBC after weighing the potential fallout with Hollywood creatives and agents, according to people familiar with the matter. Such a move at NBCUniversal would risk ruining relationships with TV titans such as “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf, whose shows have occupied the 10 p.m. hour on NBC for years and have created a deep library for NBCUniversal’s flagship streaming service, Peacock. Irritating Hollywood would have run counter to Shell’s strategy to increase Peacock’s content catalog, as NBCUniversal needed strong relationships to fuel the service with new programming.

Wolf’s shows were also significant moneymakers for NBCUniversal, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Jeff Shell, CEO of NBCUniversal, speaks to the media at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 7, 2021.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Ceding the 10 p.m. hour would also have negatively affected the ratings of NBC’s storied late night show, “The Tonight Show.” CBS’ late night show, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” is consistently the top-rated late night show, which could naturally give Shell pause on moving away from 10 p.m. once he’s overseeing Paramount assets.

Still, all of the late night shows are losing audience, and a downsizing has already begun across the genre. Shell may feel it’s finally time to pull the rip cord.

He is clearly aware that the status quo of linear TV needs to change.

“Obviously a big chunk of the company is in the linear world, and we know that linear is challenged and declining,” Shell said during the July conference call. “I think a lot of us in the business know, we have got to run these businesses in a different way as they decline. And so, we’ve spent a lot of the last few months really building a bottom-up plan, and our goal is to manage the businesses, particularly the linear businesses, for cash flow generation.”

previously said.

That doesn’t appear to be in Ellison and Shell’s playbook for Paramount. The two have expressed their desire to partner Paramount+ with another streamer to add scale and content to the service, either through a merger or a bundle. Paramount Global has already held talks with a number of media companies about partnering on streaming, including NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery.

“To be a winner in [streaming] really means being in the ultimate bundle that’s coming,” Shell said during the July conference call. “We’ve had a bunch of inbound calls from a number of people about partnerships that could involve a partnership with another player or players.”

At NBCUniversal, according to people familiar with his thinking, Shell privately pushed the benefits of merging with another content company — again, something that never happened.

He spoke up in meetings about the benefits of merging with Viacom, WarnerMedia and even Netflix to ensure Peacock would have staying power against larger streaming services, according to people who heard him speak.

Ultimately, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts decided the moves weren’t in the best interest of shareholders or that it was too difficult to gain regulatory approval for them, though Roberts nearly approved a deal in 2022 for NBCUniversal to merge with video game developer Electronic Arts — a deal that, according to people familiar with the matter, would have seen Shell lose his job as NBCUniversal CEO. That role would have gone to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, the people said.

Jeff Shell, Chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, and Brian L. Roberts, Chairman and CEO of Comcast Corporation, seen at Universal Pictures “Sing” after party at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016, in Toronto.

Eric Charbonneau | Invision for Universal Pictures | AP

hit Bravo franchises such as “The Real Housewives” and “Below Deck,” it has kept RSNs and news networks MSNBC and CNBC separate.

One of Shell’s big decisions at Paramount will be what to do with a handful of cable channels that have effectively turned into zombie networks, largely airing reruns of the same shows to avoid spending on new content. This includes MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central.

Shell wanted to combine some NBCUniversal cable networks to cut costs and push back on dwindling revenue, people familiar with the matter said, but ultimately decided not to.

Shell also had ideas that didn’t come to fruition about changing programming on some of NBC’s cable networks. He initially wanted CNBC to adopt what he described to others as a center-right primetime lineup, according to people familiar with the discussions at the time.

Then-CNBC chief Mark Hoffman argued the idea didn’t make sense for the network’s brand and likely wouldn’t have much of an audience, and Shell backed down, the people said. CNBC did hire former Fox News anchor Shepard Smith in 2020 to anchor a prime-time show that was canceled in 2022 just months after Hoffman retired. Hoffman declined to comment for this story.

One of Shell’s first accomplishments upon taking the NBCUniversal job was to renew the network’s “Sunday Night Football” deal with the NFL, and one of the last things he did was support NBC Sports moving forward with a bid for NBA rights if it got an opportunity, according to people familiar with the matter. NBC did get the chance to bid, and it’s bringing back NBA games beginning in 2025 after agreeing to pay about $2.45 billion per season to the league.

Both Shell and Ellison touted the importance of CBS Sports during their July conference call. When Paramount laid off hundreds of employees in September, none of them were part of CBS Sports, according to a person familiar with the matter.

CBS owns a Sunday afternoon package of NFL games, part of NCAA March Madness, Big Ten football, UEFA Champions League, and The Masters, among other sports. It wouldn’t be surprising if Shell migrates away from CBS entertainment programming toward sports, even in prime time, if those opportunities present themselves.

Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

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Jeff Shell is about to lead Paramount. He may have runway to make bold changes he couldn't at NBC

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