Jeff Shell, the former CEO of NBCUniversal who will become president at Paramount Global as part of Skydance’s pending takeover, is ultra-bullish on the future of linear TV.
“Obviously, linear is going to keep declining. I think we’re realistic about that,” Shell said during an investor call Monday about Skydance’s $8 billion investment in Paramount, which will give it control of major linear assets including CBS and a portfolio of local broadcast stations. “It’s been declining at about 8% a year when you factor everything in. We think that’s obviously going to continue as the MVPD universe gets smaller. … We don’t know if there’s a floor somewhere.”
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Despite the downtrend, “I personally think the linear business is going to be a strong business for decades to come,” Shell maintained. “We’ll be sitting here in 10, 20 years talking about a significant amount of viewership on the CBS network. But it’s going to become part of the equation instead of the driving part of the equation, which is why you’ve got to be involved in both sides. We think it’s going to continue. We don’t think it’s going to worsen, but we don’t actually think it’s going to get better, either.”
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In its financial models, Skydance took “a more conservative view” on linear TV than current management or the markets, Shell added. Asked about bundling initiatives in streaming that could replicate the traditional pay-TV experience, the exec said a new day will soon be dawning — by absolute necessity.
“Everybody here on this call probably watches television,” he said. “The experience right now is not great. For consumers, No. 1, if you have all these streaming services, you want to watch something, you don’t know if you get it. You have to try to remember where it is. For most consumers, who are price-sensitive, it is pretty expensive now to get all these services. It actually ends up being more expensive than an MVPD bundle. So, I don’t think it’s rocket science to suggest that that consumer experience is not sustainable. Eventually, there’s going to have to be some form of bundled solution that’s easy and simple for somebody. When people get home from work after working a hard day, they want to watch something. They don’t want to spend 30 minutes trying to figure out what they get.”
While he didn’t offer specific details about what a future bundle might look like or which companies would be part of it, Shell said, “If you’re in that bundle, you’re going to win and if you’re not in that bundle, you’re in real trouble.”
Shell left NBCU in 2023 after admitting to an “inappropriate” relationship with a colleague. Several months later, he joined RedBird Capital, a key backer of Skydance and the Paramount transaction, in the role of Chairman, Sports & Media.
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Ellison on the call prompted Shell to note the reach of CBS as an appealing trait for sports leagues and advertisers. “There’s a reason why sports is moving back to a kind of ‘barbell’ strategy,” Shell said, intimating a large amount of viewership on broadcast and streaming but with a less robust outlook for linear cable. “You need reach. For a lot of us, we thought broadcast would decline along with cable five years ago. That simply hasn’t happened.”
Skydance’s deal, which assigns Paramount an enterprise value of $28 billion, is expected to close in the third quarter of 2025, execs said.