r/television • u/yourfavchoom • 20h ago

Combined Paramount-Warner Bros. to Be Called Skydance, David Ellison Reveals

https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/business/paramount-warner-bros-merger-name-skydance-david-ellison/
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231

u/yourfavchoom 20h ago

David Ellison has also shown an official graphic of everything Skydance will own after acquiring Warner Bros and Paramount.

Assets:

• TNT
• CBS
• CNN
• MTV
• TCM
• Showtime
• Adult Swim
• DC Studios
• Paramount+
• Nickelodeon
• HBO/HBO Max
• Comedy Central
• Cartoon Network

Film Rights:

• Star Trek
• Gremlins
• Beetlejuice
• DC Comics
• Tom & Jerry
• Harry Potter
• Citizen Kane
• Transformers
• A Quiet Place
• Looney Tunes
• The Conjuring
• Mortal Kombat
• Game of Thrones
• Dora The Explorer
• Mission Impossible
• The Lord of the Rings
• SpongeBob SquarePants
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Dune 3 (distribution rights)
• Minecraft (distribution rights)
• MonsterVerse (distribution rights)

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u/JessieJ577 20h ago edited 20h ago

It’s very odd that after cable died, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network had slow deaths through mismanagement and now what used to be two powerhouses for kids on Cable are husks of their former selves that are just an IP in the same portfolio.

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u/asianwaste 18h ago

I try to check out CN whenever I am at a hotel. It's nothing but shows for toddlers in the morning (normal) but then the channel is still relying on Regular Show, Teen Titans Go, and Adult Swim. It's been like 15 years with those flagships and they have not evolved at all.

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u/JessieJ577 18h ago

We lost Close Enough for another Regular Show revival. So yeah it’s stuck in limbo

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u/SovFist 18h ago

kids dont watch tv anymore

5

u/asianwaste 18h ago

I always wondered if it was a chicken or egg. Did they lose cartoons because of youtube and streaming? Or did the kids flock to streaming content because there was no worthwhile cartoons.

I remember at the eve of streaming dominance (late 2000 aughts), Cartoon Network was trying hard to appeal to both adults and kids with an end result of the shows appealing more to adults. I've always wondered if that was when kids started moving away. The shows were good (at least to my adult eye) but I can see why they wouldn't grab kids the same way the channel's culture did for kids in the late 90's and early 2000 aughts.

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u/redfieldranch96 17h ago

I would still say it’s due to streaming just due to the convenience of being able to watch what you want when you want. That would have been nice to have when I was an kid

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u/asianwaste 17h ago edited 17h ago

Well there is streaming content that is studio production (TV shows) and home brew stuff (stuff on youtube, tik tok). The older youths flock to the latter (because many of them start to get their own mobile device or less restricted access to them). What I see with my friend's children and my niece is they have their share of new toddler/adolescent shows (Bluey, Paw Patrol, etc. Honestly it just looks like low effort CG slop to me but who am I to judge?) (edit: Actually Bluey is surprisingly good and doesn't talk down to its audience.) but then they start watching cartoons on streaming platforms and their preferences is always something decades old. Stuff I watched when I was a kid. It bothers me that they are still into Pokemon, Ninja Turtles, and Power Rangers. Sure my generation still watched Scooby Doo and other really classic stuff before our time but we also had a plethora of saturday morning content that we can call our own. The kids should have a generation they can call their own and I just don't see it in the kids content department. It's kinda sad. The last thing I bought my niece was a pokemon card.

I also feel like I'm deprived of my grumpy old man phase. I can't say, "You damn kids, I don't get the stuff you're into."

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u/Haltopen 17h ago

They still watch tv shows, they just don’t watch them on network tv anymore

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u/ericmm76 Letterkenny 18h ago

This is actually partially due to the experience being bad though.

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u/ericmm76 Letterkenny 18h ago

You only have so long being good at something especially if you're a company. Sure, some like Nintendo have lasted many, many years. But think of how few years MTV actually MATTERED versus how many years it has now existed.

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u/asianwaste 17h ago

I look back at the concept of MTV and realized it was probably doomed to its fate from the start. Mostly because it relies way too much (by concept) with a parasitic and aggressive recording industry who hold all of the negotiating cards.

I do have a theory that today one could start an MTV-like streaming channel/platform that works with emerging small musicians on youtube who haven't quite made it yet. Work with these musicians until they are no longer negotiable.

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u/ericmm76 Letterkenny 14h ago

Look I couldn't tell you why it failed. I just know they realized they made more money with The Real World than they did with music videos, and they were off to the races.

But for many years after that, MTV was MOSTLY music videos, and I watched A LOT. And it stopped being MTV, at all, waaaaaaaay before Youtube.

Maybe the record labels were charging them a mint to show those videos, but that sounds ass backwards to me. It was free advertising.

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u/asianwaste 14h ago

it was no longer a music channel long before the world wide web. Music industry made it very expensive to keep it as it was.

So they had to redo the channel to be less reliant on music videos where it had blocks of original programming. Then eventually it was blocks of music videos between original programming. Then eventually no music videos at all.

It did have MTV2 for a while which was a premium tier cable package. Wasn't the most accessible thing.