Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A big media merger may cause a major reset of the TV studio business.
It happened after Disney acquired Fox’s studio assets. It happened both before and after the Skydance-Paramount merger. Now, with Paramount poised to take control of Warner Bros. Discovery, it could happen again with two of the most prolific TV studio operations in the industry.
Including co-productions, Warner Bros. Television Group’s various production units and Paramount’s studios together have more than 100 series currently airing or about to premiere and another 25 to 30 more either greenlit for future dates or in development. The studios’ output touches almost every part of the TV landscape, from streaming to broadcast syndication, and includes shows ranging from Euphoria to Dora.
The Warner Bros. Discovery board approved the deal Friday, but the merger still faces a potentially rocky path to regulatory approval, both domestically and abroad (Paramount is targeting the third quarter of this year for closing the deal). Assuming it clears all those hurdles, the combined TV studio operations would be a behemoth, easily outpacing the volume of any other studio. (That’s aside from the potentially awkward combination of streaming platforms, FAST channels and cable outlets the merged company will boast.)
That also assumes, of course, that the combined studio colossus will keep making that many shows, and that Warner Bros. Television, Paramount TV Studios, CBS Studios and their various subunits will keep going as currently constituted. In short, that’s unlikely.
For starters, Paramount will come out of the deal with tens of billions of dollars in debt on its books. The company laid off more than 1,000 employees after the (much smaller) Skydance merger, and it would be foolish to think that more aren’t coming should the WBD merger close. The combined Paramount-WBD under David Ellison will doubtless look for “efficiencies” (i.e., cost cuts via layoffs and buyouts) across the TV studio spectrum.
The debt load could also “change the calculus about how content is monetized downstream,” analyst Julie Clark, senior vp media and entertainment at TransUnion, told The Hollywood Reporter. “It will hinge some on the consolidation of their tech and how they connect with audiences and advertisers with the core IP that they have.”
The deal will result in a trove of household name-level properties residing under the Paramount umbrella. In addition to its own brands, which include Star Trek, SpongeBob and the just-revived G.I. Joe franchise, Paramount will eventually have control of Warner properties DC Studios, the Harry Potter franchise — an HBO series based on the books is due to premiere in 2027 — and the Godzilla/Kong Monsterverse, which WB produces with Legendary Pictures, among others.
Without an in-house broadcast network and with WBD’s non-HBO cable channels mostly out of the scripted TV business, Warner Bros. TV has been the largest seller of programming to other outlets in recent years. In addition to HBO and streamer HBO Max, the studio has series currently running or in the works at Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu, Prime Video and all of the big four broadcast networks — including CBS, which will become a corporate sibling after the merger closes.
In its first public statement after the WBD board approved the deal Friday, Paramount said the combined company will operate the Paramount and Warner Bros. movie studios independently, and that it will continue buying from and selling to third parties. “I think ultimately, it will be a similar kind of volume” coming from the two studios, Clark said. “My guess is that windowing will become more important, especially for premium IP.”
Paramount’s statement did not, however, mention any specific plans for how the TV studios will operate — but recent history suggests a shakeup is on the horizon.
After the Disney-Fox merger in 2019, the TV studio operations underwent several reorganizations. Four studios (ABC Studios, ABC Signature, 20th Television and Fox 21) just after the merger were winnowed to just one, 20th TV, by October 2024.
Paramount’s saga is even odder: It shuttered Paramount TV Studios in August 2024 as a cost-cutting move in anticipation of the Skydance merger; its productions moved to CBS Studios. A year later, as that deal was about to close, the company revived PTVS, reclaiming its previous shows and folding in those from Showtime/MTV Entertainment — which went by the wayside post-merger — and those of the formerly independent Skydance TV.
Details on any possible reorganization may not emerge for months, as Paramount will have to be circumspect in its public comments until the deal fully closes. In the meantime, both companies’ sets of TV production units will continue their business under that cloud of uncertainty.