Like the rest of the town last week, the shock news of Paramount Skydance’s 11th hour successful acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery stung deep at HBO. According to at least one insider, when word came down on Thursday that Netflix had ended its pursuit of the company, HBO chairman and CEO Casey Bloys walked out of his office and proclaimed, “It’s over.”
And he wasn’t just referring to the uncertainty surrounding the future of who would ultimately control Warner Bros. Discovery — and ergo, HBO. No, the surprise deal that would put Paramount Skydance and the Donald Trump-friendly Ellisons in charge of HBO — and what it might mean for the future of the company and its HBO Max streamer — sent staffers into a weekend tailspin.
According to insiders, Paramount CEO David Ellison had yet to reach out to key Warner Bros. execs — including Bloys, Warner Bros. TV Group head Channing Dungey and others — on Monday morning when he finally shared some of his plans for the combined Par-WB. Without many details, Ellison told analysts that he plans to give HBO autonomy even as he aims to merge HBO Max and Paramount+.
“Casey and his team do absolutely a remarkable job at HBO,” said Ellison in his investor call on Monday. “We do plan for that to be able to operate with independence, so that HBO can, candidly, do what it does incredibly well. Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO.”
One HBO staffer said Ellison’s statements were “encouraging, but basically meaningless, because we don’t really have any concrete plans. We haven’t heard anything. I feel like when the Netflix thing happened, Casey was one of Ted Sarandos’ first calls.”
After the Ellison investor meeting, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president of global streaming and games JB Perrette held a meeting with staffers, noting that it’s going to take time and tons of effort to merge the HBO Max and Paramount+ streaming entities. And given that WBD’s product team already did that with HBO Max and Discovery+, they’ll likely be needed for the time being.
“Our people have experience with that, and Paramount is very new to this,” said a staffer, who called Perrette’s address to the troops “surprisingly motivational, given the circumstances… In fact, maybe the situation for our product people would not have been as good with Netflix. It was nice to hear that, and very interesting to hear that perspective from him.”
That’s not to say there isn’t a company-wide stupor after last week’s bombshells. Staffers have spent months on the impending split between the Warner Bros. and Discovery sides of the businesses — and all that work to untangle the two sides seemingly has been all for naught.
Then there’s the even more tenuous fate of CNN, which was a priority for Trump to move under friendlier ownership. For WBD staffers even outside of the cable units, the potential impact on Ted Turner’s cable news brainchild is perhaps the most upsetting to the rank and file. Ellison’s visit to the State of the Union address — and a chummy photo with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had invited the exec — is not being well received around town. (The tone-deaf pic was likened by WBD insiders of the time David Zaslav was photographed sipping champagne at Cannes during the writers’ strike.)
Beyond CNN, the fate of WBD’s linear cable channels (including TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, HGTV and Food Network) is another source of fear that more massive job losses are on the horizon for a division that has already faced steep cuts in recent years. Paramount’s linear cable channels already run with skeleton staffs, in most cases.
HBO, on the other hand, cannot be stripped to the nub if Paramount wants to maintain its premium TV status. Paramount insiders say Bloys’ stature, expertise and talent relations should seemingly be welcome under the Ellison regime, particularly since the previous Paramount regime killed off HBO’s longtime rival Showtime. Meanwhile, the Paramount+ streamer is still a small operation, with a staff of about 100.
How will the HBO-Paramount+ integration work? No one seems to know for sure, starting with the potential question of how Bloys and Paramount direct-to-consumer chair Cindy Holland might co-exist under the new structure. Bloys’ contract — a five-year deal he signed in 2022 — is up next year, which is perhaps convenient timing for him. At that point, a Warner Bros. Discovery/Paramount Skydance merger will presumably be done, or close to done, and Bloys will have a better idea of whether he wants to stay or go (or if Ellison will make that decision for him).
“We’ll have to see what Casey’s first conversation is like with David [Ellison],” said one insider, noting that it’s tough to predict what comes next until then. Adds another exec: “I think Casey is just waiting to see what’s going to happen now, and what the actual idea is for how HBO would operate as a standalone.”
Under Netflix, Bloys and his team were expecting HBO to be marketed and sold a premium upgrade, in many ways just like it was in the pay cable TV era. Will it still be standard under a merged HBO Max/Paramount+, or an add-on like Paramount tried to do with “Paramount+ With Showtime”? Notes an HBO exec: “Paramount+ With Showtime is not really the same value proposition as HBO is to a streaming platform.”
Over the weekend, HBO staffers were still reeling from what one person called the “whiplash” of finding peace with the idea of Netflix acquiring the brand — only to see the rug ripped out from under them. During Netflix’s courting process, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said all the right things and won over many inside HBO with the idea that the brand would stay intact and operate as its own quality label, much like FX inside Hulu and Disney.
“A lot of people are feeling very disappointed, because, yes, there was a shock when the Netflix deal was announced, but we’ve spent the last four months wrapping our heads around this and seeing that Ted Sarandos really did value Casey and wanted to leave HBO intact as a standalone business,” said another insider. “Then, to get the news and be blind to how Ellison even feels about HBO, it was like, fuck. What a step back.”
Now, they don’t know what to make with Paramount Skydance, other than the fear that the company’s massive debt load will force massive cuts.
“The debt is the thing that’s hanging over all of us,” said one exec. “What are they going to do with that? That has been a problem ever since AT&T, and it has never gone away. It always results in cuts and cuts to the bone. The people who have survived at this company so far, they know what’s coming. Everyone is stretched so thin. That’s definitely bad for morale.”
There’s plenty to be worried about, but staffers also noted that they still have jobs to do. “I think the vibe right now very much is like, is it okay for us to be cautiously optimistic about this? We kind of just have to keep our heads down and do the work,” said a source. “We have so much coming out this year.”
That “business as usual” mantra will make for some awkward moments in the coming weeks, including as HBO Max launches on March 26 in the U.K. Bloys is expected to conduct some interviews with press around that debut — and presumably will have more to say about the fate of HBO at that point.
For the HBO rank and file, Emmy season is just about to get underway, along with new seasons of shows like “The Comeback,” “Euphoria” and “House of the Dragon.” And then there’s the much anticipated “Harry Potter” series, with production underway for an expected early 2027 premiere.
The same is true across town at the much smaller Paramount+. At a press event on Friday for Paramount+’s upcoming Taylor Sheridan drama “The Madison,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Holland was in attendance, but declined to speculate what might come next. But that shouldn’t be a surprise, as deals like the Warner Bros./Paramount merger are handled in small rooms, and it’s likely that Holland and Bloys weren’t involved with any of those discussions — and probably have many of the same questions the rest of the town has.
Ironically, Warner Communications was once a co-owner of Showtime, before selling its share of that pay cabler to Viacom and merging with HBO owner Time Inc. in 1990. Now, the successor companies of both Time-Warner and Viacom, which battled for years in the pay TV space, will now be united. Showtime essentially doesn’t exist anymore (its remnants consumed by Paramount+); now comes the great debate over the fate of HBO.
(Anna Tingley contributed to this report.)
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