Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses Entertainment Technology

CBS, Viacom Strike Deal To Recombine (hollywoodreporter.com) 24

Posted by msmash from the consolidation-consolidation dept.
Viacom and CBS have struck a deal for a merger on Tuesday with an agreement to recombine in the latest entertainment industry mega-deal. From a report: As expected, Viacom CEO Bob Bakish will lead the combined company as CEO, while CBS acting CEO Joe Ianniello will also remain in a top executive position that will have him oversee CBS-branded assets. CBS CFO Christina Spade will serve as CFO of the merged firm. Shari Redstone, vice chair of both companies, will serve as chair of the combined company. The companies had previously agreed on the management setup and the composition of the board of the merged company, with the stock exchange ratio for the deal being the final haggling point that was finally resolved early in the week. The boards of both companies have approved the deal.

Consolidation to gain more scale amid competition from streaming video and technology giants has been a key focus for the entertainment sector in recent years. The CBS-Viacom deal agreement comes after Walt Disney's $71.3 billion acquisition of large parts of 21st Century Fox and AT&T's $85 billion takeover of Time Warner. CBS is also understood to have offered Lionsgate $5 billion to buy its premium TV unit Starz.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

CBS, Viacom Strike Deal To Recombine More

CBS, Viacom Strike Deal To Recombine

Comments Filter:
  • Less options? Higher prices?
  • Hail Netflix! Long live Netflix!

  • Will CBS kill South Park?

  • Star Trek Unified (Score:3)

    by alexgieg ( 948359 ) <alexgieg@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @02:09PM (#59083648) Homepage

    This mean Star Trek is now back into a single corporate roof, which hopefully will end the "25% difference" rule that has caused so much of the newer series to look and feel odd compared to the older ones.

    • Star Trek Rights Problem Explained (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @02:42PM (#59083756)

      This mean Star Trek is now back into a single corporate roof, which hopefully will end the "25% difference" rule that has caused so much of the newer series to look and feel odd compared to the older ones.

      For whoever needs this explained in detail:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      or in greater detail (including how STD has hidden and lied about it in marketing):
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • Midnight's Edge is frequently accurate and insightful, but on this subject, they've always been wrong. As is mentioned further down this thread, CBS officially confirmed that DSC's look was a creative decision instead of a legal one.

        People need to stop pushing this debunked crap. It takes focus away from the actual problem, which is that the current staff working on Star Trek doesn't care about any of the previous shows, about canon, etc.

    • Oh thank Q! All the weirdness this caused was completely unnecessary, and while I don't expect it will change the general direction of writing modern Star Trek, hopefully it means they at least don't have to keep dancing around certain aspects of the series.

    • The "25% rule" has been debunked. CBS has officially stated that DSC looks the way it does for creative reasons and not legal ones. That's not good because it means their staff are every bit as incompetent as we feared.

    • Hope so!

  • Star Trek may (Score:3)

    by imperious_rex ( 845595 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @02:19PM (#59083680)
    Ever since the CBS-Viacom split, the Star Trek property has suffered under multiple owners. I won't get into explaining the sordid mess about Trek rights issues, but this very interesting yet lengthy video [youtube.com] explains it nicely. With CBS and Viacom coming together again, it will be interesting to see what happens with the Star Trek franchise now under a single owner. Hopefully, the Kelvin timeline and Discovery series will no longer be canon and fans will see Trek given better treatment.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by irving47 ( 73147 )

      I hope you're right, but I am 75% convinced it's too late at this point.

    • Stop pushing Midnight's Edge. They're usually quite insightful, but in this, they're dead wrong [trekmovie.com].

      • Midnight's Edge (and others) may be wrong about the alleged "25% rule" but that doesn't mean the rest of the video doesn't have value.
      • The publishers have a monetary incentive to lie about this and there are no drawbacks to doing so. I'm not going to say they are lying, I'm just going to treat both their words and Midnight's Edge with the same grain of salt.

  • Star Trek: Discovery on TV? (Score:3)

    by TomR teh Pirate ( 1554037 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @02:37PM (#59083742)
    I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who are pretty unhappy with the fact that Star Trek: Discovery is available only via streaming. My hope is that the new CEO sees the folly of this given that some of us don't want to buy CBS streaming for just 1 TV show.

  • MEGA MAID!

    Suck! Suck! Suck!

  • ... agar.io

Slashdot Top Deals

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

Close