Paramount Global

Media & EntertainmentFounded 1912- Updated July 2025

Last reviewed: July 2025

Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.

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Paramount Global

Media & EntertainmentFounded 1912- Updated July 2025

Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya

Last reviewed: July 2025

Leadership History

Paramount Global: CEO History

4 leaders · Full leadership timeline

Last reviewed: 2025-07-15 · By Swet Parvadiya

Company Overview

Paramount Global owns more than a century of film and television history — the mountain logo predates Hollywood itself. That heritage now sits alongside a $28.7 billion revenue base and a net loss of $565 million in 2024, a combination that tells you everything about the tension running through this company. The catalog is priceless. The cash flow is not. CBS alone reaches more American households in a single evening than most streaming services reach in a week. Paramount+ has attracted subscribers globally. Yet the business that pays the bills — linear cable — is contracting every quarter, and no streaming service has yet filled that financial gap. Twenty-two thousand employees are navigating a company that is simultaneously one of entertainment's most powerful brands and one of its most constrained operators. David Ellison took the CEO chair in 2024 after Skydance Media completed its merger with Paramount, bringing fresh capital and a production partner behind films like Top Gun: Maverick — which grossed $1.49 billion worldwide and ranks as the highest-grossing film in the studio's modern era. The acquisition of Pluto TV in 2019 gave Paramount a free ad-supported streaming platform that now counts among the most-watched in the United States. The 1948 Supreme Court ruling forced the studio to sell more than 1,000 theaters, ending the integrated model Adolph Zukor had built over three decades. That decision dismantled one structure. The next restructuring is underway now — and the outcome is equally unwritten.

David Ellison

Chief Executive Officer

Legacy

David Ellison assumed the CEO role at Paramount Global following the completion of the Skydance merger in 2025, bringing a background as a film producer and technology executive to the leadership of one of Hollywood's oldest media institutions. As founder of Skydance Media, Ellison co-produced a series of major commercial successes including Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, and multiple Terminator and Jack Reacher films, establishing a track record of franchise content execution at commercial scale. His appointment signals a shift toward more disciplined creative investment and technology-enabled distribution strategy, reflecting both his production background and the technological resources available through his family's Oracle-adjacent investment infrastructure. Ellison's strategic priorities include reaching streaming profitability, reducing the company's debt burden through asset sales and cash flow improvement, and positioning Paramount as a focused streaming competitor rather than a sprawling legacy media conglomerate.

Shari Redstone

Non-Executive Chairwoman (to 2025)

Legacy

Shari Redstone served as non-executive chairwoman of Paramount Global and its predecessor companies CBS Corporation and Viacom for nearly a decade, exercising decisive influence over corporate strategy through the National Amusements holding company that controlled the majority of the company's voting shares. She was the principal architect of the 2019 Viacom-CBS merger that created ViacomCBS, overcoming significant boardroom resistance and litigation challenges from CBS's independent directors to complete a combination she believed was essential for the company's survival in the streaming era. Her decade of leadership included navigating the Les Moonves misconduct scandal, multiple CEO transitions, the 2022 rebrand to Paramount Global, and ultimately the negotiation of the Skydance merger that she concluded was the best available path to long-term value preservation for the company and its shareholders.

Bob Bakish

President and CEO (2019–2024)

Legacy

Bob Bakish served as President and Chief Executive Officer of ViacomCBS and then Paramount Global from the completion of the Viacom-CBS merger in December 2019 through his departure in April 2024, a period encompassing the company's most significant strategic transformation in decades. Under his leadership, the company launched Paramount+ in March 2021, rebranded from ViacomCBS to Paramount Global in February 2022, and grew the streaming subscriber base from near zero to approximately 60 million by mid-2024. Bakish was also responsible for supervising the theatrical release of Top Gun: Maverick, which grossed $1.49 billion worldwide in 2022. His departure in April 2024, announced as the Skydance merger negotiations were advancing, reflected strategic differences with the board over how aggressively to pursue cost reduction and portfolio rationalization.

George Cheeks

President and CEO, CBS

Legacy

George Cheeks has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of CBS since 2020, overseeing the network's continued audience leadership in broadcast television and managing the integration of CBS programming and sports rights into the broader Paramount+ streaming strategy. Under Cheeks' leadership, CBS has maintained its position as the most-watched broadcast network in the United States for consecutive television seasons, a competitive durability that has made CBS programming — particularly NFL coverage — the most powerful subscriber acquisition tool in Paramount's streaming arsenal. His navigation of NFL contract renewals, late-night programming transitions, and the integration of CBS's news division into the streaming ecosystem has been critical to maintaining the network's advertiser relationships and retransmission fee negotiations.

Challenges & Strategic Context

The most fundamental challenge is the accelerating decline of linear television, the segment that has historically generated the bulk of Paramount's revenue and virtually all of its operating profit. The balance sheet presents a second category of acute challenge. Content costs represent a third dimension of challenge. The Skydance merger itself introduced a new category of challenge: execution risk during a complex organizational transformation.

It pioneered block booking, a controversial practice in which theater owners were required to book entire packages of films in advance without seeing them first, a practice that generated enormous revenue for the studio but was eventually challenged on antitrust grounds. The landmark United States v. Paramount Pictures antitrust case, decided by the Supreme Court in 1948, fundamentally restructured the studio's business model.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Bob Bakish leave Paramount in 2024, and what was his record?

Bob Bakish served as president and chief executive of ViacomCBS and subsequently Paramount Global from the December 2019 merger close through his April 2024 departure, an approximately four-and-a-half-year tenure that spanned the launch of Paramount+ in March 2021, the corporate rebrand to Paramount Global in February 2022, the theatrical release of Top Gun: Maverick (a $1.49 billion worldwide grosser) the same year, and the growth of Paramount+ from near zero to roughly 71 million global subscribers. Bakish was a Viacom lifer who had run Viacom International Media Networks before being named Viacom CEO in 2016 and then leading the combined company. His departure was reported to follow strategic disagreements with the Paramount board and Shari Redstone over the pace of cost reduction, the willingness to divest cable network assets, and the engagement with prospective Skydance merger terms. Following his exit the company adopted an unusual office-of-the-CEO structure with George Cheeks (CBS), Brian Robbins (Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon), and Chris McCarthy (Showtime and cable) sharing leadership through the Skydance transaction, until David Ellison assumed the chief executive role upon merger close in August 2025.

What role did the office-of-the-CEO play between Bakish and Ellison?

Following Bob Bakish's April 2024 departure, the Paramount Global board did not appoint a permanent successor and instead created an office of the CEO comprising three senior operating executives: George Cheeks (president and chief executive of CBS, responsible for the broadcast network, CBS Sports, and CBS News and Stations), Brian Robbins (president and chief executive of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon, responsible for theatrical film and kids' content), and Chris McCarthy (president and chief executive of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks, responsible for cable and Showtime). The structure was explicitly transitional and designed to maintain operational continuity through the Skydance merger negotiation and regulatory approval period rather than to commit to a long-term distributed leadership model. During the interim the trio executed roughly 15% workforce reductions, the integration of Showtime into the Paramount+ premium tier branding, cost cuts in Paramount+ international markets, and the negotiation of NFL programming carriage. The arrangement ended in August 2025 when David Ellison assumed the chief executive role upon merger close, with Cheeks, Robbins, and McCarthy continuing in their operating roles under the new Paramount Skydance Corporation structure.

What is David Ellison's strategic agenda as Paramount Skydance CEO?

David Ellison assumed the chief executive role of Paramount Skydance Corporation in August 2025 upon merger close, having co-founded Skydance Media in 2010 and built it into a roughly $4 billion production company before the Paramount deal. His publicly stated strategic priorities are fourfold: reach durable Direct-to-Consumer profitability on Paramount+ by combining content discipline with technology investment; reduce leverage from the roughly $14.6 billion long-term debt level toward investment-grade metrics through a combination of $1.5 billion of fresh primary capital injected by the merger, divestitures of non-core assets, and OIBDA growth; rationalize the cable network portfolio (with BET, Showtime linear, and certain real estate frequently cited as candidates for sale); and apply technical talent — much of it drawn from the Ellison family's broader Oracle-adjacent network — to streaming, ad-tech, and recommendation infrastructure. Ellison has emphasized franchise theatrical production, citing his own track record with Mission: Impossible, Top Gun: Maverick, and Terminator titles, and has signaled increased theatrical output from Paramount Pictures after several years of conservative release slates under prior management.

How did Sumner and Shari Redstone shape Paramount's CEO succession over four decades?

Sumner Redstone took control of Viacom through a 1987 hostile takeover and personally selected each subsequent chief executive: Frank Biondi (1987-1996), Mel Karmazin (briefly during the 2000-2004 CBS combination), Tom Freston (Viacom 2006-2006), Philippe Dauman (Viacom 2006-2016), and Bob Bakish (Viacom 2016-2019, then ViacomCBS/Paramount Global 2019-2024). On the CBS side Redstone backed Les Moonves from 2003 until Moonves's 2018 ouster over sexual misconduct allegations, then Joe Ianniello as interim CEO until the 2019 reunification. As Sumner Redstone's cognitive decline accelerated after 2014, daughter Shari Redstone progressively assumed control of National Amusements and the voting shares, becoming non-executive chair of ViacomCBS upon the 2019 merger close and exercising decisive influence over board composition and CEO selection. Shari Redstone was the architect of the 2019 Viacom-CBS reunification, supported the office-of-the-CEO structure following Bakish's 2024 departure, and ultimately negotiated the Skydance sale that ended Redstone family control and installed David Ellison — concluding roughly thirty-eight years of Redstone-family-driven Paramount CEO selection.

Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.

Leadership History

Paramount Global: CEO History

4 leaders · Full leadership timeline

Last reviewed: 2025-07-15 · By Swet Parvadiya

Company Overview

David Ellison

Chief Executive Officer

Legacy

Shari Redstone

Non-Executive Chairwoman (to 2025)

Legacy

Bob Bakish

President and CEO (2019–2024)

Legacy

George Cheeks

President and CEO, CBS