Even at a company with the amount of upheaval and attrition that Paramount Global has already seen and is likely to reinforce in coming months, there are likely few jobs as secure as those assigned to business affairs and legal. They’re an awfully busy bunch these days, and yesterday was proof positive that they’re probably maxing out their Doordash accounts.
On the positive side, they did finally put to an end to one national nightmare by at last making nice and shaking hands with Nielsen, as THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Rick Porter reported (try saying THAT three times fast):
Nielsen and Paramount have settled a months-long contract dispute. The two companies have signed a new, multiyear deal under which Nielsen will provide a host of ratings and analytics services across Paramount Global‘s linear network and streaming portfolio. The two companies had been at odds since October, when their previous contract expired.
The usual ghost-written hyperbole from the companies’ respective leaders Karthik Rao and George Cheeks accompanied this tale of detente, with Cheeks sounding particularly conciliatory:
“Paramount and Nielsen are committed to addressing Television’s multiplatform future to the benefit of all of our stakeholders. Karthik and his team continue to meet the needs of our marketplace across all our platforms, and we are incredibly pleased to reinforce and reinvigorate our deal with our longtime partner. Paramount Global’s ratings wins reported today are just one of many successes we look forward to with Nielsen as we build upon this new future together.”
All well and good, except what got glossed over was that Paramount Global was already scoring wins which their partnership from Videoamp was reporting for the roughly four months since the Nielsen deal ended–in some cases with larger and more inclusive numbers than Nielsen had been reporting. The problem apparently lies in the fact that clients of some of their more profitable ventures were less likely to break precedent and embrace a service other than the one that they had bought time on–or at least their auditors voiced such concerns. Any deal that involved at least two media companies needed to the same proof of performance applied to all, and it’s apparently not kosher to mix apples and oranges. That was apparently the case at CBS Local, which delivers far more to the corporate bottom line than any national network or “global” platform does these days. And apparently that was also the case with the company’s syndication division, as some news which DEADLINE’s Dominic Patten reported on later in the day underscored:
All games have winners and losers, but CBS is now calling out Sony Pictures TV for not playing by the rules when it comes to the dispute over decades-old Jeopardy! & Wheel of Fortune distribution deals. On Monday, hours after SPT’s head of Games Shows sent a letter to CBS informing the company that the Tokyo-led media giant will be taking over global distribution of the shows after a more than 40-year deal between the parties, the Shari Redstone-owned CBS Media Ventures sent a missive to clients and others saying NFW.
The note, which I’m told is also CBS’ on-the-record response, said in the bluntest terms: “We are aware Sony has informed you that it has purported to assume the distribution functions for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, and that it has terminated CBS’s distribution arrangement. This communication is false, inappropriate, and ineffective. Sony has no rights under the distribution agreements to terminate them, and CBS remains the distributor for the Series, notwithstanding any communications from Sony to the contrary. Any contention by Sony that it has reclaimed the distribution rights is subject to ongoing judicial proceedings, and CBS will be seeking immediate relief from the appropriate courts. All business should continue in the usual course.”
But what Patten uncovered in his analysis of a recently updated FAC which Sony originally filed appropriately enough last Halloween once again underscores why making a deal with Nielsen may have been, well, paramount at this point:
“For example, in January 2025, Procter & Gamble — a top advertiser for the Shows in recent years —stopped advertising on the Shows entirely,” the proposed amended complaint states regarding “long-term harm” to the “goodwill” and cold hard ad cash Wheel and Jeopardy! have suffered from CBS in Sony’s POV. “Sony Pictures does not yet know why Procter & Gamble made this choice, including because CBS failed to notify Sony Pictures of this change, but the abrupt termination after years of advertising on the Shows overlaps with CBS’s failure to renew Nielsen and the lack of commercial ratings data. Procter & Gamble similarly stopped advertising for other CBS-sold shows like Flip Side, Family Feud, and People Puzzler, all of which would be affected by the Nielsen non-renewal.”
P&G is a particularly Luddite advertiser who for decades has been loathe to embrace new ways of doing business, still somehow among the few companies that are still relying upon Sunday newspaper inserts and actual print coupons to hawk their soaps and detergents. The demographic skew of these shows is pretty much aligned with that of what remains of print consumers, a fact I’m all too aware of. And from Sony’s side, they’ve got a whole lot of new sheriffs in charge of their posse, with aggressive and newly appointed heads of the corporation and television studio trying to make the most possible yen from two of their most lucrative brands. Paying a sizable sales fee established by an outdated handshake agreement between the King brothers and Merv Griffin–now all deceased– to an increasingly distracted babysitter that had already pissed Sony off as previously noted apparently doesn’t play well in Tokyo and Culver City.
And if all of that isn’t enough to justify that LEXIS/NEXIS subscription, the legal beagles have been assisting their brethren at CBS News a bit more these days as well, as THE ECONOMIC TIMES reported yesterday:
Paramount’s CBS News has turned over documents sought by the Federal Communications Commission in an investigation of a “60 Minutes” interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris, a network spokesperson said on Monday. “We submitted the documents to the FCC today,” the CBS News spokesperson told Reuters in an email. Last week, agency chair Brendan Carr, appointed by President Donald Trump, said the commission had reinstated a complaint into the appearance. “CBS played the same question on two different programs and clearly the words of the answers were very different,” Carr said. “Was it edited for clarity and length – which would be fine – or are there other reasons?”
Apparently the folks in legal are more contrite than at least one of their colleagues, as THE NEW YORK TIMES’Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin reported:
The head of “60 Minutes” told the show’s staff on Monday that he would not apologize as part of any prospective settlement in a lawsuit brought by President Trump against their network, CBS, according to people with knowledge of the remarks.
The comments by Bill Owens, the executive producer who oversees the long-running news program, came as CBS’s parent company, Paramount, continued to pursue settlement talks with Mr. Trump. The president is accusing the network of deceptively editing an interview with his rival, the Democratic candidate for president, Kamala Harris. Many legal experts have described the lawsuit as far-fetched and baseless.
“There have been reports in the media about a settlement and/or apology,” Mr. Owens said, according to two people who heard his remarks. “The company knows I will not apologize for anything we have done.”
Pretty bold of him, considering where and with whom the creator and enabler of his incoming boss was spending yesterday, as FINANCIAL REVIEW’s Matthew Cranston reported this morning:
Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a new US sovereign wealth fund and suggested the fund could be used to keep Chinese-owned TikTok operating in the United States. The president was joined in the Oval Office by “the legendary Rupert Murdoch and [tech billionaire] Larry Ellison”.
Mmm hmm, Ellison, as in David’s daddy.
When the last round of negotiations on licensing WHEEL and JEOPARDY was ongoing several years ago, it was widely reported that the FOX owned-and-operated stations were aggressively pursuing usurping those shows from their longtime perches on the ABC-owned stations they directly compete with in their largest markets. CBS eventually opted to keep the status quo, not even entering the bidding themselves with their stations to perhaps goose the price point a bit further. By their calculations, a 100 per cent stake in wholly-owned but lower-rated shows like INSIDE EDITION and ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT better serve tbeir parochial needs than 60-something per cent of more successful franchises. Facts I’m pretty sure the folks at both Sony and FOX know.
So one never knows what those two Oval Office guests, infused by being in the presence of the guy who in his mind created “the art of the deal” might have been talking about while he was babbling their praises to anyone within earshot, as Cranston further noted:
“The legendary Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison. So there are two legends in business and publishing. Larry is pretty much in a class by himself, right? You may have a couple of bucks more, I don’t know, and Rupert is in a class by himself. He’s an amazing guy,” Mr Trump said.
Anything’s possible these days. And we know anything that comes from any of these worlds will certainly need more than their share of lawyers.
Until next time…