“The notion that the strikes saved the company is wildly overstated,” Bob Bakish said of Paramount today.
The Paramount Global boss acknowledged that “the strike is accretive to cash in 2023 and that is true for the [whole] industry” but rubbished the notion of the labor action saving the company, calling it an “overstatement.”
“We are playing the hand we were dealt,” said Bakish as he accepted the Mipcom Cannes Personality of the Year Award. “Necessity is the mother of invention but I would say we want this strike to be over so we can resume work. The notion that it saved the company is wildly overstated.”
Bakish cited how Paramount has had to innovate due to the content well drying up, with reality series extended in length and cable shows like Yellowstone airing on CBS.
He acknowledged that “things broke down a bit last week” between the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA but said the pair are ready to “come back to the table.”
Content licensing passion
In a wide-ranging Mipcom keynote, Bakish passionately reaffirmed Paramount’s commitment to content licensing and said there will be a “significant reduction in streaming losses” next year.
“While our peers were pulling back content and putting up walled gardens, we never left [the content licensing game],” he said.
The exec described content licensing as an “ecosystem that gives a robust supply of content from diverse creatives to entertain consumers.”
“We share not only a commitment but responsiblity to move the industry forward, to evolve it for our mutual benefit,” he added. “Content licensing was and will continue to be a fundamental part of our economic model.”
While simultaneously reaffirming Paramount’s commitment to D2C streaming, he said content partnerships remain vitally important and flagged a new multi-year tie-up with Greece’s Cosmote TV along with pre-existing deals with South Korea’s CJ ENM and Canal+ in France.
There will be “significant streaming growth driven by significant reduction in streaming losses” next year, he went on to say, following a year of “peak investment.”
“Yes there has been continued discussion about streaming and the robustness of that business and profitability but it’s more true than two years ago that it is important to have significant exposure to streaming,” he added. “Consumers continue to move in that direction – the linear ecosystem continues to be in gradual decline and streaming continues to get bigger.”
Addressing the recession, he said the “trough had been slightly deeper because the ad market got a little softer” but Paramount had negated impacts by, for example, consolidating Paramount with Showtime. “Fundamentally we saw this arc coming and continue to be focused on executing [our strategy] in a differentiated way,” he added.
Bakish was closing day two of Mipcom Cannes. The likes of Eva Longoria, Mo Abudu and Gerhard Zeiler have also addressed the market.