Paramount Skydance held its first upfront presentation for advertisers Thursday, gathering media buyers, talent and reporters at its Melrose Avenue property to hear the startup’s marketing pitch.
Paramount will continue its roadshow in the coming days, with several more conferences and events planned in markets including New York. But this week’s event, kicked off by CEO David Ellison, who had just appeared in Las Vegas earlier in the day for the company’s CinemaCon presentation, was perhaps its biggest yet.
A day after CBS announced its fall schedule and held its own “CBS Fest” on the Paramount lot, it was the company’s turn to make a comprehensive pitch. Before Mr. Ellison came out, a new corporate branding video narrated by Tom Cruise showcased Paramount’s talent and featured big-name creators like Jerry Bruckheimer, James Cameron, the Duffer Brothers, Mark Wahlberg and Will Smith. (The same sizzle reel was shown at CinemaCon earlier in the day.)
“This moment is particularly meaningful to us as it marks the first Upfront for the new Paramount,” Ellison said, opening the Upfront inside Paramount’s Shelley Lansing Theater. “We launched Paramount Skydance nearly nine months ago, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the progress and momentum we’ve achieved in a relatively short period of time. Our goal is to build a leading media and entertainment company that strengthens our competition, better serves the creative community, and delivers even more compelling stories to audiences around the world.”
In a sign of the importance of sports broadcasts to the company, “NFL Today” anchor James Brown moderated the event and introduced various executives.
While there was no mention of the company’s impending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, there was a lot of talk about how the company is focusing on technology. Paramount also took time to introduce three major companies. In a seated, on-stage corner, Chief Revenue Officer Jay Askinasi interviewed D2C Chairman Cindy Holland and Chief Product Officer Dane Glasgow about why they joined Paramount and their plans for the future. The trio represents a new structure at Paramount that came together last fall after Ellison’s Skydance Media completed its $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global from Shari Redstone and National Amusements. Asinasi joined Paramount last October after leading Roku’s ad sales division and serving as CEO of Publicis Media Exchange US.
Holland called the next-day CBS series “a really important foundation” for Paramount+, along with the NFL and other simulcast sports. She also recently had credits on the Taylor Sheridan series, including “The Madison.” “Obviously, the NFL is a huge audience funnel, very large, very diverse. We want to continue to have programs for different demographics,” she said. “And the job is to add more programming. We’re also going to welcome the BET+ community to Paramount+[in June]and it’s a privilege and an honor for us to welcome that community and its stories and bring them to a wider audience.”
As for Paramount+’s new programming, Holland said the show will focus on more “female-oriented” content, following the recent success of “Madison,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer. These include “Fear Not,” starring Anne Hathaway, and “Discretion,” starring Nicole Kidman and Hathaway.
“Landman’s audience is about 50 percent female, but people see it from a slightly more male perspective,” Holland said. “And we also know that group dramas, dramas, legal thrillers, soapy thrillers with female leads are what we were looking for.”
Glasgow also discussed PlutoTV’s refocus on Gen Z viewers, saying, “If you look specifically at Pluto’s data, the 18-34 demographic is actually our fastest growing demographic, up 30% over last year.” “What that means is that the way people use our products is changing, and that’s exciting because it means we can deliver a whole new set of experiences and features. We’re integrating our Pluto and Paramount+ stacks to But what that ultimately means is that we’re going to be able to deliver a significantly better experience for Pluto. At the same time, we’re going to bring a lot of new content together. So this summer, we’re rebooting Pluto in a pretty significant way.”
As Variety recently reported, Pluto TV has just added several CW classics from the 2000s and 2010s, including “Hart of Dixie,” “Arrow,” “The 100” and “Everwood,” to cater to young people nostalgic for the shows of their youth.
Also on the Upfront, Paramount TV Media Chairman George Cheeks and CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach reiterated Wednesday’s news about i Network’s fall schedule and market position.
The wide range of clips includes talent such as Helen Mirren (“Mobland”), Michelle Pfeiffer (“Madison”), Nicole Kidman (“The Lioness”), Zoe Saldaña (“The Lioness”), Kathy Bates (“Matlock”), Kelly Reilly (“Dutton Ranch”) and Annette Bening (“Dutton Ranch”).
But noticeably, the focus was primarily on Paramount+, CBS Entertainment, and CBS Sports, with no mention of Paramount’s struggling CBS News division. Cable TV, once a pillar of Paramount, is barely mentioned anymore, save for a fleeting flash of “South Park,” mentions of MTV’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and the MTV Video Music Awards. Perhaps it’s painfully clear that cable is considered a thing of the past, and the company is now working hard to rebrand itself as technology-first.
“Everything is accelerated by technology,” Askinasi said. “We think and operate like a platform.”
