Paramount is a legacy name in Hollywood. This dates back 100 years and owns some of the most iconic names in cinema history.

Unfortunately, the glory days are long gone.

The company is now on fire, and not in a good way. It is in the process of being sold to Skydance, a situation that is being made even more complicated. In the meantime, the company keeps dumping hundreds of millions into streaming.

Naturally, Paramount is not alone in this. All legacy studios jumped on the streaming bandwagon. The belief was to roll out a service and simply pull all the profits from Netflix. This not only turned out to be false, the studios removed their content from their competitor, losing that stream of revenue.

Nobody dove deeper into the abyss than Disney. Paramount is, however, doing it part, still putting up money in hopes of turning a profit.

Paramount Is A Dumpster Fire: Announces Loss For Quarter

Everywhere we look for Hollywood, things are taking. The movie industry is getting slammed, with box office receipts still down. Many are hoping they return although estimates are, at best, 2026. That means this year is already being written off.

Another issue is legacy television. Last year, we saw write downs into the billions. These assets no longer have the value which they were on the books. The studios has no choice but to take the hit on the financials since it became undeniable.

Paramount is seeing things complicated because of its television division.

At the moment, CBS News is facing a $20 billion lawsuit for defamation and election interference. President Trump is suing over an assortment of decisions the network made, including the interview with Kamala Harris. The FCC is also looking into the matter.

The results of this lawsuit are uncertain. There is nothing that says Trump will win in court. Actually, there is a strong chance that CBS could prevail. The problem for the network is discovery. A court proceeding will open up a lot of internal documentation to public scrutiny as the Trump legal team enters it into evidence.

For this reason, along with the buyout, many believe the company is looking to settle. Skydance has stated it will not go through with the deal until this is resolved.

The Death of Legacy Media

Jeff Bezos made a surprising decision regarding the Washington Post. He came out and stated that opinion pages will defend free market and ‘personal liberties’. This is a marked shift for the left leaning publication.

In other words, Bezos is not going to tolerate the flailing newspaper going down the path of reputation destruction. For Bezos, it is unlikely this is about the money. He can certainly afford to fund it to the tune of $10 or 20 million per year. Certainly, he would like to break even on the asset at a minimum. However, it is far more probable that he is looking at his legacy.

Here is the problem according to Gallup:

Trust is a very difficult thing to recapture. This chart is a bit dated and it will be interesting to see what the end of 2025 numbers look like. The ratings for the cable news channels, at least on the left, have plummeted since the election.

Here is another problem for these studios that own these properties. The value is rapidly declining, with revenues dwindling. There is a lot of high paid talent that is not going to be removed from the books soon.

This is a giant tsunami for the likes of Paramount. It is not surprising they are going to do all they can to ensure the sale goes through. That is the only hope for most of these studios. MGM was already gobbled up by Amazon. Big Tech has the money to acquire the properties. Unfortunately, the values keep declining on a monthly basis.

If I had to guess, another year or two of this will see some of these properties sold at the valuation of their libraries. There isn't much else to some of these that has much of a future.