Paramount and CBS merged together:
CBS And Viacom Finally Re-Tie The Knot, Merging After 13 Years As Separate Companies
How this affects Trek:
‘Star Trek’ Poised To Become New Marvel? CBS & Viacom Merger Brings Franchise Under One Fleet
CBS And Viacom Finally Re-Tie The Knot, Merging After 13 Years As Separate Companies
Ending years of fitful discussions that played out against a backdrop of operatic corporate drama and media industry consolidation, CBS and Viacom have finally agreed to merge. The deal reunites them and pools assets such as Paramount Pictures, CBS, Showtime and MTV in a new entity to be called ViacomCBS Inc. after 13 years of the two operating in largely separate media domains.
Under the all-stock deal, Viacom shareholders will get 0.59625 CBS shares for each non-voting share they own, which is an exchange ratio a bit below Viacom’s closing price last Friday. Regulatory approval of the merger is expected in the next several months.
The fair market value of the tie-up as of today is about $30 billion. The combined annual revenue of the new company is $28 billion.
How this affects Trek:
‘Star Trek’ Poised To Become New Marvel? CBS & Viacom Merger Brings Franchise Under One Fleet
Taking a page from the now Fox-expanded Disney book, new ViacomCBS kingpin Bob Bakish made very clear just now on today’s investor call, Star Trek and the Mission Impossible franchises have significant potential to leverage “across all the companies’ platforms.” Soon to be minted CBS CEO Joe Ianniello hit the drum hard himself when he added with an international angle that “scale is becoming more and more important all the time.”
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It may not be Marvel yet but it certainly has the potential to rival the Disney-own comic giant with a legacy and currency that is almost as valuable – especially as part of Shari Redstone’s overall strategy is a great global footprint.
At this very early stage, we hear that any great Trek will fall under the fiefdom of the David Stapf-run CBS Studios – as we await who truly rules what and whether a fourth Star Trek movie in the latest reboot round is truly coming in an R-rated form from Quentin Tarantino or whoever.