Paramount Television Studios, the television arm of Paramount Pictures that is best known for its work on several popular shows, including Reacher, The Haunting of Hill House, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and, more recently, Time Bandits, will cease operations at the end of the week, according to a pair of memos that have been sent out to impacted employees from company executives, including one from Nicole Clemens (President, Paramount Television Studios) that explains how the closure is part of a restructuring plan, one that was prompted by what’s been described as a challenging and transformative time in the industry. The news comes on the same day that Paramount Global announced that it would be reducing its U.S.-based workforce by 15%; 90% of the total cuts are expected to occur by the end of September.
Clemens writes:
- “Over the past 11 years, PTVS has weathered seemingly insurmountable obstacles through a combination of strength, determination, and unwavering commitment. We met these challenges with incredible resilience, creativity, and passion for what we do, and I could not be prouder of our team.”
- “We’ve also had the privilege to collaborate with some of the most brilliant creative talent in the industry to help tell incredible stories seen around the world, entertaining and shaping culture.”
- “Although Paramount Television Studios is ending, our ethos will live on in shows that will continue to be enjoyed by global audiences for years to come. We’ve cemented our legacy by shepherding some of the most influential, award-winning, and critically acclaimed shows in the streaming era with series like 13 Reasons Why, The Offer, Defending Jacob, The Alienist, The Haunting of Hill House, Station Eleven, Time Bandits, and many more.”
- “We have broken streaming platform records with Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Reacher, and The Spiderwick Chronicles. Our upcoming shows, Cross, Before, and Murderbot, are sure to join the ranks of those hits.”
Some promos for those shows:
George Cheeks (Co-CEO, Paramount Global and President & CEO, CBS) noted in a separate memo:
A short time ago, we informed the team at Paramount Television Studios (PTVS) that the studio will cease operations at the end of the week. To be clear, this is not a decision based on how PTVS performed. This move is the result of significant changes in the TV and streaming marketplace and the need to streamline our company.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Good. Maybe they can stop the Starfleet Academy show before that pile of dog shit gets made.
Yeah there was a story going around this weekend about how Max, Paramount both got really bad financial news over the weekend.
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[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.investopedia.com/paramount-to-cut-2-000-jobs-posts-usd6b-write-down-8693077[/URL]
Maybe not everyone and their brother are cut out to start their own streaming service and distribution network.
Yeah, I get it, you want to vertically integrate and control/monetize every aspect of your product. But ... sometimes that just doesn't work out like you planned.
They were making a bunch of baffling decisions lately. Like you were only able to stream the olympics if you subscribed to max, and then bought the additional sports package only available to max subscribers.
I wanted to sign up for Discovery+ for years, except it is not available in my region to this day.
They killed off the Eurosport streaming service twice in the last two years only to restart it as new service.
Every decision maker at WB deserves everything that is coming to them. But unfortunately they probably all have their stock options and golden parachutes to safely land, so this again only screws the employees.
Paying for streaming wasn't bad when there were only a couple options (Netflix, Hulu). But since every studio decided to ala carte things and make their own streaming services people don't want to pay for it. Not when you can get cable for the same amount as paying for all these streaming services, then you only have 1 company/bill to deal with.
All these services, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, Peacock, etc etc are all doomed to fail.
Good riddance.
A lot of the problem comes down to the garbage content they are making. They are spending a fortune on original content that sucks ass. In the case of Paramount, most of the Star Trek shows haven't been well received and they are extremely expensive to make. Thanks to Alex Kurtzman, they are making shows no one asked for or wanted in the first place.
We've enjoyed Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, but aside from that, ended up regretting any time spent watching anything else and I really have no interest in any of the things they say are in development. There moments when I'm more optimistic but the true test is if we rewatch something and those are the only two that have passed that test. For the most part though, I agree that, regardless of services, the self-made stuff is pure crap. I feel even more strongly about that with Netflix though but its true for all of them.
As an avid Star Trek fan, I'd rather see the franchise go into hibernation for a decade than see anymore Kurtzman Trek. Most of it has been absolutely painful to watch. The Kelvin Reboot movies sucked ass, Star Trek Discovery is bar none the worst Star Trek series ever produced by a long shot. Lower Deck's is surprisingly good and Strange New Worlds is a mixed bag at best. Some episodes are absolutely fucking cringe inducing and others are rather excellent. Picard Seasons 1 and 2 are the equivalent of digital rectal cancer.
That leaves Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds and Season 3 of Picard as being the only watchable entries in the franchise since 2009. Even then, when Strange New Worlds sucks, it sucks harder than a $20 hooker on payday. The musical episode was horrible. The episode where Spock becomes human was basically modeled after a fucking sitcom.
I can write a fucking thesis about how mishandled the Spock character has been on SNW. That's left overs from SNW spawning from Discovery. Because its all JJ/Kurtzman Trek, everything but Lower Decks seems to have been negatively influenced by both the Kelvin movies and the aptly named STD. The few issues I have with Picard Season 3 inherit their problems from Ronald D. Moore, because Terry Matalas is too busy choking on the guy's cock and was an avid Battlestar Galactica fan.
What I think of that show is its own subject, but the out of place conflicts and super dark lighting all come from that influence. Despite this, Picard Season 3 came out pretty good for the most part. It would have been better without the BSG influence and without having inherited baggage from Seasons 1 and 2 of Picard. Under the circumstances and despite his knee level worshipping of Ron Moore, its probably as good as can be under those circumstances.
Every episode of Discovery is basically as painful as the Voyager Warp 10 episode. The best episodes of that show are only as good as Spock's Brain or the episode of TNG where Doctor Crusher has sex with a ghost.
As for Netflix and everyone else, its still a mixed bag. Netflix's movies and TV shows are generally awful but they've got a lot of cheaply made documentary shows that are decent if you are into that. Though some of them like "Making a Murderer" show clear bias and leave out a lot of information.
The whole industry has been making garbage for the better part of 10 years now. There are very few truly successful movies every year. There are very few successful TV shows. Franchises that once printed money are floundering and the companies behind them throw out every excuse they can while failing to acknowledge the real problem. Beyond being creatively bankrupt and out of steam, their attempts at social engineering, the infusion of identity politics and girl boss nonsense is causing them to bleed money and subscribers.
It's self-immolation. These services will self-destruct. Not only because of the shit content they've produced, but because people are sick and tired of being nickeled and dimed to death paying $10 here, and $15 there for a ton of streaming services with nothing good to watch on them. Having all of these essentially gives you an old school $100+ cable bill again. People are fed up and only subscribe to services that have something to offer.
At this point, I subscribe to Crunchyroll through Amazon Prime. It and Prime are all I have. Prime video comes with my Amazon Prime subscription (paid annually) and so I pay $7 a month for streaming services. I dropped all the rest because they have little to nothing to offer me.
SNW and Picard Season 3 are the only watchable ST in the last 10 years. In fact I recently rewatched Picard season 3.
I dont know why they didnt keep the previous pipe to netflix model: milk the material for a good while, then sell rights to netflix later on.
Oh well.
I liked Picard S3 but it was so weird after watching the first two seasons that I still doubt it actually happened. S2 essentially retconned S1 and S3 did the same to S2 and somehow there's a flimsy Q/Picard plotline that's supposed to tie it all together. If not for those issues I'd give more props to S3 but I'm just too annoyed by it all.
I never subscribed to their streaming service. I never really seen anything on there that I just had to watch. It is a shame that more people are losing their jobs though.
Picard Season 3 essentially ignores Seasons 1 & 2 of the show. It only makes some vague references to a couple of things that happened in the earlier seasons. Specifically, Captain Shaw references the Borg encounter in Season 2 as "that weird shit" and states those aren't the real Borg and the real Borg were still out there. This naturally foreshadows their actual return in the last two episodes of the show.
Riker and Troi make references to how much they hate living on that planet by themselves in the middle of nowhere referencing their appearance in the first season. They also reference their son dying, though only indirectly. I think a couple names are dropped here and there and of course, the Romulan chick appears in the first episode.
Lastly, Q's death from Season 2 is mentioned and Q more or less states that their understanding of time, space and causality is limited. Effectively hinting at the Q either not dying out, or dying out in an extremely distant future in which Q traveled back to visit Picard and that the Q seen from Season 2 isn't Q in the present.
All of this is Terry Matalas retconning trash decisions from the earlier seasons. This was necessary given the baggage he inherited by doing a third season of a shit show. Given the circumstances he did about as well as he could have. Despite my issues with Terry Matalas's hard on for Ronald D. Moore and Battle Star Galactasuck which deep throats whale cock, he's an obvious super fan of Star Trek and much of what he did was narratively necessary, it gave the fans what they wanted and even had some spite sprinkled in with it.
If the earlier seasons weren't trash, he wouldn't have had to waste so much time retconning garbage narrative decisions but it is what it is.
Season 3 was the ending to TNG the fans wanted/deserved.
I totally agree with you on everything you state I just think at that point they've should've done a name change (Picard whatever saga) like some shows do when they essentially abandon their previous seasons. We did re-watch a few episodes, which is usually a good thing but every time I think about S1+S2 I don't even want to try and re-watch S3. To be fair though, I'm feeling that way about a lot of stuff these days and choosing to sleep rather putting time into things I'm not that into any more.