Doug Herzog, a former top exec at Viacom (now part of Paramount) says his alma mater will soon look a lot different in the wake of its just-closed merger with Skydance.
“I would believe that 24 months from now, when we take a look at Paramount, it will not closely resemble what it is today,” Herzog said in a TV of Tomorrow podcast appearance Friday. “And I honestly think that’s the way forward. These legacy media companies, if they’re going to survive – and, by the way, survival is not mandatory – I think they kind of have to blow it up and take some chances and embrace the tech world in a way that they have slowly been doing, which I think you’ll see at Paramount.”
The conversation hosted by Rick Howe, himself a cable vet and a former Showtime exec, touched on a number of Herzog’s achievements during his years at MTV and then two stints overseeing Comedy Central. He rose to the position of President of Viacom’s Music Entertainment Group before stepping down in 2017.
Herzog noted the “deep pockets” of Paramount CEO David Ellison, the son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison who took the top job after the $8.4 billion merger finally closed earlier this month. “As much as he, for Wall Street purposes lately, has positioned himself as a tech person and he’s got that DNA, he’s also a content guy,” Herzog observed. “He’s been running his own studio now for quite some time.”
The financial structure of big media companies, which benefited for decades from the dual revenue stream of distribution and advertising, is now cratering due to cord-cutting. Traditional players are also shifting resources to their streaming services as they continue to try to close the gap with Netflix.
“I kind of think you need to blow it up,” Herzog said. “The model’s kind of broken. The strength of [Paramount] was in the cable networks. It’s all done. It’s done. So, you need a different idea.”
Paramount leaders in recent weeks have rebuffed the notion that they would spin off their cable portfolio as Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery are in the process of doing. They also reaffirmed their commitment to BET Networks, which had gone on the block two years ago during Bob Bakish’s tenure as Paramount Global CEO. Many networks and franchises in the cable portfolio will be “redefined” rather than immediately sold off, the new executive regime has asserted.
One franchise that remains vibrant after nearly three decades is South Park, whose creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, signed a $1.5 billion renewal just as the show’s incisive new season was beginning its run. Herzog was running Comedy Central when the show first went on the air, and the podcast included a lengthy look back at the animated mainstay’s origin story.
Herzog said the show’s durability has been “glorious,” but initially it seemed a longshot to even see the air. In a reversal of industry norms, he said, the fact that Comedy Central at the time was a joint venture between Viacom and Time Warner worked to the show’s advantage. Typically, JVs are so micro-managed and involve so much tension and in-fighting among the partners that their output is hampered. Not so in this case, Herzog maintained.
Then-Viacom network boss Tom Freston and HBO chief Jeff Bewkes “appreciated” the show and “got it immediately,” Herzog recalled. “But I thought to myself, ‘If I only worked for one of them, if the company was fully owned by one of those corporations, would we have been able to put South Park on?’ Because it was so dangerous, it was so over-the-top, nobody had seen anything like it. I remember waking up in a cold sweat about a week before we debuted and thinking, can I go to jail for this?’ It was so out-there. But I always wonder whether, if I was working for one single corporation whether they would have gotten cold feet.”
Howe said the situation reminded him of the trope of a child of divorced parents who tells their father, “Well, Mom said it was OK.”
Herzog replied, “Well, they both said it was OK, but I think they were also both afraid to tell me no. There were very few benefits of a JV … [but] that was certainly one of them. I was largely left on my own and to my own devices.”
Ultimately, Herzog said, South Park became “the house on which Comedy Central was built.” At a time when the network was only three years old and had in only 40 million homes, less than half of the pay-TV universe, “It was the first real hit, it put us in business. And here we are 27, 28 years later. They’re still going strong. They’re still making trouble and pissing off everybody. They deserve every penny they get. They’re absolute geniuses.”
The post “You Need To Blow It Up”: Former Comedy Central Chief Doug Herzog On Paramount’s Future appeared first on Deadline.
