CBS CEO George Cheeks on Long-Term Plans, Morale, Paramount Fate

Just days after Bob Bakish left Paramount Global as CEO, CBS president/CEO George Cheeks — one-third of the newly formed “Office of the CEO” that will now jointly run the company — spoke to reporters about what to expect moving forward. And so far, there’s not much he can say.

Cheeks met with reporters on Thursday, alongside CBS Entertainment prexy Amy Reisenbach, to unveil CBS’ 2024-2025 TV schedule. But Cheeks, who now is also part of the Paramount Global office of the CEO that includes Chris McCarthy (president and CEO, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks) and Brian Robbins (president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon) opened his comments by first addressing the elephant in the room.

The exec can’t comment on the pending fate of Paramount, and like clockwork, news that Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management have made a bid to take Paramount private with an all-cash buyout offer of $26 billion came just minutes before Cheeks met with reporters. (The Sony/Apollo bid comes as Paramount Global board’s special committee established to consider M&A proposals is evaluating the best and final offer from Skydance Media to merge Paramount and Skydance while keeping Paramount Global public.)

But Cheeks did take the time to stress that the three CEOs are still handling their respective businesses even as they work together to run the full company.

“We’re only four days in so there’s not a lot I can say,” Cheeks said. “But there are two things that I did want to say. The first is that Brian, Chris and I are in the process of finalizing our strategic plan that we’re going to roll out as soon as possible. The second thing is divisional clarity will continue. What I mean by that is that I will still remain the sole head of CBS. Brian Robbins will remain the sole had a Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon. And Chris will remain the sole head of MTV Entertainment and Showtime. So in other words, I have no involvement in Paramount Pictures greenlights, and Brian has no involvement in CBS show greenlights.”

As for how the trio of CEOs are mapping out their “long-term strategy” at a time when the long-term fate of Paramount is unclear, Cheeks added, “When you don’t control those things, you strategize for long term. Because we believe that CBS has an incredible amount of momentum right now. And we want to continue and stay that course. We have no idea what could happen, or if the transaction could happen or not. But regardless, we believe so strongly in CBS that we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.”

Asked by Variety to describe how he is managing the issue of morale at Paramount, and specifically at CBS, Cheeks said, “It’s a challenging time right now. I mean, you read articles every day. But I think what’s amazing about this team is that we’ve all kind of locked arms and said, ‘We can only control we can control.’ What we can control is helping to develop great shows, hit shows, and being No. 1. And what’s been amazing to me, is throughout all the noise, everybody is just sort of locked and loaded on what we need to do. I’m blown away by this team every single day. And especially right now, when you have to deal with all of that noise out there — by the way, not just with this company, but in the larger industry — it’s just amazing to me how well we’ve all aligned and come together and just kind of focused on what we do every day.”