Broadcast TV Ratings Continue Declining, But Paramount's New Boss Still Has Big Expectations For CBS' Future
That's good at least...
CBS has definitely been making news lately, but not all of it has to do with the number of shows the network has canceled or set to end at some point during the 2024 TV schedule. For several months we’ve known that those behind the channel’s parent company, Paramount, were in the process of attempting to negotiate a sale, and that finally came to fruition when Paramount Global sold to Skydance Media earlier in July. But, even with broadcast ratings continuing to decline, the new boss still has big expectations for the future of CBS.
What Did Paramount’s New Boss Say About Future Expectations For CBS?
As fans of the many crime procedurals, comedies and dramas on the eye network know, the past few months have been rough. The cancellation of shows like NCIS: Hawai’i blindsided cast and crew and angered fans, with millions of others also mourning the loss of CSI: Vegas, the wonderful legal comedy So Help Me Todd, and other series that didn’t make it out of the 2023-2024 television season alive. Jeff Shell has been appointed as the new president of Paramount, and when he spoke to reporters recently The Wrap noted that he still has strong hopes for CBS’ prospects going forward. Shell said:
Though to the casual observer it might not seem like the TV business is “declining,” as there are certainly more shows to watch than ever before, he’s specifically talking about the business of network television. With each passing year, more and more people find shows on streaming that they spend their time on, leaving series on stations like CBS with fewer overall eyeballs as a result.
Shell’s talk of “making some harder decisions” really rings true after digging a bit deeper into many of those cancellations from just a few weeks ago. Shortly after So Help Me Todd was relieved of a potential renewal, it was revealed that not only did the sale of Paramount likely factor into cancellation, but the ratings weren’t really that bad (something that had an NCIS: Hawai’i star troll CBS over that series being axed), and some of the issue was scheduling for the fall season, and simply not having space for a show that wasn’t basically a blockbuster hit.
Paramount’s president continued, and added that he’s still very committed to the network and feels it will be important to the company as time goes on:
I suppose it’s a sign of hope that it appears they’ll be looking for a “no news is good news" situation when it comes to how much money CBS can bring in over the coming years and how popular they expect it to remain, despite "linear" television programming not being the biggest game in town anymore. But, as he said before, this will mean that there will probably be even tougher cuts to the schedule moving forward, with more upstart shows not having much of an opportunity to really gain traction before being tossed aside. We’ll just have to wait and see what that’ll mean as we get through the fall TV season and beyond.
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Covering The Witcher, Outlander, Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias and a slew of other streaming shows, Adrienne Jones is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend, and started in the fall of 2015. In addition to writing and editing stories on a variety of different topics, she also spends her work days trying to find new ways to write about the many romantic entanglements that fictional characters find themselves in on TV shows. She graduated from Mizzou with a degree in Photojournalism.