As David Ellison brings together Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery under the Skydance umbrella, series such as Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, Harry Potter and Taylor Sheridan’s Landman have been in the spotlight.

But another swathe of content is driving many of the channels that bring in billions of dollars across the two companies.

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and South Park, MTV’s Ridiculousness, Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants and BET’s Sistas will now be placed under the same corporate umbrella as shows such as Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, TLC’s 90 Day FiancĂ©, HGTV’s The Flip Off, TBS’s Impractical Jokers and Investigation Discovery’s slate of true-crime titles like Ruby & Jodi: A Cult of Sin and Influence.

The problem is that while cable is still a high-margin business that throws off a lot of cash, it is declining.

To paraphrase a former U.S. President, it’s about the content, stupid.

At Skydance’s first press briefing following the closing of the deal, Skydance Co-CEO Ynon Kreiz was asked about its cable TV business. “There are many brands within our umbrella, and, ultimately, we’re looking to achieve economic scale, and be productive. We run a business that makes great content that can compete in the marketplace, and ultimately, it’s about investing in content,” he said.

The former Endemol and Mattel chief believes that what makes Skydance stand apart is its IP.

“The investment thesis is about increasing output and establishing the company as a leading content engine. When you do that, you can then drive growth in your [direct-to-consumer] business. You can continue to optimize linear channels around the world, which is a large business,” he added.

Establishing the content engine from the cable side will be a job for George Cheeks, Co-Chair and Chief Content Officer, Skydance TV, and his new report Channing Dungey, who was Chairman and CEO, Warner Bros Television Group and US Networks, but will now also oversee the Paramount cable networks such as MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET as well as VH1, Paramount Network, TV Land, CMT, Pop TV and Logo TV.

There are obvious priorities: MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET on the Paramount side and channels such as Discovery Channel, TLC, HGTV and Food Network on the WBD side, which also includes, Adult Swim, Cooking Channel, TNT and TruTV.

Some of the brands are already focused on becoming a content engine for a digital world.

Jason Sarlanis, President, TBS, TNT, truTV, ID & HLN, Linear & Streaming at Warner Bros. Discovery, told Deadline earlier this spring that Investigation Discovery has become more than just a cable network.

“We really have transformed that network into being a content engine for streaming, and so getting those massive documentary ‘docbuster’ events to break through, both on the streaming platform, but using the network as a barker to bring that voracious audience to this new platform has been our strategy.”

Paramount has already turned some of its linear franchises into digital properties such as Drunk History, which ran for six seasons on Comedy Central through 2019, which has returned as a series of digital shorts on YouTube.

Nickelodeon has also greenlit a number of YouTube originals such as Kid Cowboy and Star Trek Scouts. The idea is that these serve as an incubator for ideas that can then be turned into franchises for its streaming services, which can then be fed back into the linear landscape.

MTV seems ripe for this level of experimentation. When Quibi launched in 2020 it ordered a number of reboots of classic MTV series such as Punk’d and Singled Out, so it’s not a stretch to see those types of shows, or other iconic franchises such as TRL and Yo MTV Raps!, go digital. In success, they could be turned into streaming shows that have a second window on the cable networks.

It’s not too dissimilar from the MTV Video Music Awards airing on CBS; the show, which featured awards given to the likes of Taylor Swift and Nirvana, hit an 11-year high with 8.43M viewers across CBS and MTV, but only just over 800,000 of those viewers watched on the cable network.

Cheeks and Dungey will now be working out what that looks likes for WBD franchises.

There is plenty of programming to plunder from Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters, which ran for 17 seasons before ending in 2016, to Ina Garten’s long-running Food Network’s hit Barefoot Contessa, Duff Goldman’s Ace of Cakes, Adam Richman’s Man V. Food and, TLC’s A Baby Story.

After Skydance acquired Paramount, Cheeks, who was then Paramount’s Chair of TV Media division, admitted cable was a “super challenging business”. “But, the cable group, the content group, has created these incredibly iconic franchises, and we’re all seeing the pay cable business shifting over to streaming. So, there’ll be a lot of conversations about what iconic franchises we want to continue, shift maybe to streaming,” he said in August 2025.

It is a similar message spread by former WBD cable chief Kathleen Finch, who retired at the end of 2024, handing the reins to Dungey. She warned that cable executives should “stop using the word cable” in the future and focus on content creation. “That’s going away at some point, so what we all are is creatives. You make content, then you put it on these different places and the audience chooses to watch it whichever place they happen to prefer,” she said before leaving.

Where this leaves the combined company’s cable executives is now one of the big questions; Paramount unveiled its leadership team to run its cable networks in November with Laurel Weir overseeing programming for MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

Howard Lee has been Chief Creative Officer of U.S. Networks since the end of 2024 as well as continuing to oversee TLC and Discovery Channel, while Sarlanis has been running ID since June 2021 and TNT, TBS, TruTV and HLN since December 2022. Magnolia is run by Allison Page and Betsy Ayala is Head of Content, Food.

The cable networks also played a major role in the delay of the deal; California Attorney General Rob Bonta and other AGs filed a lawsuit arguing that the merger would create too much concentration among these channels when it comes to negotiating carriage deals.

In fact, the settlement that Bonta and others struck with Skydance meant that the merged company must conduct negotiations for Paramount basic cable channels independently from negotiations for Warner Bros. basic cable channels to “preserve the existing competitive dynamic between the companies”, which the AG would “help to keep prices down for consumers”.

If they break this rule, or in fact, break other rules such as the number of theatrical movies it releases per year, it is these cable assets, notably, BET, VH1, Comedy Central, Smithsonian, Destination America, and the Science Channel, that will be in the crosshairs with Skydance forced to sell them.

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