On Thursday, a trio of Hollywood Reporter staffers attended a presentation by new Paramount owner David Ellison, who sat alongside his investors from RedBird Capital and new executives at his company’s Manhattan headquarters to lay out his vision for the embattled media firm.

Ellison & Co. had just spent some $8 billion for the 113-year-old studio and have hopes — really, a need — to turn it into a tech company more equipped to handle the realities of the 2020’s. Shortly after the meet-and-greet wrapped, the THR reporters debriefed on what they’d just heard (and didn’t hear) from the incoming ownership.

Steven Zeitchik: So I have to admit, I came into the event feeling like it was just going to be more of the same — find efficiencies, unlock shareholder value, all that MBA snooze lingo — and was pleasantly surprised to actually hear a plan that kinda makes sense: combine the Ellison tech-savvy (and money) with all those iconic Paramount properties.

Alex Weprin: It seems like they have a vision. Whether they can execute, that’s a whole other question. But I came away thinking this isn’t just a pure vanity play where they buy it and they don’t know what they’re going to do with it. They really think technology can change the entertainment industry, even if they were not as forthcoming as they could have been.

SZ: A vision and also advantages no one else has. Like Google-YouTube and Netflix don’t have the library or history Paramount does, and of course most other legacy companies don’t have the tech savvy from their owner. They could argue they now have both in a way no company has before.

AW: That’s true, except if you look at Nielsen Gauge, YouTube is adding share of viewership on TV, and they’re a pure tech company. So you may just not need to be a legacy TV company. But maybe there’s room for an entertainment company to come in and say we can build a tech product too, a kind of pipeline that is consumer friendly and make people watch more of your stuff, whatever it might be, that can compete with YouTube and Netflix, which are a tier above when it comes to sucking up consumers’ time.

SZ: Totally. I felt like that was the real frustration talking to their team yesterday, like we spend all this money to produce Matlock and then we only get a viewer one hour a week while YouTube spends a lot less and they have them five hours a day. Erik, tell me if I’m being too credulous here. Did anything they say convince you?

Erik Hayden: One thing I was struck by is how Ellison said I’m doing this for the next 20 years. Obviously it’s hyperbole, but the exec team also said this is the first family since Walt Disney to put a lot of their own money into a company. They’re framing themselves as an infusion into Hollywood rather than as an extractor. They’re also framing the company as a long-term play. The problem is that David Ellison is now the CEO of a public company and he’s going to have to react to quarterly earnings and the investor class, and is going to be hearing a lot of “are they big enough to compete with Netflix” and all the narratives we hear daily.

SZ: Yeah, and those analysts don’t care about what ol’ Walt did but just about the business. And certainly all these legacy cable companies or even CBS is stuff that doesn’t get them excited. So it’s a little bit like Warner Bros. Discovery where Wall Street could just want cuts and a fire sale. The difference though is these guys may be too rich to care. Like seriously, does the stock price matter to them at that level.

AW: You know, I don’t think David Ellison or even new CEO Jeff Shell needs to hit their bonus numbers the way David Zaslav does.

SZ: I think David Ellison got the bonus that mattered when he turned 18.

AW: It’s actually a meaningful thing; their compensation packages are lower at the outset. The salaries are in line, but their target bonuses are $1.5 million. Which really is below average in the industry. So I really don’t think they have the reason to hit the numbers in a quarter the way other executives do. RedBird wants to see return but Ellison is in a different position.

EH: I wonder if it would work better if they went private.

AW: Given how much ownership they have it probably wouldn’t take that much. Might be something they think about down the line.

SZ: In the meantime let’s not forget they’ll be doing cutting too, which Wall Street always likes. They pretty much said that yesterday. Jeff Shell was asked what he was most excited about and he literally said efficiency. I could almost feel everyone else on the panel balk. It’s like dude, we’re all talking big vision and then he’s like, yeah, I’m going to get that Redstone gristle right outta here.

EH: And the only detail they gave on the cutting was that they wouldn’t do it on a quarter-by-quarter basis, and it won’t be death by 1,000 cuts like we saw with Warner Bros Discovery. It was just, look to the Nov. 6 earnings call for more.

AW: I think there’s going to be a big, big, dramatic reorganization. They’re going to talk about it in November, and then it’s going to happen very quickly after.

SZ: What do we think the company looks like when that’s all done — maybe just a movie studio and then whatever the souped-up Paramount+ is? And CBS, for the time being.

EH: It seems like that’s how it’s going to be. Ellison appears to view it as Paramount Pictures … and everything else.

AW: I guess the only reason I’d push back is that nobody would argue a movie studio is a growth business. Maybe you can add more films to the slate because they’ve released so few films over the last couple of years. But theatrical is not an overall growth business.

EH: Maybe then big IP – Top Gun, Terminator, Star Trek. Wherever it gets monetized.

SZ: And film franchises can still bring in the bucks. I mean they made $1.2 billion just in the last couple years just on Mission: Impossible movies. Split with theaters, of course, but still. And you get the sense Ellison loves getting a Top Gun-type hit cooking. He also really seems to want to fix Paramount+ – which people forget by the way has like 80 million subscribers.

EH: And also had the two most-watched original shows of the year with Taylor Sheridan’s Landman and 1923, with MobLand at No. 4, according to Luminate’s tally.

SZ: The question is the algorithm, can they get it to anything close to Netflix, where they just recommend stuff that keeps you on the platform.

AW: It will be interesting when Cindy Holland talks next week in L.A. on the studio lot about what their plans are. She comes from Netflix and they’re the masters at just keeping people hooked.

SZ: You get the sense Ellison really wants to own it, the distribution. The exec team implied that when shows do better on YouTube than they do on an owned-and-operated platform it’s a loss. It’s really all about keeping it tightly on P+.

AW: They make a lot more money when they’re distributing. It used to be “content is king” but really it’s turning into “distribution is king.”

EH: And they’ve got a decent brand to do that, despite everything. Everyone knows what a Paramount+ show is now – the action, the solid Middle America, Sheridan-esque premium brand. You can build on that.

SZ: Speaking of, well, whatever the opposite is of building, we have to mention CBS News. Like at this point do they just want this whole thing to go away.

EH: I thought it was funny Ellison kept saying we’re staying nonpolitical. I didn’t get the sense he wants to be a media operator.

AW: Like a lot of companies I think they view the news division as more of a pain in the butt.

SZ: Which is what makes Bari Weiss and all The Free Press rumors strange. Does he really covet it?

EH: I thought when he was asked yesterday about The Free Press it was interesting that he didn’t say “oh we really like what they’re doing,” which is what someone may typically say aside from a “we don’t comment on rumors and speculation.” He just said something like “I took 50 meetings at Sun Valley and that was one of them.”

SZ: Yeah that may be a tempest in a teapot. It might be more interesting to look at what he could do with influencers. He wants cheap YouTube-y content, there’s a whole lot of political content right there. DC Draino on one hand, Meidas Touch or Hasan Piker on the other, boom, you’ve got your suck-up-consumer time. Whether you’ve got your good-for-democracy time, I don’t know. But you got your hours.

AW: I wouldn’t be surprised if his news strategy was driven by, you know, more opinionated people. Because the funny thing is they talk a lot about being dedicated to truth but I think in today’s media environment truth is just not that valuable.

SZ: A slogan for late-stage capitalism.

AW: But I mean it’s true. If he’s looking at what he can monetize there are a whole lot of opinion voices on the content creator side.

SZ:. Alright if we’re talking influencers we have to address this other elephant in the room: TikTok. If Larry Ellison buys it and it somehow gets aligned with Paramount it’s a game-changer for the younger Ellison, right? Now they have these crazy algorithms and millions of users and they can really go off.

EH: I just—

SZ: Not feeling it?

EH: I just don’t know that the businesses have anything to do with each other.

SZ: Fair. But that’s where the AI and the personalization comes in. Ellison was talking about how he wants it so that pretty soon – obviously the tech isn’t there yet, but when it is — you can have a conversation with your favorite character. That would be the brass ring for him, wouldn’t it? TikTok with SpongeBob?

AW: I think if they buy TikTok it is a gamechanger. They become a juggernaut that can challenge YouTube and Netflix.

SZ: It has to be, right? No one in history has ever owned so much legacy media and so much social power. Well Rupert did with MySpace but let’s not talk about that.

AW: It really feels like it would change everything.

SZ: And if he doesn’t? Like what’s the ceiling here? Just staying alive?

AW: I think there’s ample room to turn the business around – you do a better job at the movie studio and a better job at the TV studio and a better job at streaming, you could have a Universal-level business.

SZ: And a Disney-level business?

AW: I wouldn’t go that far.