Earlier this week, Shari Redstone and Bob Bakish genuflected to Wall Street’s streaming demands by going as far as changing the name of their mashed-up company, ViacomCBS (which neither Wall Street nor Shari’s father ever wanted mashed up, by the way), to Paramount Global. Investors responded by dumping the stock, in one massive exhale, to celebrate the lipstick choreography.
On Friday, my partner Matt Belloni elucidated the many perceived flaws in the Redstone-Bakish strategy. Since that announcement on February 15, the ViacomCBS stock has been gutted 21.2 percent, reducing the company’s market value to $18 billion. (By comparison, Disney’s market value is $276 billion.) Last March, around the time that Bakish successfully launched Paramount+, the ViacomCBS stock was trading at a meme-inflated $100 a share, and now it’s trading at a little more than $28 a share. So, you know, what to do?
