Did you notice that Paramount Global just fell off the annual Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies? It’s the first time that has happened since owner Shari Redstone triumphantly combined CBS and Viacom in 2019 to create a media giant that, she insisted, would transcend the cable TV era of entertainment and compete with Netflix and Disney for world domination in the streaming age.

Sigh. Just five years later, the company has been sold, its interim leadership just wrote down $6 billion in evaporated value, and the three C.E.O.s we aren’t calling the Pep Boys began laying off 2,000 more employees, another 15 percent of the company. At the same time, Paramount’s supposed white knights—David Ellison, the billionaire Skydance C.E.O.; his centibillionaire father, Larry; and their backers at RedBird Capital—must sit and wait for months as the deal proceeds over various hurdles, both financial and regulatory, toward a closing date next year. Meanwhile, like renters in an aging duplex that’s been pegged for redevelopment, the C.E.O.s are executing their “strategic plan” despite not being able to do much of anything besides cut costs without approval from the Skydance team. Not ideal.