When Chris McCarthy took control of Paramount Network at the end of 2019, he inherited a hot new hit (Yellowstone) and a really big headache: The business model of linear TV, particularly cable, was crumbling even faster than the most dire forecasts had projected. The Kevin Costner–led drama was already one of the biggest shows on cable, and yet amazingly, it wasn’t yet the money-printing machine a similar-size success might have netted even a few years earlier. “While it was bringing in about $150 million in revenue, it was losing about a third of that,” the exec says. As McCarthy saw it, the promise of Paramount Network had run right into “the harsh realities of where we were” in the TV business, and he needed to figure out a way to fix it — fast.
formerly Mad Cornish Projectionist.