The Skydance CEO’s business leadership team unveiled Monday includes only co-presidents, with everyone in the group sharing oversight of a division alongside someone else. All pairs come from the same side of the merged Paramount-Warner Bros. company. Discovery (Casey Bloys and JB Perrette of WBD for DTC and James Gunn and Peter Safran for DC; Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein of Paramount for the film), except for a crossover duo: George Cheeks of Paramount and Perrette of WBD, who will serve as co-presidents of Skydance TV.
The move marks the latest shared executive position for Cheeks and also a new role he has yet to fill – at least by title – as chief content officer of Skydance TV, a unit spanning all three television studios from Skydance, Warner Bros. TV, CBS Studios and Paramount TV Studios, CBS and approximately 30 basic cable networks. As Skydance TV’s chief commercial officer, Perrette will oversee the division’s advertising sales, distribution, content sales and international operations.
For a decade now, Cheeks, a Harvard law graduate, has been the business partner of a creative executive, whether as co-president of Universal Cable Prods. and Wilshire Studios alongside Dawn Olmstead or as co-president of NBC Entertainment alongside Paul Telegdy. NOW he is the creative director alongside Perrette with a title matching that of Bloys, Skydance DTC’s chief content officer, one of the television industry’s most accomplished development executives.
It caps a long evolution for Cheeks dating back to one of his first jobs in Hollywood, while having Perrette as chief business officer of DTC as well as TV studios and linear networks corrects a structural flux that existed at both Paramount and WBD.
The business guy
After working early at the entertainment law firms Loeb & Loeb and Hansen Jacobson Teller as well as the BA and legal department of Castle Rock Entertainment, Cheeks landed a job in business and legal affairs at MTV Networks. There, in addition to writing deal memos, he also began doing screenplay coverage for the era’s top programming executives, Tony DiSanto and Liz Gateley.
Cheeks got his first formal assignment on the creative side – and showed his skills in dealing with talent – when, as executive vice president of business operations for NBC and Universal TV, he was named head of NBC Late Night in 2014. Lorne Michaels liked him (while disliking his predecessor) and took him under his wing, valuing his creative acumen by asking his opinion on writer packages and taking him to auditions.
Cheeks credited landing the NBC Late Night job with changing his career, fueling his aspirations to straddle business and creative. He would later be chosen as the primary liaison to NBCUniversal’s other television producer, Dick Wolf, for similar reasons (the procedural king wanted a change of direction), proving he can work well with top-tier talent.
Yet when Bonnie Hammer announced the appointment of Cheeks and Olmstead as UCP co-presidents in early 2018, she called Olmstead a “talented creative director” while praising Cheeks’ “business acumen” as “second to none.” Similarly, Steve Burke’s statement on Cheeks’ promotion to co-president of NBC Entertainment alongside Telegdy later that year called him a “masterful strategist and negotiator.”
It’s a perception Cheeks picked up during his 2020 move to ViacomCBS as president and CEO of CBS Entertainment, with David Nevins initially serving as the division’s chief content officer. That changed in 2021. Overseeing CBS brand operations in various roles over the past five years — including another shared as co-CEO of Paramount Global — polished Cheeks’ creative credentials as he worked closely with executives such as CBS Entertainment Chairman Amy Reisenbach and CBS Studios President David Stapf.
Now, Cheeks, who also oversees Paramount’s basic cable networks, will focus on programming and marketing content while expanding its portfolio to include Warner Bros. TV and Paramount TV Studios as WBD’s cable brands, leaving most areas of business to Perrette. (Given his business background, Cheeks should still be involved in some decisions.)
Bring together linear and streaming business operations
Traditional media companies such as Skydance are faced with managing the transition from linear television to streaming, and Perrette, as chief business officer of direct-to-consumer networks and linear television networks/studios, will help facilitate that as the two areas have become closely intertwined in many key areas such as distribution deals, advertising and content sales.
For example, in affiliate distribution agreements for linear networks, operators are increasingly emphasizing streaming service bundling. The same goes for ad buyers who package ad time linearly and digitally.
And then there’s content licensing, which could be much more efficient if the studios’ distribution divisions and their sister streamers were overseen by the same head of business operations. For example, CBS and Paramount+ had been siled, with Paramount+ automatically requesting exclusivity on virtually all CBS series. A holistic approach would help determine whether certain shows should be streamed exclusively on Paramount+ or, based on engagement and other metrics, they could also be licensed to other platforms, generating revenue that can be used to produce more shows.
Straddling the two domains will also give the business executive in charge more ownership over next-day CBS series to better integrate them into the platform alongside Paramount+ originals. (CBS fare, a major in-season viewership driver, is expected to largely remain on Paramount+ until the streamer’s merger with HBO Max is finalized within the next two years.)
Additionally, the new streamlined structure with Perrette for linear and continuous business operations allows for simplified and accelerated decision-making. At WBD, where he was CEO of global streaming, it was a quartet of executives who collaborated on these decisions: Perrette, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, chief revenue and strategy officer Bruce Campbell and international president Gerhard Zeiler.
“The Odd Couple” 2.0?
In addition to being the only intercompany couple in the upper echelon of Skydance management, Cheeks and Perrette share another distinction: Cheeks is the only Paramount Global alum and Perrette the group’s only former Discovery executive.
When it comes to compatibility, both have a good track record. Perrette already has his successful partnership with Bloys, and Cheeks has shown he can work with anyone.
Cheeks joked about it when asked in 2019 how he got along with Telegdy, a flamboyant, larger-than-life personality.
“We literally couldn’t be more different. It’s like Casting 101: ‘Let’s leave this guy and that guy, they’re so different, they’re an odd couple,'” he told NATPE.
Cheeks has clearly impressed Hollywood moguls with his performance as he continues to be featured in half of the leading couples.
Gn entert
