George Cheeks has named the leadership team that will report to him at the TV arm of the newly formed Skydance company, covering studios, entertainment, sports and news. The announcement, made in a letter to staff, is the first concrete picture of how television will be run inside the company born from the US$110bn merger of Paramount Skydance (PSKY) and Warner Bros Discovery, according to C21media.
What the letter actually reveals is a structure, not just a staffing list. Cheeks, who was previously chairman of TV media at PSKY and took over oversight of Warner Bros Television and Paramount Television Studios in addition to CBS Studios after the merger, has kept the incumbent studio heads in place and routed the awkward questions — international cable, sports coordination, streaming — through a small number of deputies. In a merger this size, that is the commercial logic: protect the shows that make money, and delay the hard consolidation decisions until integration planning is further along.
For readers tracking the business behind the screen, this is where the entertainment news of the season turns into strategy. Here is what the org chart says. This connects to our earlier piece, New Horror Movies This Season, Dated and Sourced for October Nights.
Who runs what under Cheeks
Channing Dungey continues to lead the Warner Bros Television Group and its portfolio of scripted, unscripted and animation studios. Her remit also expands to the combined Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery cable roster of more than 50 brands, including HGTV, Food Network, TNT, BET and MTV. For cable channels outside the US, she will report to Cheeks for programming and to JB Perrette for operations — a split line that tells you international cable is being managed, not yet merged.
Perrette, co-chair and chief business officer of both Skydance TV and Skydance direct-to-consumer, oversees streaming and networks outside the US. David Stapf stays at CBS Studios, home to NCIS and producer of Sheriff Country, Little House on the Prairie and Murderbot, with See It Now Studios operating as a label within CBS Studios. Matt Thunell oversees Paramount Television Studios, home to Reacher, its spin-off Neagley and the Taylor Sheridan universe spanning Dutton Ranch, Landman and Lioness on Paramount+ and Marshals on CBS. Amy Reisenbach leads CBS Entertainment across primetime, daytime and late-night creative departments.
Sports and news get their own lanes
David Berson leads Skydance's Global Sports Group, with oversight of the live sports portfolio across all platforms, led by CBS Sports, TNT Sports and WBD Sports, in partnership with Perrette and the international team outside the US. That is a notable structural choice: putting CBS Sports and TNT Sports under one global group is how a company signals it intends to run sports as a single asset rather than two inherited ones. Skydance Sports Entertainment will sit within the Skydance TV Studios Group, with details to follow, Cheeks said.
Tom Cibrowski continues to oversee operations across CBS News' broadcast, streaming and digital businesses, including CBS Mornings and CBS Evening News. News staying intact under one operator, with no announced combination with WBD news assets, suggests the news division is not the first integration target.
The support layer and what it signals
Bryon Rubin serves as chief operating officer, working with all divisional leaders on strategic and operational matters while keeping leadership of CBS domestic syndication. He will also take oversight of the CBS Television Stations group, working with division president Jennifer Mitchell. Laurel Weir will oversee research and programming insights across broadcast, cable and studios, while continuing to lead content strategy, scheduling and acquisitions for the Paramount cable networks while the company works through what Cheeks called "integration planning."
Keeping every major studio head in place is the cheapest option available in the first months after a US$110bn merger. Franchises like NCIS, Reacher and the Sheridan universe are revenue engines, and disrupting the teams behind them would create risk without immediate savings. The split reporting line for international cable — programming to Cheeks, operations to Perrette — reads as a holding pattern that preserves flexibility for a later consolidation.
The wider context: moves are coming fast
The leadership announcement lands amid a rapid run of executive moves at the combined company. Skydance boss David Ellison made the surprise decision to tap former Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO. Cindy Holland, PSKY's chair of direct-to-consumer, stepped down last month, with HBO boss Casey Bloys assuming control of Skydance's streaming business. Against that backdrop, Cheeks' letter is the television-side answer to a company-wide reorganisation still in motion — a structure built to run the business now, while the deeper questions about what gets merged and what gets cut wait for integration planning to finish.
What the evidence establishes is who reports to whom and what each executive keeps. What it does not yet establish is how long the dual-brand cable roster or the split international lines survive. That answer will come from the integration decisions Cheeks has explicitly deferred, and it is the next thing to watch for anyone following the streaming and network business, on screen or off.
