Paramount Global had quite a turbulent 2024, and it’s difficult to say whether or not things will let up as the company enters 2025. The international enterprise’s captains, executives, and three CEOs struggled to maintain control throughout 2024, with some company workers categorizing the year as relentless and unforgiving.

Paramount Global’s 2024 Layoffs

Toward the end of September, Paramount Global employees who managed to avoid the previous layoffs were already anticipating a second succession. On September 24th, hundreds of workers in California and New York received notification via a Zoom conversation that some unfortunate staffers should expect an email detailing their job loss at Paramount. The message, arriving within an hour after the Zoom calls, reached a substantial and unlucky group of laborers. One employee even noted that the entire ordeal was “honestly traumatizing” and “inhumane.”

Paramount Global serves as a central hub to the Paramount Pictures movie studio, CBS, and various culture-outlining networks such as BET, Comedy Central, MTV, and Nickelodeon. While this massive enterprise isn’t the only customary entertainment business cutting staff, it is one of the most notable based on how many workers it decided to let go in 2024. Paramount shedded around 2,000 employees, surpassing layoff levels recorded at Disney, Netflix, and Warner Bros.

It’s not entirely shocking that these significant layoffs resulted from several years of mismanagement and precariousness.

Paramount Global’s Daunting Decisions and Drama

Controversy hit Paramount Global at the top of the entertainment enterprise in July 2024. The company then signed an $8 billion deal to merge with Skydance Media over the next few years.

Paramount’s co-CEOs, whom many employees referred to as “three-e-o’s,” made decisions that only seemed to cause additional issues rather than remedies for the company. Paramount spokespeople explained that “decisions to streamline are difficult, but they are necessary to transform the company for the streaming age.”

Unfortunately, Paramount struggled throughout 2024 to keep up with the progress made in emerging technologies over the last few years. These novel advancements enable corporate consolidation and make way for private equity firms and hedge funds, which aim to pluck ideas from creative workers and items from media businesses’ catalogs.

The Start of Paramount’s End

While things look rough now, Paramount wasn’t always fighting to stay at the forefront of media and entertainment. The studio remains respected for classic films like Chinatown, The Godfather, Titanic, and Top Gun throughout the 1990s. Around that time, the company was still under the control of the late media magnate Sumner Redstone. Upon Redstone’s passing in 2020 at age 97, the battle to obtain control over his empire only intensified.

Even in the late 2010s, former employees still found Paramount to be an enjoyable place to work. The company boasted extravagant holiday festivities with high-profile guests like Nick Jonas, Snoop Dogg, and the Roots.

Competing entertainment organizations are also fighting to maintain their standing in a fractured business scene. Consumers have abandoned their cable services, supporting streaming selections from Amazon, Apple, and Netflix. Moreover, younger audiences have shown a significant preference for platforms such as TikTok and YouTube. By 2024, Paramount and similar companies will find it hard to remain relevant against these colossal streaming platforms.

An Unpredictable Future for Paramount Global

After a rough 2024, Paramount Global’s leadership plans to launch a new media and tech hybrid version of the enterprise. Andrew deWaard, assistant professor of media and popular culture at the University of California San Diego and author of Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture, states that Paramount employees should anticipate additional hardship in the near future.

He states that the merger between Paramount and Skydance symbolizes Hollywood’s “financialization,” as he calls it. Owners who prioritize numbers over everything else will try to mine the assets and catalogs of creators, resembling what the music industry has undergone in recent years. Noting that Paramount employees’ “tough year may be just the beginning,” deWaard predicts the entertainment industry may enter “a decade from hell.”