On Monday, the company that runs Paramount+ and HBO Max began offering voluntary buyouts to employees who have been there at least 15 years. Three weeks earlier, that company did not exist. It now owns exactly one third of the 30 shows EpisodePing users track most.
Ten of the 30 most-tracked shows sit on Paramount+, HBO, HBO Max or Max, and between them they account for 52 of the 126 tracking entries in the whole list. The buyout memo and that number are the same story told from opposite ends: the biggest decisions about what gets made are being taken a long way from any writers' room.
What closed on October 6
Paramount's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery completed on Tuesday, October 6, after more than a year of bids, a Netflix counter-offer, an antitrust suit from state attorneys general and a settlement that cleared the last hurdle. CNBC puts the deal at about $110 billion on an enterprise basis. The combined company is called Skydance and trades under the ticker SKYD.
The Guardian's description of the asset list is the clearest one going: two film studios more than a century old, the television networks HBO, MTV and Discovery, and CBS and CNN on the news side. CNBC's framing is blunter, noting that the new company controls nearly one third of basic cable programming.
Money was always part of the plan. Variety obtained the Day One memo in which David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz told staff that integrating two companies "will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce." The same memo set a target of at least $6 billion in annual savings across three years.
This week: buyouts, and five days in the office
The buyout program went out on Monday. The New York Post, which obtained the internal email, reports that it is open to employees with at least 15 years at the company, at vice-president rank or lower, on at-will contracts and in certain markets including the US, UK, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. The same memo ordered a five-day return to office, phased by location with advance notice.
"As we bring our teams together, we recognize that not everyone will see their future here, and we respect that," the memo says, according to the Post.
The Guardian, writing two days before the memo went out, captured the mood inside: "It feels like the calm before the storm," one executive said. Another put it shorter: "Cuts inevitably mean jobs." The paper puts headcount above 53,000 and the debt load above $80 billion, which is the number those savings are meant to attack. The Post reports roughly $82.5 billion of debt against $7.9 billion in cash as of June 30.
None of that is a show being cancelled. It is the weather in which renewal decisions get made.
Ten shows under one roof
The list is mechanical. Every show on EpisodePing carries a count of how many users have added it to My Shows, and the counts are aggregates only: no names, no viewing history, no demographics. Take the 30 most-tracked shows this month and sort them by who owns the network:
- Landman, Paramount+, 8 trackers
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO, 7
- Task, HBO, 6
- The Pitt, Max, 6
- MobLand, Paramount+, 5
- Peacemaker, HBO Max, 5
- Tulsa King, Paramount+, 5
- Mayor of Kingstown, Paramount+, 4
- Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Paramount+, 3
- The Last of Us, HBO, 3
That is a third of the slots and 52 of the 126 tracking entries. The catalogue stores "HBO", "HBO Max" and "Max" as three separate labels, but Max is HBO Max under its older name, so the honest count is the one above rather than three smaller ones.
For comparison, the next largest owners in the same list are Apple with four shows and 17 trackers (counting Apple TV and Apple TV+ as one service), Amazon with four and 14, Netflix with four and 14, and Disney+ with one and six. The merged bloc is bigger than the next two owners put together.
Seven of the ten already have a next season
It would be easy to over-read the buyouts as a cancellation wave. Seven of the ten already have another season listed on TVLine's running scorecard: Landman, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Task, The Pitt, MobLand, Tulsa King and The Last of Us. TVLine dates The Pitt's next run to January 2027 and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms to 2027. Deadline's renewal gallery independently carries Landman, The Pitt and Tulsa King.
Two are ending by design. Mayor of Kingstown returns on January 15, 2027 for a fifth and final season, which both TVLine and Deadline list as a final order, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's second season is its last, per TVLine.
Peacemaker is the open question of the ten: five trackers, two seasons in the catalogue, and no next season on either renewal list.
The streaming layer is where this lands
The part of the merger that reaches viewers directly is the apps. The Guardian reports that Ellison immediately extended Casey Bloys's soon-to-expire contract and promoted the HBO boss to also oversee Paramount+ and HBO Max. One executive now sits above both services, which is the arrangement any combined slate would need. The line this list draws between a Paramount+ show and an HBO Max show is already one decision-maker thinner than it looks.
The precedent the Guardian cites is Disney's 2019 purchase of Rupert Murdoch's entertainment assets. Since then, the number of film releases has broadly halved. Consolidation at the top has historically meant fewer things get made, not more.
For a viewer the question is narrower. A merged service has fewer slots than two separate ones, and a $6 billion savings target gets paid for somewhere, usually in fewer scripted shows a year and more pressure on the ones with modest audiences.
What to watch instead of the paperwork
Nothing about the buyouts changes what airs this weekend. The schedule behind this site lists 120 episodes across 98 shows between Friday and Sunday, and one of the ten is on it: Tulsa King, season four, episode three, "Cease & Desist," on Friday.
That is the useful part. Ownership tells you who has the power to cancel something. The tracking list tells you what people actually care about, one show at a time, and it does not need anyone's approval to be counted. Ten of the 30 most-tracked shows now answer to one company. Knowing which ten is the difference between being surprised and being ready.
