OCTOBER 1, 2026

Welcome back to Buffering, where we’ve been watching the final resistance to House Ellison’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery melt away. By this time next week, young King David will almost surely have taken ownership of his second major Hollywood studio in as many years, gobbling up dozens of TV and movie brands and, very soon, ending the employment of thousands of workers. As awful as the consequences of consolidation will be, there remains the possibility of some upside. If Ellison’s theory is correct, the scale of the combined Paramount Warner Bros. could finally serve as a check against Netflix’s dominance in subscription streaming. It’s unlikely to lead to lower prices for consumers, but in general, competition is good, and it was becoming pretty clear that by themselves, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount weren’t very effective competitors, even if both had finally started making money. This week’s newsletter takes a look at the person Ellison is looking to lead his new company into battle on the content front: Casey Bloys. As always, thanks for reading.

— Joe Adalian, West Coast editor

In this edition: David Ellison, Casey Bloys, Cindy Holland, Ynon Kreiz, George Cheeks, Francesca Orsi, Zack Snyder, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Matthew Rhys, and the ghost of Showtime past …

It’s been a good week for live entertainment on linear TV. On Tuesday, a Yacht Rock–themed episode of Dancing With the Stars kept up the show’s recent ratings momentum by drawing 7.318 million viewers, beating NBC’s big wildcard baseball game by a hair and notching the largest non-finale audience for DWTS since 2020, per Nielsen. Meanwhile, Madonna’s star-packed opening number at Sunday’s Video Music Awards (which also featured Taylor Swift dedicating the night’s final win to Dolly Parton) on CBS and MTV was seen by more than 15 million viewers, helping boost the full two-hour telecast to its best ratings in over a decade, according to the ratings giant. 

Boosted by its lead-in from a (literal) last-second thriller of an NFL matchup, the 2026 VMAs delivered a very healthy 8.2 million same-day viewers for CBS (up 63 percent versus the 5 million for last year’s September 7 broadcast) and tallied an additional 641,000 viewers on actual MTV (a jump of 31 percent from 2025’s audience of 491,000). Throw in the 169,000 stragglers who watched an encore on MTV later Sunday night, and the total same-day audience for the VMAs came in at just shy of 9 million viewers — the biggest tune-in for the show since 2015 (12.73 million, when the show aired only on MTV). Obviously the massive influx of viewers from the NFL game helped, as did airing the show on CBS rather than MTV, the network now known for endless reruns of sitcoms and Ridiculousness. But by shifting the VMAs to broadcast, CBS chief George Cheeks has not only managed to save a barely breathing show from extinction, he’s also given the Eye network a new tentpole to (somewhat) make up for the loss of the Grammys to ABC, as well as a nice place to promote his new fall shows. —Joe Adalian

Just a few hours left to draft the full slate. Here’s every movie in play this year. Our writers have some thoughts on strategy. And we also have guides to how mini-leagues work so you can square off against friends. Deadline to enter is 11:59 p.m. PT tonight. Enjoy! —Eric Vilas-Boas

By Josef Adalian

Photo: Matei Horvath/WireImage

After a year of bidding wars and legal dramas, Paramount’s David Ellison this week finally claimed a definitive victory in his war for Warner Bros. Discovery following Wednesday’s resolution of a lawsuit brought by a dozen state attorneys general. With no more remaining legal hurdles to clear, the merger is expected to close within days, most likely on October 6. But already, the contours of the combined Para Bros. have started taking shape, with multiple sources confirming that Ellison has tapped Casey Bloys, the respected CEO of HBO and Max Content, to run his new streaming empire, forcing out (now former) Paramount streaming boss Cindy Holland in the process. It’s a big win for Bloys, but he won’t have much time to celebrate. He’s now charged with nothing less than turning the combined HBO Max and Paramount+ into a revenue-generating machine, and a streaming force on par with Netflix. Here are six things on his Day One to-do list:

Back in March, Ellison told investors his goal was to smash his new company’s subscription streaming assets together into a single super service. “The combined offering, given the amount of content and what we can do from the tech side, really will put us in a position to be able to compete with the most scaled players,” he said. Holland’s exit all but reaffirms Ellison’s desire for a single streaming voice when it comes to developing, producing, and managing content. What’s less clear is how quickly that will play out for consumers. 

Industry insiders I’ve spoken to over the last few weeks have repeatedly told me that Ellison (and thus Bloys) will be guided first and foremost by what makes the most financial sense in the short term. Remember: While HBO Max and Paramount+ combined have more than 210 million global subscribers, the amount of overlap in the two platforms’ audiences is significant — as high as 28 percent by some estimates. Unless they plan to charge $40 a month for a single service, an immediate unification of the two platforms could mean a big financial hit, something the debt-saddled new company can ill afford. 

That’s one reason why Disney, which has had full financial ownership of Hulu for nearly 18 months — and de facto control for years — has not done away with that streamer. Instead, the company slowly worked to unify the two services’ behind-the-scenes tech and pushed Hulu subscribers to start watching their shows on Disney+. Similarly, when soon-to-be-former Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav first got control of HBO Max, he quickly made plans to shut down Discovery+. But when someone pointed out such a move would mean leaving behind tens of millions in subscription revenue (if not more), he kept Discovery+ humming along, only now with virtually no investment. 

Bloys and Ellison are unlikely to do exactly the same thing with Par+ and HBO Max: You could see a scenario where one platform becomes the dominant player, with an eye on it eventually becoming the single super streamer. The other service would continue on, but with less and less invested in that brand until it eventually went away altogether. Or it’s possible that Ellison and Bloys decide there is value in maintaining both the HBO Max and Paramount+ brands, and the goal becomes giving audiences the chance to access both services — and free streamer Pluto — on a single streamer indefinitely, but under a tier system. I mentioned this scenario last week: Pluto could be the entry-level product, Paramount+ could be the basic level, and HBO Max (or perhaps just HBO again) could be the premium offering. All of this could take a while to sort out, of course, so in the meantime, Bloys and his streaming team might want to do something else much sooner ...

This is small potatoes thinking, for sure, but it’s also one of the quickest ways Bloys can leverage the power of his massively expanded streaming empire ASAP. HBO Max already has experience doing this with an outside company; it’s been selling a combo of Max, Disney+ and Hulu for over two years now, and by all accounts, it’s helped reduce churn for all involved. But an HBO Max/P+ bundle offers even more upside, since all the benefits stay in-house — and it’s also possible to be more flexible with pricing since you control everything in the offer. 

Right now, consumers have to shell out $20 a month if they want the entry-level tiers of both P+ and HBO Max, a bit less than Max’s current mash-up with the Disney streamers ($22). It seems a no-brainer to come out of the gate with an even more attractively priced package, taking advantage of all the publicity the closing of this merger will generate, along with some big tentpole content coming up (such as the new Harry Potter series), and the usual surge of subscriptions we see around the holidays. And if the financials work, offering a mega-bargain over Black Friday — say, a full year of both services for $100 — might make sense as a loss leader to rapidly drive sign-ups for the combined entity. When D+ launched in 2019, it offered incredibly low rates for customers who paid for three years in advance. These services aren’t new propositions as they were seven years ago, but if this merger is supposed to represent the start of a concerted effort to match Netflix, maybe it’s time for some 2019-style boldness in pricing, too.

Here, Bloys will likely be guided first by whatever budget targets Ellison and new co-CEO Ynon Kreiz set. Staff reductions are expected to be brutal, and with so many duplicative roles across Max and P+, many talented execs will lose their jobs. So-called back office functions (think ad sales and marketing) will likely be slashed first, but very quickly, Bloys is going to want to figure out where to make changes across the programming teams. With Holland out, it seems more likely than not that some of her top lieutenants — including P+ head of originals Jane Wiseman — will want to follow her out the door. 

Conversely, with Bloys putting so much more on his plate with this new gig, he may want to give more power to his own trusted deputies, such as longtime drama chief Francesca Orsi. On the other hand, don’t assume that everyone currently at HBO Max is safe and everyone at Paramount is doomed. Bloys may well have to sacrifice some of his own team on the altar of fiscal responsibility, or could decide that there are execs at the current Paramount who might be better suited to push his supersized division forward. Either way, he’ll likely have to act quickly: When Disney took over Fox in 2019, exec changes started happening within days. 

Just six weeks ago, Wiseman sat for an interview to talk about her strategy for Paramount streaming and the dozens of projects on her plate, including seven scripted drama greenlights. There’s no reason for Bloys to blow all that up: Some could be potential hits, and even if they’re not, the costs of cancellation could outweigh the savings of mothballing them. Plus, Bloys knows well that where a good idea comes from matters less than how it gets executed and then marketed: Hacks was developed before Bloys had oversight of Max Originals, but Bloys gave the show its greenlight, and it turned into a long-running smash. So is he going to halt production on Discretion, the Nicole Kidman–Elle Fanning limited series thriller from A24 that marked the first big buy of Holland’s tenure? Of course not. If anything, if the show turns out well, he’d be more likely to make it a Max (or even HBO) original than pull the plug. 

Still, given the mandate to slash costs, it’s entirely logical to expect Bloys and his team to immediately take a hard look at everything in the Paramount hopper. Shows that haven’t started production will be the easiest to eliminate, but even completed projects might not be immune. As we saw after David Zaslav took over Warner Bros., there can be financial incentives in the year or so after a merger to write off expenditures unlikely to yield much in profit. Remember all those shows that got disappeared from Max a few years ago? We could see something similar happen again.

It didn’t get a ton of headlines, but one of the most tangible products of Paramount’s Holland era was her overhaul of Pluto TV. Working with Dane Glasgow, the former Google and Mega exec Ellison recruited last year to serve as his chief product officer, she helped steer the free streamer away from its linear-forward roots to a more VOD-centric user experience in line with that of rivals Tubi and the Roku Channel. Bloys inherits that redesigned product, as well as an area of streaming that’s primed for major growth as audiences continue embracing free ad-supported TV (FAST). There’s been buzz about integrating Pluto more fully into P+ now that the two are on the same stack, so figuring out exactly how to do that — or changing course — will be a major task for Bloys during his first year in the new job. Then again, with Ellison in the process of unveiling his new exe