‘East of Eden’ Series Premiere, ‘Slow Horses’ S6E3, and Cindy Holland Leaves Paramount. Plus, Best TV of the Century Honorable Mentions.

The Watch

The episode explores significant leadership shifts in the streaming industry, specifically Cindy Holland's departure from Paramount and its impact on

Key takeaways

• Cindy Holland is leaving Paramount/Skydance, leaving Casey Bloys as the presumed streaming head for the combined entity.
• The new HBO/Sky co-production 'War' is highlighted as a slick, high-end legal drama set in London.
• Netflix's 'East of．Eden' adaptation is praised for its visual beauty and emotional depth despite the risks of adapting Steinbeck.
• Season 6 of 'Slow Horses' is described as a 'dazzler' that maintains excellence through strong character writing and unexpected stakes.
• The hosts critique the NYT Top 100 list, arguing that omissions like 'Industry,' 'Mindhunter,' and 'Dark' reflect a lack of recognition for certain modern classics.

Main topics

• Paramount/Skydance executive reshuffle
• HBO 'War' premiere review
• Netflix 'East of Eden' adaptation analysis

Notable quotes

The TVification of all TV again is hilarious to me.

Conclusion

A comprehensive look at how corporate consolidation and executive chan

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) you Speaker 2 (0:05) I need support staff to clear the room. Speaker 1 (0:08) Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me on the other line, he's about to be very happy or very mad because of the Atlanta Braves. It's Andy Greenwald! Why are you hanging out to dry like that? Your Speaker 2 (0:28) emotional life is also in the balance here. It's not just me. Speaker 1 (0:32) I just keep having podcasts during this Philly's Brave series, so all I get is highlights or lowlights, you know? Speaker 2 (0:37) I must say, there was something quite peaceful. Obviously, we should talk about what we're going to talk about today, but there was something quite peaceful about the rhythm of my last few autumns in which work or travel has denied me the opportunity. to have my intestines ripped out through my face. You know what I mean? And so the fact that actually tonight we're recording on Thursday is lining up so I can watch the game worries me. Speaker 1 (0:59) It's going to be a fun text message thread from you. Andy, today on the pod, we're going to talk a little bit about the reshuffle over at the, I guess, newly formed Warner Mount, Para Brothers. where we've got some TV executive news that does pertain to a lot of what we want to talk about on this pod. Also wanted to hit two new shows that are premiering this week, War on HBO and East of Eden on Netflix. We both have some book reports, some show and tell for that. And then we were going to talk about the third episode of Slow Horses, as well as some shows that we wanted to shine a light on that did not make... the New York Times top 100 list, which we've been talking about over the last couple of episodes, which has been really quite interesting to see all the conversation about it. Andy and I went on Wesley Morris's podcast Cannonball, and you can check us out on that show talking about the list. And we've discussed it. I talked about it with Joe a little bit. Great to see you, man. You're working in New York. So thank you for making time to talk about. The thing that brings us together and that's people moving up and down the corporate ladder. Speaker 2 (2:07) It really gets me up in the morning and down at night, I guess. Speaker 1 (2:11) Here is the headline from Deadline, or rather the sort of lead paragraph from Deadline.com. Cindy Holland is leaving Paramount Skydance, where she was chair of direct-to-consumer, having previously served as an advisor to Skydance CEO David Ellison. Today, I think, which was two days ago, is her last day. The move, which has been rumored for the past week, leaves Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max content, as the presumed streaming head of the combined Paramount WBD. Holland hinted at this in her email to staff, indicating that Ellison had shared with her his plan for the leadership of the combined HBO Max and Paramount streamer, and it involved him, quote, optimizing for HBO's stability. AKA going with Casey plays something Holland, uh, supported. She said in her email to the staff, uh, obviously Cindy Holland only at Paramount for about a year, a little bit more than a year. Uh, we talked about her as a figure in this industry a couple of times over the year, especially when she got hired, she was instrumental in building out Netflix's original TV programming, um, had her hands on stranger things on house of cards, et cetera. and was brought over to Paramount, I think, to diversify their programming or to deleverage them from a world where Taylor Sheridan had five, six, seven shows on the air because Taylor Sheridan is leaving and going to Universal. Whether or not that was tied to Cindy Holland's leadership, I don't know. But now we have this major change and we have a much clearer picture of what the future... of the kind of TV we talk about is going to look like here. What was your first reaction when you saw this? Speaker 2 (3:56) My first reaction was, it feels good when you can make people's dreams come true. And I have it on good authority that Casey's number one dream in this massive promotion was leading the A Block on the Watch Us Thursday podcast. So the Make-A-Wish Foundation strikes again, and I'm sure this is going to stay as the best thing that happened to him this week. That makes me glad. I Speaker 1 (4:16) love the idea that we're like... Walter Cronkite and people are like, what's Walter going to talk about in the opening segment? It's like, yeah. Speaker 2 (4:23) No, my God. Do you think David Ellison is like, if we lost the watch, we've lost the war. Sure. That's Speaker 1 (4:28) the Speaker 2 (4:28) war Speaker 1 (4:28) he's worried about. Speaker 2 (4:30) That's the biggest war facing him. So there's a bunch of different ways into this. And one of the first ways is it's definitely not any reason to celebrate when someone loses their job, particularly because I think that Cindy Holland's hiring by Ellison was interesting. Interesting because for as much as we want to, or maybe we tend to look at these massive mergers through very reductive binary lenses, there is more nuance here. And I'm not just saying this because we would like to work for Paramount someday. That is not part of it. It is literally that. for every Barry Weiss that David Ellison has hired, he hires a Cindy Holland. And Cindy Holland came to Paramount and almost immediately, quote unquote, un-Ellisoned it in the sense of if we think that everything that this guy and his father have done has been sort of red-pilled, like decoupling from Taylor Sheridan, who really is more of a libertarian. I listened to you in van and I have some new insight into the validity of private jet travel. Speaker 1 (5:27) Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:28) Mixed. My point is, When this news broke, like in the room that I'm working in, someone said, oh no, Paramount just started caring about women. Like genuinely, she was beginning to program Paramount and we haven't seen really her fingerprints on the schedule yet. It'll be a couple of months or years until we do, if we do it all now, but that they definitely were changing the culture in terms of the types of shows that they were greenlighting and what they were interested in representing in the marketplace. So that is unfortunate and interesting. The second point is, when this whole deal started, even a year ago, when it was seeming that Netflix was going to buy HBO, like one thing that I think you and I can attest, and I don't think this is reporting. I think that Matt Bellany, who actually does reporting would say the same thing is that got the amazing thing about Casey is he keeps his powder dry. Like he does not seem that bothered. And I think that is just, you know, genetically who he is. But I also think that we now have months, years, decades of evidence. that somehow HBO has succeeded by just letting the excellence do the talking and that it manages to keep on rolling despite all kinds of outrageous mergers, whether it was Time Warner, whether it was AOL, Discovery, and now this one. And so it makes a lot of sense that Ellison would want to maintain stability at HBO. It's interesting that he also has signaled that he's going to keep the head of CNN to maintain stability there, at least for now. Speaker 1 (6:54) Your guy, Mark Thompson. Speaker 2 (6:56) That's my guy, Joe. Fair and balanced. You got a poster of him right Speaker 1 (7:00) next to Aaron Nola. Speaker 2 (7:02) My hopes, I have so much hope pinned on these two gentlemen tonight and in the near future. No, it's just that if you have someone who has not only proven over the past decade that he can lead HBO's particular brand in the marketplace and navigate everything that's going on, but also, and I think this is crucial, Casey in the last few years has proved that he is also able to program. genre IP content by welcoming the DC shows and Harry Potter into the HBO universe. And then also what he did with HBO Max, which fell under his umbrella and he immediately programmed the pit. So it is exactly the kind of kind of like almost doing your homework before you realize that you're, you've enrolled in graduate school performance that would make him the obvious heir apparent to lead all programming, not just maintain his role at HBO. There's Speaker 1 (7:51) so many different sort of paths we can follow from this, but the one that's so interesting is what you just suggested, which is that in some ways, boys has been training for this for years or proving, proving the theorem of this for years when the HBO max experiment started and it was going to be like HBO is over here, but over here is going to be like an elevated TBS TNT kind of show. And, you know, they've had hits and misses. Uh, I think over time, Speaker 1 (8:21) In my experience, audiences have been telling us and telling networks or companies, I don't want to think too hard about where to find the things I want to find. I just want them presented to me and I will accept a Kaley Cuoco-like kind of family drama or spy show next to somebody somewhere or I may destroy you. And that, you know, as long as the shows are good. People are happy to have that variety of stuff to choose from. I think that what that leads me to is what's going to happen to these networks, but really these verticals and really these apps and really these streaming services. So today in the Hollywood Reporter, they got Casey to talk a little bit about what's happening. And he was gracious and was just like, I'm going to let David talk about what his vision for the management of this service is going to be. But what he did suggest is that essentially that he would view this as more of a bundle than like a merger. That there is not going to be HBO mount where Game of Thrones is sitting next to Lioness. I'm so sorry Speaker 2 (9:34) for your loss. Speaker 1 (9:35) I mean, that's just my living room, dog. You know what I mean? There it is. But there's not going to be necessarily... Now, will that mean on HBO you can opt in to also having all of Paramount content? or on Paramount, you can do the same for HBO. I'm sure that there will be something like that. The TVification of all TV again is hilarious to me. I mean, Ted Sarandos just did an upfront or a talk about the inevitability of channels hitting Netflix. You know, we're going back to the way things were in a lot of ways. So I'm fascinated to see the actual user experience play out here and how that relates back to... Casey's new responsibilities, but you're so right. I mean, this guy has been getting ready to program beyond cocktail parties in New York and Los Angeles for a very long time. Speaker 2 (10:26) Yeah, and it's also just a smart, I mean, hopefully we'll get the chance to talk to him about this on the record, but, you know, I'm sorry I'm a broken record. I've just been suffused with this HBO stuff because I'm reading that Tinderbox book, and, like, it's just so interesting to think about the subtle... of what it means to not be TV, to be HBO. Because if you go back to Michael Fuchs, who was like the first head of programming from the 80s into the 90s, his whole, I mean, he was a complicated guy, but like his programming strategy boiled down to if they're doing it, we're not. Speaker 1 (10:58) Like Speaker 2 (10:59) that is entirely it. If something came across his desk that felt like it could live on any other channel, it was an instant no. And he only said yes to the things that wouldn't. That isn't necessarily a successful strategy in an era when so many companies are primed to sell prestige content and also need to get the same type of eyeballs or like advertiser desired types of eyeballs as HBO. HBO lost its, you know, the uniqueness of its fiefdom a lot of years ago. So what Casey has sort of evolved the brand into mean is, so it is TV, but what's our HBO version of it? And in a way, that conversation started with Game of Thrones, which they, you know, which isn't really thought of this way anymore. But when it premiered, it was a big swing for them, not just because of the expense, but because it was on the same channel at the same time as Sopranos. And so I think if we go back and read a lot of the early coverage of it or reviews, there's probably a lot of like handholding in the sense of don't worry, there's a lot of complicated men talking in rooms here. Like it's not that discordant with Boardwalk Empire, you know, and then the dragons came later. So it was kind of a gateway drug towards what does it mean for HBO to do these types of shows? And now we are living in a world and doing a podcast where we cover lanterns and the pit. And there are superhero shows and medical shows on every surface. But what makes these distinctly, quote unquote, HBO? And I say that knowing that the pit is Max, but it's just a very, very smart. I think self-directed evolution that has not necessarily intentionally, but it's clearly led to this moment. And we'll see how it plays out across, you know, now that he has even more channels potentially to play with, but what do you make of the overall strategy of post-Rob Bonta fumbling the bag, David Ellison making peace with the town, making peace with the industry? and basically preaching stability, not just stability, but abundance, right? Saying we're going to release, we're staying in Hollywood. We're going to make more movies here. We're going to make 30 theatrical releases a year. CNN's not going away or changing. HBO is not changing, like really trying to preach stability. Is this? likely to happen in your opinion, or is this just good optics for transitioning away from, fuck you guys, I'm going to Nashville? Speaker 1 (13:19) I have seen enough public negotiations take place in the world of entertainment and sports over the last 15 years of kind of professionally observing this stuff that I can recognize saber-rattling when I see it. And I think I was seeing that on both the Paramount side and the state's attorney general side. There was a resignation, I think, among people that once Netflix didn't get this, that this was about. This was going to happen. And yes, I agree with fantasy who talks all the time on the big picture of like, I don't think this needed to take place at all. Yep. But once it does, and once the ball is rolling downhill, like kicking it off the mountain is not an option. You know, kicking that ball off the, off the hill is not an option. So like, you've got to finish it and you've got to, you've got to land it. I... I am very open to the idea that... There is certainly not going to be like a kind of political ideology behind the programming. I don't think that TV works that way. I don't think entertainment works that way. I haven't really sensed yet like a few, like now we can all pitch Paramount in peace. Like, but it's only been two days, but I don't know if Speaker 2 (14:32) I Speaker 1 (14:32) detect a palpable relief as much as a... You know, I don't frankly, I guess I don't really think that Cindy Holland would have been a bad choice. Like, I'm very, very excited to see what Casey Bloys does with all the different tranches of Paramount and Warner Brothers and how he defines those. And maybe if there's going to be some contraction in there, I don't know. But I don't think really that I've been able to sense a sense of like, ah, now we can get back to regular scheduled programming. The thing I was fascinated by... Sorry, if you wanted to respond to that. Speaker 2 (15:07) No, no, I think it's just a good observation. I think that one thing that I've hopefully consistently said and continues to be the case is that fewer buyers sucks. It doesn't matter if they... They will continue to operate these planks, I think, as distinct. operations for a while. But I don't know how fuzzy that distinction gets when there's one person in charge of all of it. I mean, it's certainly possible. But I would imagine that coming from that experience that you were alluding to when Kevin Reilly and Sarah Aubrey were running HBO Max as a distinct buyer in the marketplace from HBO, and they bought Station Eleven, for example, which doesn't... or hacks, for example, which both of which could have easily lived on HBO, I would imagine that Casey is loathe to enter into a situation like that again, where he is actively having his Francesco Orsi and drama bidding against her equivalent at Paramount for, for things. So I think that it's just generally there's fewer buyers, which means, which has, which is going to have downstream negative effects for the industry. And I don't think that has changed. Um, I don't think that has changed at all, which I still think is massively a bummer, but in terms of like the immediate reaction or the immediate like fallout for the consumer, this has to have been relatively, for people who are paying attention, this is a relatively stable outcome. Yeah. Because your HBO isn't going anywhere and you're Paramount. I mean, honestly, what is Paramount right now? It is the place you watch your Taylor Sheridan shows. Taylor's leaving. His shows may continue, but what are the other like... I guess Star Trek, but that's sort of in flux as well. Speaker 1 (16:36) Yeah, I was just looking at the Paramount IP and I have to say that the idea of, I think that HBO has shown a pretty consistent ability to develop and make things when they're ready to be made. And they will be pretty merciless