The new owners of Paramount are clearly not afraid of making bold decisions. That’s the biggest conclusion to be reached from a recent Wall Street Journal report on Paramount Skydance’s plans for its cable networks. At a time when many media companies are planning for a future without their cable networks, Paramount is busy mapping out strategies for keeping its pay-TV channels up and running.

According to the Journal’s reporting, Paramount has plans to rehabilitate cable networks like Comedy Central, MTV, and Nickelodeon. It’s a key part of the larger changes new company officials plan to make after the completion of the Paramount and Skydance merger.

The officials responsible for carrying out these channel revamps will have to accomplish the task without an extra infusion of cash, as the Journal says that executives don’t plan to increase spending on the channels. Paramount president Jeff Shell has reportedly had internal conversations pointing to the recent success of Bravo as a model for Paramount to follow.

Increasing the digital presence of Paramount’s cable channels might be a key step in the process. Making the MTV website a destination for fans who want to dig deeper for information is one idea currently in the works, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as attempts to inject new life into the brands behind these channels go.

New Paramount chief operating officer Andy Gordon told reporters in August that there is “probably a place outside the linear world where these brands exist and flourish,” and Paramount is discussing investing further in these brands in order to make them more available outside the cable business. That could mean they have larger streaming presences in the future, but it could also point to Paramount seeking out more business partnerships across industries with them.

There are lots of changes in the works at Paramount. The company is plotting definite changes for the Paramount+ streaming service, and the company is also planning to cut more than $2 billion in costs. Paramount’s new executive teams are clearly trying to get things headed in the right direction in the company, but they’re also bucking a current Hollywood trend in a big way.

It began in November 2024, when Comcast announced that it was breaking off its cable channels into a separate company, keeping Bravo, NBC, and Peacock in the fold. Then this summer, Warner Bros. Discovery made public its plans to follow a similar path, splitting cable channels off into their own entity while maintaining HBO Max and the Warner movie studio in another.

Paramount clearly has different plans for now, though if linear revenues at the company continue to fall, the strategy may change. It will be fascinating to see the results of the experiment from Paramount, which is intent on playing to its own tune in a business strategy sense.