Jeff Shell

Jeff Shell was out at Paramount six months ago, and he's already building something new.

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Let's get into it.

Let's talk about Jeff Shell, because his trajectory over the last two years is one of the more unusual executive arcs in the business, and where he lands next will matter.

Quick recap on the timeline.

Shell was the longtime NBC Universal chief, ran the studio through the pandemic recovery, and had genuine credibility as an operator.

Uh, that was with the five executives, I believe, George Cheeks and Jerry Cardinal and Andy Gordon were also on stage with, with, uh, Ellison.

Uh, Jeff Shell, uh, was there as well, if you wanna bring that back.

Um, so, you know, they have, uh, you know, we ...

Obviously, as you mentioned, an, an unprecedented deal, so it's not like there's a real comp here for somebody else, but certainly WBD didn't do something like this when they combined in 2022.

[upbeat music] Make no mistake about it, Peter, you are right.

He is the guy who is, uh, gonna be sort of the Jeff Shell 2.0 person.

He's gonna come in there, he's looking at the employee cohort chart, I'm sure, and figuring out how to, um, how to work through the changes.

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the Gap Inc CEO.

Um, and make no mistake about it, Peter, you are right.

He is the guy who is, uh, gonna be sort of the Jeff Shell 2.0 person.

He's gonna come in there, he's looking at the employee cohort chart, I'm sure, and figuring out how to, um, how to work through the changes.

Well, just the other thing I was gonna say is, is this structure's very interesting.

So David Ellison, as you recall, when he got Paramount, he brought in Jeff Shell to serve as his president.

Yeah.

And Jeff Shell had this sort of very interesting role because Jeff was, in many ways, the, the seasoned CEO in the room who could manage businesses in a way that David could not, and yet Jeff didn't have any real authority.

He didn't...

I don't believe he had any true direct reports.

At the end of the day, David's the CEO.

But the co-CEO role is significant because one thing that David has done, to his credit, is he's shown s- enough self-awareness to say, like, "Hey, I'm a 40-year-old, 40-something-year-old who doesn't totally understand how to run a company of this size, and I need professional CEOs in place to help me out." And if you look back to when he got Paramount, he brought in Jeff Shell, who was once the head of NBC Universal, to help him out.

Jeff didn't really have a role of this stature.

He was president, but no one actually reported to him, and, and what authority he had versus a sort of advisory role was never quite clear to me.