At Skydance's first employee town hall after it acquired Warner Bros. Discovery in October, CEO David Ellison told staff that the company behind Paramount Plus and HBO Max was competing for people's attention with some of the world's biggest tech companies. Months earlier, he'd singled out a way to get viewers to spend more time with Paramount's programming. A feed of short vertical videos, he said, was "critical to our future."
On Skydance's earnings call Monday, Ellison put a name to the competition. Add up all of Paramount's and Warner Bros. Discovery's broadcast, cable, and streaming properties, he said, and they still trail YouTube in …
