National Amusements Approves ViacomCBS Merger, Now Expected to Close Early December

Viacom and CBS

The holding company of both CBS and Viacom, National Amusements, has voted to approve the merger of the two companies, which is now expected to proceed earlier than expected.

The merger was announced back in August and originally expected to close by the end of the year. Now, according to a piece by The Hollywood Reporter, the National Amusements vote  has paved the way for the deal to close. Viacom and CBS said in a statement yesterday that the merger “is now expected to close by early December.”

Since the merger was announced, both CBS and Viacom have been plagued by dropping share prices, even prompting Viacom CEO Bob Bakish to defend the combined company’s strategy at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit last week. But Shari Redstone, part of the Redstone family who own National Amusements, and who will be chairman of the board of ViacomCBS when the merger is finalized, remains optimistic about the new company’s future. At a conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal last week, she said, “I think a lot of times when people talk about scale, they talk about market cap, but scale matters whether or not you have the capability to make quantity of content and quality of content. Between the library that we have, the $13 billion spend on content every year, we can compete with the best of them.”

There’s still no indication from the Star Trek Global Franchise Group about how the franchise will look when the films (currently licensed to Paramount Pictures, a subsidiary of Viacom) and the television series (currently owned by CBS) are back together under the same roof.