ViacomCBS makes raft of management changes

Inside Amy Schumer

ViacomCBS has made a swathe of changes to its senior management team, with CBS exec David Nevins among those expanding their remits and Comedy Central chief Kent Alterman among senior execs departing.

Nevins was named chief creative officer at CBS last year, with oversight across CBS Television Studios, CBS’s entertainment arm, CBS and cabler Showtime, but he will now also head up BET Networks and Pop from the Viacom stable.

BET president Scott Mills will remain with the company, reporting into Nevins, who is also overseeing a new group designed to make the most of programming assets across the soon-to-be merged companies.

MTV, VH1, CMT and Logo chief Chris McCarthy, meanwhile, has been named president of entertainment and youth, adding Comedy Central and Paramount Network to his remit, along with TV Land and Smithsonian Channel. He takes the reins for the latter from Nevins and reports into Viacom CEO Bob Bakish.

David Nevins

Alterman, who had previously headed up Viacom-owned Comedy Central as well as Paramount Network and TV Land, is stepping down along with Viacom Media Networks COO Sarah Levy, who is not being replaced.

Levy had been with Viacom for almost two decades and oversaw US cablenets as part of her most recent role, while Alterman had been with Viacom since 2010 and worked on series including Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City.

He returned to Comedy Central after having a four-year stint from 1996 and in a memo to staff thanked them for being a “stellar group of humans”.

Other changes include Brian Robbins, who had headed up Nickelodeon, being upped to president of kids and family entertainment for ViacomCBS, with his remit including oversight of AwesomenessTV, the company he founded that was latter acquired by Viacom.

Elsewhere, Viacom’s head of digital studios Kelly Day will now report into CBS Interactive chief Marc DeBebevboise, who has oversight of digital services including SVOD CBS All Access.

Earlier this month, Bakish confirmed that the long-awaited merger, finally struck mid-August, would close https://tbivision.com/2019/11/03/bakish-advertiser-and-distributor-partners-are-bedrock-of-viacomcbs-strategy/ in “early December” as opposed to later in the month, as previously thought.

Alterman and Levy’s exits follow the departures of other Viacom execs including Nickelodeon’s Cyma Zarghami, Paramount Network chief Kevin Kay and BET CEO Debra Lee, who both exited last year.

News of the reshuffle was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.