By Joe Flint and Jessica Toonkel

Paramount Global executive George Cheeks has spent more than three decades dealing with some of the entertainment industry's most challenging personalities and trying tasks. Now he faces his stiffest test.

Cheeks is helping to negotiate a settlement of President Trump's $20 billion lawsuit against Paramount's CBS News. Paramount's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, sees a resolution as necessary to cementing her merger deal with Skydance Media, but it is strongly opposed by CBS News staffers and executives.

Hanging in the balance are the $8 billion merger of Paramount and Skydance -- which needs the approval of the Federal Communications Commission -- and the reputation of CBS News.

For Cheeks, it is a high-wire act. In addition to the lawsuit, Cheeks, who runs CBS while helming Paramount with two other executives, has been dealing with Redstone's complaints about CBS News's coverage of Israel's war against Hamas.

He is now trying to calm nerves at CBS News after a longtime "60 Minutes" executive producer resigned over corporate oversight.

Adding to the challenges, Paramount's business is under pressure. Advertisers are reducing spending due to concerns about the economy. After laying off thousands of employees last year, the company is preparing another round of job cuts as soon as next month that would save hundreds of millions of dollars in costs, according to people familiar with the situation.

Yet if anyone can keep his footing in such precarious circumstances, Cheeks's supporters say, it is the former entertainment lawyer, who has steered television networks through a rapidly changing media landscape while overcoming thorny issues and pleasing big egos.

"I do not know how he manages all he oversees and always has a smile on his face despite whatever noise is going on," CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach said.

Cheeks dismissed questions about settlement talks during a recent event promoting CBS's upcoming prime-time lineup, saying "I appreciate the try, but I have had no tequila today." He acknowledged the network faced challenges and said he was focused on supporting his team.

"For me, what's important as a leader is how you show up in a difficult time," he said. His biggest goal was making sure everyone is "locking arms and saying, 'We're a team, we're a family, we're going to get through this together.' "

Cheeks declined to comment for this article.

Placating the boss

Trump's lawsuit alleges "60 Minutes" deceitfully edited an interview with Kamala Harris, who was then the Democratic presidential candidate. Cheeks has played a role in settlement talks. The sides, which are also in mediation, have been tens of millions of dollars apart, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The prospect of a settlement has angered many CBS news staff, who say the editing of the interview by "60 Minutes" was typical and showed a different part of the answer to the same question.

Some of the staff also criticize Cheeks for going too far accommodating Redstone's complaints that CBS News coverage of the war with Hamas has displayed an anti-Israel bias.

Redstone is the daughter of the late media titan Sumner Redstone. After she and Jewish groups criticized a "60 Minutes" story about the Biden administration's response to the war in Gaza, Cheeks in January named former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky as executive editor in charge of vetting stories and checking for bias.

Redstone pushed for the hire, people familiar with the matter said. Zirinsky, who is close to Redstone, was an executive producer of "We Will Dance Again," a recent documentary about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on an Israeli music festival.

Her assignment undercut "60 Minutes" executive producer Bill Owens, some CBS News staff said, because he has long had an antagonistic relationship with Zirinsky. Owens resigned last month, citing a loss of editorial control of the show to corporate oversight.

People close to Cheeks and "60 Minutes" said he has preserved the show's editorial independence and none of its stories have been altered or softened.

Savvy operator

When he joined NBCUniversal in 2012 as a late-night business-affairs executive, Cheeks formed a close bond with Lorne Michaels, the powerful creator of "Saturday Night Live," who is known for being wary of network "suits" and their requests.

Cheeks won Michaels over by not coming across as a corporate type, there to look over his shoulder and scrutinize every last item on his budgets, Michaels said.

"He cared about the shows and the people who did the shows," Michaels said in an interview, and he understood "our end of the business, which was not something NBC knew much about."

Some network executives, however, said Cheeks catered too much to Michaels.

Cheeks played a key role in the lucrative 2015 NBCU deal to acquire reruns of "Saturday Night Live" from Michaels for between $250 million and $300 million, people familiar with the pact said.

Michaels said Cheeks wasn't a pushover. "He was tough when he had to be, " he said. "He was a fan of the show without being a sycophant or star-struck."

With Michaels advocating for him, Cheeks climbed the ladder at NBCU, eventually becoming co-chairman of NBC Entertainment.

Cheeks's rise at the company halted in 2020, when NBC movie boss Jeff Shell was also given oversight of NBC Entertainment. Shell moved Cheeks to vice chair of NBCU Content Studios, which some staff saw as a demotion.

At the staff meeting outlining the restructuring, Cheeks broke down in tears and pounded a table, saying while he understood this was what was best for the company it still hurt, people who attended the meeting said.

Cheeks took the helm of CBS a few months later. There, he is known for working through tropical vacations and has drawn praise for maintaining CBS's solid prime-time lineup and holding on to the network's important sports deals, including with the NFL. Cheeks greenlighted such CBS hits as "Ghosts," "Tracker" and this season's successful "Matlock."

Yet Paramount rolled back the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that Cheeks had pushed, such as directing that half of the casts of unscripted shows be Black, indigenous or people of color and assigning a quarter of its development budget toward Bipoc creators and producers.

The FCC has been examining Paramount's commitment to abstain from such diversity initiatives as part of its review of the Skydance merger, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Cheeks is one of three co-CEOs of Paramount along with movie studio head Brian Robbins and cable network chief Chris McCarthy.

He has taken a leadership role among the three CEOs preparing the company for the Skydance takeover, including making sure Paramount promptly answers Skydance's information requests, people familiar with the situation said.

After the combination is finished, Cheeks is expected to take a senior position at Skydance, people familiar with the matter said. He isn't expected to report to Shell, the former NBC executive who had sidelined Cheeks and who will become Skydance president.

Write to Joe Flint at Joe.Flint@wsj.com and Jessica Toonkel at jessica.toonkel@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 14, 2025 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)

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