CBS and Paramount’s slow-motion collapse is a warning sign about how legacy radio is making all the same mistakes — just later.

• Even if Paramount Non-executive Chairwoman Shari Redstone had executed the company’s goals flawlessly, the instability we’re seeing likely would have still happened.
• Redstone’s goal has consistently been to sell the company not necessarily to build it for long-term competitiveness.
• Strategic paralysis set in years ago, with management caught between fixing the business and making it “saleable” similar to the banks and hedge funds who bought into radio.
• The board cycled through CEOs, fumbled streaming strategy, and underinvested — because the endgame was always a transaction, not transformation (sounds like radio after consolidation) 

• Even a strong, well-run Paramount would likely be in the same chaos because the root problem isn't just the product or market, it's governance. That’s what the Redstone factor has in common with iHeart, Cumulus and Audacy.

Radio Lessons

• Asset strip instead of reinvention -- Paramount's value has increasingly been seen in parts— CBS Sports, Pluto TV, real estate — rather than as a whole. The sum-of-parts breakup value now exceeds the company’s whole market cap.

• Radio parallel: Companies are beginning to shut down unprofitable stations, sell tower sites, or cash in on real estate — a signal that they too are worth more broken up than rebuilt.

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