Former Netflix exec, streaming whisperer Cindy Holland, confirmed to run Paramount+

Pastis is a vibey bistro in New York’s meatpacking district where the boeuf bourguignon goes for $US46, before taxes and tips.

Beloved by the city’s cultural elite, it has an old-school charm, and it was there in September 2020, seated between its subway-tiled walls, that Ted Sarandos fired Cindy Holland.

As Netflix’s vice president of original content, Holland’s sacking shocked Hollywood because she had been extremely well-regarded within the industry, and was known for her ability to spot zeitgeisty projects and maintain relationships with talent.

In 2022, an anonymous source told The Hollywood Reporter, “That service was built on the back of Cindy Holland’s taste. I could give you a list of names of people who would lie down on railroad tracks for her.”

Holland was instrumental in establishing Netflix’s brand when the streamer forged into originals. She had been with the company since 2002 when it was a DVD-mailout business, but when the streaming revolution came, Holland knew what to do.

She commissioned House of Cards. She commissioned Orange is the New Black. She commissioned The Crown. Bojack Horseman. Stranger Things. Bloodline. The OA. Narcos. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Mindhunter.

Holland was the first wave of Netflix originals, when it was competing with HBO in the prestige stakes, and had been synonymous with high quality and buzzy. There was a sense that if it was a Netflix push, then the odds of it being good was at least 50-50.

The second wave of Netflix originals started before Holland was ousted, when the edict came from on high to prioritise volume. That suited Bela Bajaria, a former broadcast TV executive who had been brought on to oversee unscripted but whose team then stepped onto Holland’s turf, starting with Insatiable, a widely panned “comedy” that Holland had already rejected.

When Sarandos was promoted to co-chief executive in July 2020, he set about restructuring the content team. Holland was out, Bajaria was promoted to global head of TV.

You could argue that Sarandos has been vindicated. Despite a public tumble in 2022 when the service shed subscribers for the first time in 10 years, wiping tens off billions of its market capitalisation, Netflix is firmly back on top.

Its stock price is six times higher than that 2022 nadir, it crossed the 300 million mark in subscribers and it emerged the clear victor in the streaming wars. But there is this overhanging feeling that most of its output is, well, crap.

The post-Holland Netflix is quantity over quality, mass appeal over curation. Commercially successful but not prestige.

Holland bumped around for a few years before joining Elisabeth Murdoch’s production business, Sister, but left a year later to become a consultant for Skydance just as it initiated its takeover of Paramount.

This is where it gets interesting again, because Holland has been confirmed as the incoming boss of Paramount’s streaming platforms, Paramount+ and Pluto, once the merger closes later this week.

Even five years after her Netflix exit, Holland is still a formidable name in the streaming industry, having earnt a lot of goodwill by shepherding so many lauded projects. She’s popular with talent and filmmakers.

But budgets today are not the same as a decade ago when the emphasis on growth, attention and winning saw enormous piles of money being thrown around at any semi-big-name TV writer or director. Holland was known for being generous with those cheques.

Paramount+ also has never shown the same boldness as Netflix was in the 2010s.

Belonging to the same parent company as US broadcaster CBS, Paramount+ is built on the library of TV franchises such as NCIS, CSI, Criminal Minds, Frasier and Star Trek, plus Comedy Channel staples South Park, MTV brands such as Jersey Shore and Nickelodeon favourites including SpongeBob.

It has also exploited its Showtime archives with spin-offs of Dexter and the forthcoming Billions expansions and Nurse Jackie sequel.

The one new brand it built was the Yellowstone universe (except for the original series which it had licenced to Peacock in the US and Stan in Australia), and all the other series created by Taylor Sheridan, including Lioness, Landman, Mayor of Kingstown and Tulsa King.

What can Holland do to elevate the Paramount+ brand? Is that even her brief?

If Holland has been brought in to do what she does best, that’s going to require investment, and at a time of the inevitable cost-cutting that follows any consolidation.

Good TV is often not cheap and neither are the people who make them. When Holland was at Netflix, she signed Shonda Rhimes to that $US100 million deal which netted Bridgerton.

Is Paramount+ also set up to be more ambitious in its creative philosophy? Does it have the right people in place in commissioning, production and marketing? Can it launch shows with as much buzz and expectations as HBO still does? Could it compete for the next The White Lotus or The Last of Us?

The economics of streaming have changed since Holland was in charge of the commissioning budget at Netflix, but the one thing that rarely changes is someone’s instincts, and she knew how to make great TV.

The question is if streaming audiences, trained by an algorithm into putting on background noise while second screening, are still paying attention to what Holland can offer.