Former Showtime head David Nevins to lead Peter Chernin’s entertainment venture as CEO
Former Showtime Chief Executive David Nevins is joining media mogul Peter Chernin to manage his entertainment firm, the North Road Co.
The company on Thursday said that Nevins — who departed Showtime owner Paramount Global in late 2022 after 12 years overseeing the pay-TV cable network and other programming units — has been named chief executive of Chernin’s year-old venture.
Chernin will continue to serve as executive chairman.
North Road launched in July 2022 with $800 million in financing, including a $500-million investment from Chernin’s longtime allies at Providence Equity Partners and $300 million in debt financing from asset manager Apollo.
This year, North Road raised $150 million from the Qatar Investment Authority, which previously had provided funding to Chernin’s eponymous venture that produced movies and TV shows.
How I Made It: David Nevins
North Road includes Chernin Entertainment, which launched in 2010 and has had success in scripted entertainment, including the movies “Ford v Ferrari” and “Hidden Figures” and the television show “New Girl.” The scripted entertainment unit is managed by Jenno Topping.
Los Angeles-based North Road set an ambitious pace in its first year, buying the U.S. production assets of Red Arrow Studios in a deal with Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1. That deal brought in Chris Coelen’s Kinetic Content, which produces Netflix’s unscripted hit dating show “Love Is Blind.” The company also bought Karga Seven Pictures, a film and television firm with offices in Turkey, as well as a stake in football star Peyton Manning’s sports firm Omaha Productions.
In addition, North Road consolidated Words + Pictures, the documentary film company that Chernin had launched in 2021 with former ESPN executive Connor Schell and Chernin’s longtime lieutenant, Jesse Jacobs. Producers have doubled down on sports documentaries after the 2020 hit “The Last Dance” featuring the career of Michael Jordan (Schell was an executive producer on “The Last Dance”).
Nevins’ arrival at North Road comes as major media companies are in cost-cutting mode after years of heavy investment in streaming services. But they still need premium content to keep those services relevant and to release in movie theaters, which are recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic closures. North Road is among the independent media and entertainment companies looking to supply studios and satisfy ample global demand for content.
“Big companies are all recalibrating, but they are still going to be the distributors,” Nevins said in an interview. “But there’s going to be an opportunity for well-funded private companies to be important suppliers and be really strong partners. The big platforms need the product, and they need people who know how to deliver the product.”
CBS’ premium cable channel Showtime is fighting the cord-cutting tide.
Before joining Showtime, then part of CBS Corp., Nevins was president of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Television, which produced acclaimed shows such as “24” and “Arrested Development” for Fox and “Friday Night Lights” and “Parenthood” for NBC. He also led CBS Entertainment before the consolidation of Viacom and CBS.
“David’s arrival comes as we enter the next phase of North Road’s trajectory,” Chernin said in a statement. “He joins a management team with unparalleled creative and business credentials, and David is the perfect creative leader to now bring it all together and execute on our vision for North Road.”
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