Unfinished business for Network 10 owner Paramount includes a US10 billion (A$15.9 billion) law suit Donald Trump filed against its CBS network, days before the presidential election.

The suit refers to a 60 Minutes interview with then vice-president Kamala Harris.

California-based Skydance Media has partnered Paramount Pictures since 2009 on film production and finance, announced last July that it would acquire Paramount’s publicly-held controlling shareholder National Amusements, and then perform an all-stock merger with the company. There are hopes the deal will go through in the first half of this year, but the Trump lawsuit is among issues to be resolved.

In an interview with The Australian, Paramount Australia and New Zealand regional lead and Network 10 president Beverley McGarvey (pictured), spoke of hopes the ‘New Paramount’ could “keep and nurture” the Australian business, which she has steered since 2020, having joined as head of programming in 2006.

The core Network 10 business has since been expanded with the addition of streaming through 10Play and new arrival Paramount+.

And on free-to-air TV, being the top-rating channel isn’t always the most important issue. “It’s key to get people in to sample the show,” she told The Australian’s James Manning. “Sometimes when there’s a big night of TV (elsewhere), our ratings actually go up, because there’s more people watching TV. They’re channel hopping, sampling what’s on different networks.”

And she said critics who wonder about the viability of three commercial TV networks in Australia “don’t grasp the competitive landscape”.

“It’s important for the advertising community and for the production community to have a strong, competitive industry.”

Nor does 10 see itself as in a landscape with only two competitors, with McGarvey identifying YouTube, TikTok, Netflix and Disney+ also as competitors in the multi-platform video entertainment space.

And “even on the worst night ever,” the reach of free-to-air is phenomenal, she says. “When you combine the reach of Paramount in Australia on an annual basis, it was 94 per cent of the population in 2024 across all of our services. In a month on Network 10, it’s 14.1 million Australians.

“Advertisers must buy a lot of different things to get that kind of reach on different platforms.”