With a less than perfect balance sheet for the first quarter of the year, Paramount has decided that a new approach is needed. For better or for worse, the media giant has decided to completely step away from the Upfronts, making it the first old-guard media company to do so. But what was likely planned as a headline-grabbing, shock moment of revolutionary spirit has instead been tainted by a poor set of results, grumbles of a poor ad experience on Pluto TV, and the axing of 25% of its workforce in the domestic cable networks division. Paramount Global saw an operating loss of $1.23 billion in Q1, a long way down from the net income of $775 million reported just 12…