Warner Media/Discovery joint venture; thoughts and discussion

Jeff Zucker screwed over Conan and gave hacks like Tapper and Cuomo a spotlight. He deserves to go.

Edited by HBarnill on May 19th 2021 at 5:48:48 AM

Sadly he and Zaslav are very close friends so a promotion (and potentially appointment to next-in-line succession) seems inevitable.

My biggest beef is the fact that he gave free promotion to Trump on CNN, and in many ways Zucker made him the "cultural icon" he is now.

Edited by Mario1995 on May 19th 2021 at 8:56:10 AM

That's not even during the 2016 election. CNN basically talked about him nonstop under the guise of "moral superiority" when it was just a lazy attempt at ratings. Not to mention it's the channel that promotes bothsidism but that problem was always inherent to the channel from the beginning.

Edited by HBarnill on May 19th 2021 at 6:09:47 AM

Discovery CEO David Zaslav got $190 million in stock options the day before the WarnerMedia deal.

No wonder AT&T shareholders feel they've been screwed by Stankey.

Edited by Mario1995 on May 20th 2021 at 5:12:35 AM

The full details of the deal are now out.

A tl;dr or a video summary would be much appreciated.

yeah,links just won't do in this case

I think this video from AT&T themselves might be helpful, but it's over 40 minutes long and probably filled with corporate speak.

Yeah. I figured somebody was a bookworm here and could read the whole thing in a snap. Apparently not, heh.

Well, I think we now know what John Oliver thinks of this merger.

Disney dodged a huge bullet, it seems.

It could have been different if a phone call had come just a few weeks earlier. In October 2016, shortly before Time Warner and AT&T announced their deal, Bob Iger, the head of Disney at the time, placed a call to Jeff Bewkes, the chief of Time Warner, according to two people intimately familiar with those details. The Disney leader asked Bewkes if he’d be interested in a possible merger. It was too late, Bewkes said. There was already something in the works. Iger wished him well and hung up the phone. Later, Iger called another media chief in the hopes of forging a deal. It was Rupert Murdoch.

Edited by Mario1995 on May 24th 2021 at 12:48:09 PM

Looks like the merger won't affect The CW at all, at least according to CEO Mark Pedowitz.

The CW is one of the elements that AT&T never even bothered trying to fiddle with, and CBS is apparently really content with them too. It seems to be a legit successful channel that avoids problems like the Syfy channel by building US streaming revenue into the show contracts from the start, even for stuff produced by other people. (Syfy has an issue with some of its historically most popular and acclaimed shows being popular in streaming or home video, which in many cases the channel gets nothing from)

The fact that it's a joint Warner Media/CBS venture that is successful at courting its chosen audience actually makes it really difficult to meddle with it. Warner Media wants to meddle? CBS can step in and vice versa. It's part of the reason these joint ventures are kind of rare these days.

"Warner Bros. Discovery" will be the new name for the combined WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc.

The flying fuck?

Edited by Mario1995 on Jun 1st 2021 at 1:28:57 PM

And people are lovin' that new logo!

We need to go back to this◊.

Oh yeah, were people livid about that back in the day?

PSA: the article says that since the merger won’t finalize until 2022, this "Warner Bros. Discovery" name isn't really the ultimate name, but more like a "this is a basic gist thing."

But then, given the outright ridicule going on here, I won't be surprised if the actual name is something harmless like "WarnerDiscovery".

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Jun 1st 2021 at 5:26:08 AM

Per this article, WM Studios and Networks Chairman and CEO Ann Sarnoff may be ousted once the spin-off completes.

With Sarnoff and potentially Emmerich on their way out, WB may not even be the same studio anymore.

Edited by Mario1995 on Jun 9th 2021 at 12:07:59 PM

That's 2 WB CEOs that left in the span of 2 years.

Edited by HBarnill on Jun 10th 2021 at 7:48:18 AM

Seems very on-brand for AT&T's management.

A big yikes.

Please don’t post links with zero context.

yeah,that's a surprisingly wordy article and I'd appreciate a summary

Sorry about that. Context:

“I am moving right into the Warner Bros. lot. I want to be where the content is made,” Zaslav said during a long Q&A at Credit Suisse. It “starts with the motion picture business and no one can open a picture anywhere in the world like Warner Bros,” he said. “We will lean into the motion business because it is a real strategic advantage. Because that’s where stars are made. They didn’t go to Hollywood to do a TV show that gets on a streaming service.”

Micromanagement. Not good.

Edited by Mario1995 on Jun 15th 2021 at 11:29:55 AM

I honestly dont know how you got micromanagement out of that,it seemed a whole load of nothing to me