Warner Bros. Discovery

Comcast is not interested in running the regional sports networks Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to shut down, according to a published report. Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League all have teams whose games are carried by WBD’s AT&T Sports Nets in Pittsburgh, Houston and Denver. Rather than seeing those networks shut down — and stop paying right fees — the league reached out to Comcast, which has TV stations in those markets and operates its own constellation of five regional sports networks, according to Sports Business Journal. Comcast a year ago sold its majority stake in another RSN, NBC Sports Washington, to Monumental Sports & Entertainment. Comcast declined the new overture, according to SBJ.

It tells the teams whose games are carried by three of its regional networks that it wants to stop operating the channels.

“This is a case about Defendants’ opportunistic repudiation of Warner/HBO’s exclusive streaming rights in the popular animated comedy series South Park, for which Warner/HBO agreed to pay more than half a billion dollars,” the breach of contract and other claims suit filed in New York says of the big bucks 2019 deal the parties struck. “As a result of Defendants’ misconduct, Warner/HBO has incurred, and continues to incur, damages in excess of $200 million dollars,” the complaint adds.

Warner Bros. Discovery revenue fell 11% to $11 billion (or a drop of 9% when foreign exchange fluctuations are excluded) mostly due to advertising softness and tough studio comparisons. EBITDA also tumbled 5% to $2.603. Shares in the media giant shed about 3% in after-hours trading. On the plus side for the company, direct-to-consumer losses narrowed and free cash flow improved, with those metrics among those the company is highlighting as it forges ahead with a massive restructuring.

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh, fell short of paying its full obligation to the local baseball team this week, amid industry-wide issues with the regional sports network model.

The decision reflects concerns that some Discovery+ subscribers might not want to move to a pricier platform.

Warner Bros. Discovery said that former Scripps Networks Interactive President and CEO Ken Lowe will join the company’s board of directors, effective April. 2. Lowe will replace former Liberty Media CEO Robert “Dob” Bennett, who is retiring from the board.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s freshman talker tops ratings charts and scores a renewal from Fox Television Stations, Hearst and others.

Greg Berlanti will remain at Warner Bros. Television through 2027. The new pact — it’s not an extension of his previous deal that expires in 2024 — is described as a partnership that sees Berlanti Productions serve as a mini-studio within the larger WBTVG. With The CW no longer in the volume business that let Berlanti set a record for the most TV series on the air at a given time, the backbone of the agreement needed to change. This new deal was spearheaded by CAA, which signed the mega-producer in December following a 15-year run with WME.

Most of the biggest television programmers have banded together in a new attempt to fix what they see as an audience measurement problem and promote competition to Nielsen, ending its stranglehold on the industry. Comcast NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, TelevisaUnivision and the VAB said Monday they formed a Joint Industry Committee so they can work together to set standards for measuring what they call premium video, which generates $70 billion in advertising revenue.

Warner Bros Discovery has enlisted measurement firm VideoAmp to track ad campaigns across screens for the company’s network and brand portfolio, which spans sports, news, lifestyle and entertainment. An announcement of the companies’ agreement said it followed the completion of a “first-of-its-kind test-and-learn” process designed to turn up alternative ways to gauge video ad performance.

The yanking of Westworld and Love Life from the streamer is designed to appease Wall Street, not consumers, one expert says.

Warner Bros. Discovery increased the restructuring charges against earnings it will be taking this year to $4.1 billion to $5.3 billion as it looks to cut costs and improve its bottom line following the merger of Discovery with WarnerMedia earlier this year. The company had originally said that it expected the charges against earnings to be $3.2 billion to $4.3 billion, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Nancy Daniels, who oversees the Turner networks and a number of Discovery channels, and Jane Latman, the HGTV veteran who is also in charge of Food Network, are the latest execs out at Warner Bros. Discovery. It is believed that Daniels and Latman’s exits come as part of the latest restructure within the David Zaslav-run company. (Image of Nancy Daniels)

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is prioritizing cash generation over everything else.
The company will have laid off thousands of people this year by the middle of this month.
Zaslav also faces a dilemma with TNT’s NBA rights, which are expensive and run out in 2025.

Warner Bros. Discovery executives are close to formalizing a new name and platform for its soon-to-be-launched streaming service that will combine the preexisting HBO Max and Discovery+ services. The merged platform’s expected name, “Max,” is being vetted by the company’s lawyers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said Tuesday that entertainment companies are facing a huge challenge — the advertising market is crumbling just as studios are diverting cash to fuel a massive arms race in streaming. “The advertising market right now is very weak … quite weak,” Zaslav said during a presentation at RBC’s annual technology investor conference. “This is weaker than it was during COVID, and right now there is a pretty big miss of the whole Christmas season.”

Warner Bros. Discovery just moved up its streaming timeline. The company previously announced it’d be merging HBO Max and Discovery+ by next summer. However, during an earnings call on Thursday, WBD said consumers could expect a combined streaming offering in the spring. CEO David Zaslav noted that the company has been “very hard at work” toward that goal.

Total revenue came in at $9.823 million and net losses totaled $2.8 billion, including $1.9 billion of pre-tax amortization from acquisition-related intangible assets and $1.5 billion in restructuring charges. The company reported 94.9 million direct-to-consumer subscribers, across HBO and the Discovery+ and HBO Max streaming services. It fell short of Wall Street expectations due to a slowdown in advertising and merger-related restructuring charges.

Warner Bros. Discovery, restructuring to cut cost and pay down its massive debt, said it expected to report charges against third quarter earnings of between $3.2 billion and $4.3 billion. The charge will include assessment against programming that would lead to content impairment and development write-offs of approximately $2 billion to $2.5 billion.

The future of The Cartoon Network has been thrown into question as the cable channel gets gutted by corporate parent Warner Bros. Discovery, whose CEO David Zaslav is looking to trim at least $3 billion from the sprawling media giant.

Warner Bros. Television’s decision to shut down its television workshop for emerging writers and directors sparked outrage from those worried about a major setback for women and people of color trying to make their careers in Hollywood. But on Wednesday, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery said it’s not giving up on programs to develop writers and directors of color after all. The company said in a statement that its pipeline programs will exist under its larger diversity, equity and inclusion umbrella, where they will focus specifically on working with writers and directors from underrepresented groups.

Sources say that, as part of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s effort to find $3 billion in post-merger cost savings, that layoffs will impact several departments in the merged companies. Among those expected to be impacted are Channing Dungey’s Warner Bros. Television Group (which includes scripted, unscripted and alternative studios); possibly DC Comics, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and other units.

Warner Bros. Discovery and its top corporate brass are facing a shareholder lawsuit that alleges false statements were made about the health of the HBO Max streaming service and its subscriber numbers to pave the way for a merger this year. The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed last week in New York federal court by the Collinsville (Ill.) Police Pension Board, which held Discovery stock. The suit proposes to expand to include other Discovery shareholders who have watched the value of their holdings plummet after the $43-billion merger of Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit.

The top brass at Warner Bros. Discovery held a company-wide town hall Wednesday over Zoom in which they laid out the current state of the company and the industry, acknowledging the hard times amid a slew of cost-cutting and layoffs and emphatically addressing merger rumors with CEO David Zaslav exclaiming, “We are not for sale, absolutely, not for sale.”

Wayne Friedman: “Could there be another even bigger media merger than the recently completed WarnerMedia and Discovery? How about this wrinkle: Another media company now eyeing the new Warner Bros. Discovery? Some analysts are mulling whether Comcast Corp. might just consider buying that company.”

Warner Bros. Discovery has been going all-in on cutting costs to alleviate its roughly $53 billion debt. But with uncertain financial prospects, the company might find itself in another merger —with Comcast. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts could be interested in combining WBD with NBCUniversal, giving the cable giant access to a well-known streaming service in the form of HBO Max.

The layoffs of about 30% of ad sales employees at Warner Bros Discovery started Tuesday and will likely proceed over the next few weeks. The latest cuts from a combined workforce in the range of 40,000 (10,000 from Discovery and the rest from WarnerMedia) come as the company continues to work toward achieving at least $3 billion in cost savings from the $43 billion merger. Since the deal closed in April, the company has embarked on an aggressive effort to roll back expenses in many areas.

Karen Grinthal, a veteran ad-sales executive who has long represented cable’s Food Network and other properties to Madison Avenue, is set to retire from her post. Grinthal, who has worked at Scripps and then Discovery Communications for years, was recently named part of the new senior ad-sales executive team at Warner Bros. Discovery.

The layoffs come amid a major strategic shift for the company, which is phasing out its HBO Max originals in Europe and moving to a local commissioning model.

The media mogul also said news channels should do a better job of distinguishing between news and opinion.

In recently quarterly earnings, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery revealed markedly different paths for executing on their commercial-free and ad-supported streaming tiers ahead. One of them signals trouble.

Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global to retain minority stakes and produce original, scripted content for The CW. Mark Pedowitz will continue as The CW’s chairman and chief executive officer

Employees “should have access to safe and effective health care, and their privacy should be protected,” studios say in a joint statement.

Merging is always the easy part. The companies are usually willing to join ­forces. Bankers and lawyers are incentivized to get the deal done. Plus the media loves a good M&A deal with photo ops of high-fiving CEOs and their grand plans to make history through the process of creative destruction. But then comes the heavy lifting: Successfully combining two often very different companies with different corporate cultures and creating shareholder value. I’ve been around this business long enough to know that there’s lots of destruction in big-time M&A.