{"id":553517,"date":"2025-11-06T19:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/553517\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T19:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:22:11","slug":"wbds-david-zaslav-says-we-have-an-active-process-underway-as-suitors-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/553517\/","title":{"rendered":"WBD\u2019s David Zaslav Says \u201cWe Have An Active Process Underway\u201d As Suitors Circle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a>\u2019s first public outing since Paramount started lobbing offers as the company pursues both a sale and a separation of it businesses<\/a>, CEO David Zaslav told analysts, \u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that we have an active process underway.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re on track to create two strong, well capitalized businesses that can each create significant long term shareholder value. The team is hard at work, both on the separation transaction, and on following the board\u2019s direction to evaluate strategic alternatives. You\u2019ve all seen media reports as to potential interested parties, and I won\u2019t comment on anything specific,\u201d he said on a call with analysts after quarterly earnings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tA split, planned for a year, would create two public companies, Warner Bros. (studios and streaming) and Discovery Global (linear television networks). Executives on the call (including WBD<\/a> CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels and JB Perrette, President of Global Streaming and Games) fielded questions on what assets will live where and areas of overlap. They touched on plans for a standalone sports streaming app after just launching one for CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tWBD\u2019s sports offering took a big hit when it lost the NBA but, said Wiedenfels, \u201cWe\u2019re going to begin to see some real benefits from the transition off the NBA towards a portfolio of other rights that we acquired as replacements. You\u2019re going to see hundreds of millions of dollars of benefits next year from that transition.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe important change that we\u2019re working on \u2026 is the development of our standalone sports streaming app. We [Discovery Global] will need that in the U.S. market as HBO Max stops the utilization of our streaming rights in the spin-off scenario \u2026 and that will put us in a position to have a compelling standalone offering, but also something that will allow us to partner and bundle with our own products and others in the market,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt will work differently In the U.S. and outside the U.S.,\u201d Zaslav added. \u201cOutside the U.S., all of the sports content will be available to HBO Max \u2026 We have found that all of our movies and scripted series, together with local content and local sports, is a very compelling offering outside the U.S., and that it\u2019s a driver of real growth \u2026. [But] here in the U.S., we didn\u2019t find that \u2026 the sports were providing enough value for us in terms of incremental subs. We didn\u2019t get that many. [So] the view is for us that HBO Max is much stronger being a motion picture and storytelling product not dependent on rental sports. And so I think we\u2019ll be able to take advantage of that with this new app.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCNN, led by Mark Thompson, launched its streaming subscription tier Oct. 28 <\/a>for $6.99 a month. Asked why launch a separate app when the trend is generally to consolidate streamers, Zaslav said: \u201cWe see it as a standalone. That doesn\u2019t mean that it wouldn\u2019t be bundled with multiple other products \u2026 It\u2019s now here in the U.S., but very soon it\u2019ll be anywhere in the world you go \u2026 It\u2019s a terrific everyday product with robust opportunity to get nourished with all kinds of news other than the live feed, or to have multiple live feeds,\u201d said Zaslav. \u201cWe\u2019re very bullish on this as an independent product.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWiedenfels assured the Street that the CNN app draws on the company\u2019s existing technology stacks with limited incremental operating costs.<\/p>\n

\n\tWiedenfels will be CEO of Discovery Global if it emerges intact and said his team is currently focused on revitalizing its brands around the world. \u201cWe are adding thousands of hours [of content] every year to that library, a lot of which comes from our strong free to air presence outside of the U.S., and that is going to be one of the big strengths as we set sail with Discovery Global. And we will be fully focused on figuring out the best way to monetize not only the fresh content but also the enormous library with less exclusivity for HBO Max.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPerrette clarified that HBO Max will continue to have access to \u201cwhat we call the best of the Discovery Global assets\u201d as long as they continue to engage views on HBO Max. \u201cSo even in the separation, we\u2019ll continue to have access that domestically. We\u2019ll have access to that internationally, including a lot of the free to air content that is bigger and broader, particularly in Europe, from some of our free to air channels and networks. HBO Max will continue to have access to the content that it has seen our subscribers have valued even in the separation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZaslav added, \u201cthat will be the case if, in fact, HBO Max goes ahead and splits as planned, or if Warner is acquired as Warner. And, obviously, if the company is acquired in whole, then they\u2019ll have access to everything.\u201d All to say that splitting up the moving pieces of one content and distribution ecosystem is not simple.<\/p>\n

\n\tAddressing the company\u2019s heavy domestic linear declines, evident in the third quarter report. Wiedenfels think WBD is \u201cworking through a transition period\u201d with distributors but he expects improvement next year. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe original separation of WBD was meant to be tax free. Wiedenfels declined when asked to address tax implications if the structure of a deal changed. \u201cIs there a point at which the process you\u2019re running puts the tax free nature of the separation at risk. It would be helpful for us to understand how that all works,\u201d asked an analyst.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe answer is no, I don\u2019t want to provide any more color on that process,\u201d Wiedenfels said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s first public outing since Paramount started lobbing offers as the company pursues both a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[1594,1830,77,382,16,15,47689,102088],"class_list":{"0":"post-553517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-cnn","9":"tag-earnings","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-warner-bros-discovery","15":"tag-wbd"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115504384905175433","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}