WBD Mystery Solved: Why John Malone Keeps Backing David Zaslav
A cable cowboy interview reveals the WBD endgame; women disappear from Hollywood C-suites; Netflix vs. YouTube in your living room
Welcome to the Jamboree, my weekly series of quick(ish) takes on the industry’s passing parade. Today I’ll dive into the the disappearing women in Hollywood C-suites and how YouTube is coming for Netflix in your home!
Leave Zaslav Malone!
Industry watchers, chatterers and of course, the trade media tend to view the travails of this industry through the prisms of, well, their own tastes. When they think something is a disaster — and they tend to think most things are a disaster — they can’t imagine that anyone could conceive things differently.
More precisely, they can’t imagine that the people who hold the strings to the universe could ever hold out against the scorn and disapproval of industry watchers, chatterers and of course the trade media and bro-fanboy business press.
In their minds, whatever CEO is taking his turn in the barrel must be moments away from dismissal.
Sooner or later, all studio chieftain careers must end, but when they do, it’s not at the behest of the peanut gallery. Chieftains serve at the pleasure of their major shareholders, as represented by their boards, and hard as it is to contemplate, the world looks very different from their side of the telescope than it does to us mere mortals.
For months now, as Warners Disco boss David Zaslav has gone from nightmare to nightmare and, much more importantly, as the company’s stock has cratered, the industry’s all-important narrative has taken on a “how long can this go on?” flavor.
Turns out, quite a while.
This week we got an answer to the “how long can this go on?” question from perhaps the only person who has a vote in that debate: Liberty Media Chairman John Malone, bankroller of the entire Warners Disco adventure.
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