🎧 WBD Financial Panic: No Way Out
A new earnings report reveals David Zaslav's mounting woes — and need for a plan
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First, Disney films may have buoyed its Q2 earnings — thanks Inside Out 2! — but theme park struggles led Anxiety to overwhelm Joy. Then Warner Bros. Discovery delivered its disastrous report, with a 5 percent drop in revenue, a $9.1 billion write-off on its cable assets and yeah, Furiosa. Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Richard Rushfield break it down and the need for a plan in a moment where entertainment’s diminishing cable workforce is in a full-fledged freakout.
Transcript here.
Fire Zaslav and divest discovery. Stop cutting. Go back to making things. Movies in theaters. Not on Max. Treat Max like a one stop shop for all of WB’s television offerings (a replacement for cable) rather than a Netflix alternative. Everyone else should do this, too, except Netflix, Apple, and Amazon.
Regarding the coolness of cable...I remember voting for the CableAce Awards. It felt so disruptive... and, anecdotally, back in 2019 I was on a shoot in New England and the 25 year old PA was AMAZED that the hotel had cable--especially the scrolling menu. There it was, all the programming you could ever want and an easy way to find out what was playing when...in one package. Five years later, I wonder how many subsciptions he's churning.