About three years ago, two large media companies—Warner Bros. and Discovery Inc.—merged into one much larger company, WB Discovery. Then that company made a bunch of bad decisions, racked up a ton of debt, made everyone angry, and is now splitting up again into two new companies that will likely just end up being WB and Discovery one day.
On June 9, WB Discovery announced that it was splitting up the media giant into two distinct publicly traded companies. WB Discovery CEO and internet punching bag, David Zaslav, will lead Streaming & Studios, a new company made up mostly of WB and DC assets. Meanwhile, the rest of WBD’s corpse—mostly made up of TV and cable assets—will be split off into Global Networks and run by WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels.
The separation is expected to be finished sometime in 2026. Oh, and most of the WBD’s debt, which is nearing $40 billion, will be dumped on the Widenfels TV company, perhaps revealing the actual reason this is happening.
“By operating as two distinct and optimized companies in the future, we are empowering these iconic brands with the sharper focus and strategic flexibility they need to compete most effectively in today’s evolving media landscape,” Zaslav said in a statement that sounds like he was trying to win a bet to include as many empty buzzwords as possible.
Personally, I think one company is more optimized than two companies, but I’m not a genius business guru like Zaslav, a man who gets so uncomfortable watching sex scenes he makes people in the room stare forward and not look at one another until they’re over.
Global Networks and Streaming & Studios are the current names of the newly formed companies. It’s believed by most industry experts and reporters that eventually both of these “new” entities will inherit the Warner Bros and Discovery names. This is similar to how HBO Max became Max and is now reverting back to HBO Max. Another incredibly smart business decision by Zaslav, a man who seems to be running his media empire like a drunk person trying to find their way to the bathroom at 3 am.
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