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Warner Bros. Discovery’s Carriage Deal With Charter Cools Heat Under David Zaslav’s Seat
A month ago things looked a bit bleak but Warner Bros. Discovery has just set a major carriage renewal with Charter Communications, a year early and with or without the NBA.
As WBD’s fortunes flagged in recent months, with the home of Warner Bros., HBO and CNN seeing its market value drift down to almost $16 billion (one-tenth of Disney’s), some on Wall Street begged the company to split up or sell itself. Back in April, the Texas Democrat along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-CA), Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) sent a letter asking AG Merrick Garland and DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter to investigate a merger for “potentially anticompetitive practices that reduce consumer choice and harm workers in affected labor markets.” There doesn’t seem to have been any action on that. Investors stomach the pay better than, say, unions, and have known and generally liked Zaslav since his early Discovery days through its merger with Scripps and ambitious acquisition of Warner Media, a smaller company buying a bigger one and piling on debt in the process.
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