TheHollywoodReporter: Industry observers believe WBD will sell to Comcast/NBCUniversal in 2024
- Thread starter ContractHolder
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"Obviously Peacock sucks," says one exec with knowledge of both companies.
incredible quote right there
incredible quote right there
The Tumblr of media conglomerates. Just constant sales of perpetually diminishing value.
Basically, Zazlav is trying to trim the costs around HBO/WB to make it an easier sell to somebody like Universal. Cutting unprofitable programming, minimizing staff, etc.
Death, taxes, and constantly having to worry about AEW's longevity.
Makes it cheaper and reduces costs which will make the company look better on balance sheets
There's no chance NBCU would risk losing streaming rights to WWE. If they merge, AEW is deader than dead.
He's not tanking HBO though. He signed Bloys for another five years and is investing even more on his team. He just got rid of some redundancies on the HBO Max side and merged the rest of the team with HBO proper. Bloys got a bigger team and more money to work with.
On Warner. There is nothing that stops TK from moving the programming elsewhere.
The ratings are good enough that a Viacom, apple, Amazon or Disney may jump on it
I can't wait for the HBO Discovery Peacock Max + streaming service
Might have an outside chance at Paramount+.
Amazon, Disney and Apple would not give the faintest of shits.
Disney is a large company with a big cable channel portfolio. There isn't any reason to think they wouldnt be happy to park AEW on ESPN 2/News or something similar.
Apple or Amazon only work if they are really committed to their live programming on streaming. They are both getting pretty aggressive on live sports which is the thing they need to kill of terrestrial and cable tv once and for all
if MLS can pull a 9 figure deal for games almost no one watches I'm sure TK can get good money for a show that is putting up a million viewers or so consistently
So Zaslav has been preparing the company for a future sale?
Makes sense
The Disney/Fox thing is just gonna get worse isn't it. Like one corp owning 3+ major studios eventually…
Yes. That sale was always bad. But at least we get the X-Men in the MCU so all the terrible things that come of it will be ok
So the new major/minors would be:
- [Top] Disney (w/ Fox)
- [Top] Netflix
- [Top] NBCUniversal (w/ WBDiscovery)
- [Mid] Apple
- [Mid] Amazon (w/ MGM)
- [Mid] Sony
- [Low] Paramount (w/ ViacomCBS)
- [Low] Lionsgate
Yeah, and outside of a cartoon, Disney isn't doing shit with the IP.
But to the topic at hand, would Zaslav remain in leadership, if this does happen? If not, being sold to NBC can't be any worse than how things are currently being run? I have no idea how many of this works.
I think there is a bit more to it, entertain me with this conspiracy. Zaslav started with NBC, specifically NBC TV IIRC and he left it for Discovery for 2006 and this sale provided it happens means that WBD could merge with NBCUniversal and if he gets the better end of the deal then he could be backdooring his way into co-running or maybe even running NBCUNIVERSAL/WBD just like he backdoored his way into WBD.
I assume Comcast also wants to spin-off NBCUniversal into a separate entity just like AT&T did with Warner
It made them cashflow positive (with massive debt issues still, but that's better than cashflow negative + debt). For now we don't have evidence that it's actually "tanked" HBO.
Yeah if you listen to Zaslavs comments it's pretty clear where the company is heading
Also, so what if Zaslav ticks off every single creative talent in Hollywood? Once he sells it, the bridges will be mended so it's not like that will tank the sale.
