David Zaslav Anjali Sundaram | CNBC
*********************************************************
It must be Dress Like Steve Jobs Day!.....................
Posted on 11/15/2022 11:28:20 AM PST by Red Badger
KEY POINTS
* Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav spoke Tuesday at RBC’s 2022 Global TIMT Conference in New York.
* Zaslav said the advertising market was weaker than at any point during 2020′s coronavirus pandemic.
* Zaslav said Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia has been “messier” than expected.
*******************************************************
The advertising market is currently weaker than at any point during the coronavirus pandemic slowdown of 2020, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav said at an investment conference Tuesday.
If the ad market doesn’t improve next year, “it’s going to be hard” to hit the company’s $12 billion earnings forecast for 2023, Zaslav said at RBC’s Global TIMT Conference in New York.
Zaslav’s comments signal a change in rhetoric from large traditional media executives who generally said this summer that advertising slumps weren’t significant for them even as digital media players saw a pullback. Advertisers have reduced spending as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to cool inflation, pressuring equities including media companies’.
Things got “a lot worse” during the past few months, Zaslav said.
Warner Bros. Discovery has had its valuation cut in half this year. Other companies reliant on advertising, such as Snap , Meta and BuzzFeed , have all fallen more than 65% this year.
Merging Discovery with WarnerMedia earlier this year has brought a series of unforeseen challenges because some assets were “unexpectedly worse than we thought,” Zaslav said.
HBO went from making more than $2 billion in 2019 to losing about $3 billion last year as content spending surged, according to Zaslav. The CEO has changed course for HBO Max as it gets set to merge with Discovery+ next year, including eliminating low-rated shows and bigger budget movies made only for the streaming service.
“It’s messier than we thought, it’s much worse than we thought,” Zaslav said. He added, however, that he didn’t want to buy a company “that was really well run” because it would have limited the upside of the merger. Zaslav has been cutting costs since the deal closed in April and plans to lay off over 1,000 more employees before the end of the year, CNBC reported last month.
Sports rights Zaslav also said Warner Bros. Discovery would stay disciplined when NBA rights renewal discussions accelerate next year.
“We don’t have to have the NBA,” Zaslav said. The company has plenty of sports offerings without it, he added.
Still, Zaslav reiterated he’d like to do a deal with the NBA. He recently renewed star broadcaster Charles Barkley’s contract for 10 years, though the contract includes a clause where Barkley could leave if Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t renew its carriage agreement. The NBA’s national TV contracts expire after the 2024-25 season.
Any NBA deal will need to be future-looking, said Zaslav, incorporating both the company’s streaming service and sports assets, including Bleacher Report, which reach younger audiences.
Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery rose more than 3% on Tuesday.
David Zaslav Anjali Sundaram | CNBC
*********************************************************
It must be Dress Like Steve Jobs Day!.....................
Get woke, go broke!
BINGO!!
Alienate American patriots by emphasizing globalism.
Anger the racist bigots by including interracial couples.
Disgust the normal people by showing men cuddling.
Go broke.
“interracial couples”
I keep waiting to see the ads and tv shows with a white guy and a black woman.....
crickets.....
You really think that? Interesting.
fire a shot across his bow
cancel the cable tv
no subscriber fees
less subscribers less ad revenue
the LEFTIST media is propping up the whole LEFTIST charade
Well Snowflakes, you elected this demented, dim witted, drooling moron Biden for POTUS. Enjoy the Democrat Recession!
I think ads are losing their value as people get more product information by searching for products or by looking for product reviews, videos, etc.
What is it with this BS dress by supposed leaders? Another reason why people like Trump, he dresses like a leader and not like Sprockets Euro-trash.
Sprockets, now we dance!
Too bad.
Maybe they can learn to farm and do something productive with their lives.
I’ve noticed a lot of TV ads, especially on streaming TV, leave me without a clue what they are advertising. I’ve been with others who watched the ads, and they couldn’t tell me what they were selling either.
We don’t even watch TV any more and it’s no great loss from the times I seen it when I am somewhere someone has it on.
Usually I can feel my IQ dropping the longer it remains on.
Learn to code?.....................😜
You got it.
But at least farming will be some useful, productive work, and all the manure they will be tossing around will actually do some good.
😁
SNL's Naked and Afraid Celebrity Edition with Peter Dinklage and Leslie Jones. Both naked and he was very afraid.
Sprouts and a soap commercial come to mind, off the top of my head. They are out there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.