Is David Zaslav Misunderstood?

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to look back on Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s publicly disgraced decisions to cut costs at the company and determine whether or not they were justified. It’s rare a media CEO becomes a central piece of the discourse, but after several PR mishaps and controversial content decisions, he has become the poster child for the troubled state of the industry. Is Zaslav deserving of such public disapproval? Or is he simply accomplishing his goal to reduce debt at the company by any means necessary? For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! [email protected] Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Lucas Shaw Producer: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:02.5	It is Monday, July 3rd.
1:05.4	Another week, another blow-up, it seems, were David Zasloff, the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery.
1:12.4	This past week, it was the outrage over Turner Classic Movies, the cable channel that Zazloff and his team gutted, cutting about
1:17.6	two-thirds of its staff and leading to the exit of its leaders. That was after Zazloff professed his
1:23.1	love for the channel and posed for photos with its hosts, when people like Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Martin Scrocese, very
1:29.9	predictably voiced their concern, Zazlov ended up backtracking, restoring some of the budget,
1:35.7	bringing back an executive, and asking the leaders of the Warner Brothers film studio to
1:39.6	take over the network, at least in theory.
1:42.5	A decent save, but here's the thing, financially
1:44.7	speaking, Zasloff wasn't wrong here. TCM is profitable, but it had a staff of 40-something people,
1:51.1	and the trend in the dying cable network business is to consolidate, spend less,
	...

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