Warner Bros. Discovery Is Splitting Up. What's Next?

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss the long-awaited breakup of Warner Bros. Discovery, and break down what these two new companies will consist of. They look at why this happened now, what this means for HBO Max and CNN, and who is the most likely buyer for each spun-off company (02:56). Matt finishes the show with a prediction about Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Justin Baldoni (25:10). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thetown@spotify.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Lucas Shaw Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:04.9	AI. It is Monday, June 9th. It's finally happening. The long-awaited breakup of Warner Brothers
1:12.7	Discovery was announced this morning. We've been talking about this for months. Our guy,
1:16.5	David Zazlov, the CEO, and the investor John Malone. They put WarnerMedia and Discovery
1:21.2	communications together back in 2022 with the thesis that they would be stronger together,
1:26.4	would create a super streaming service called Max that would rival Netflix
1:30.4	and allow the company to rise above the $55 billion in debt that it would be saddled with.
1:36.8	Now, forget that.
	...

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