Word from Burbank and New York during these especially dog-ish days of August is that Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav has been huddling with his C.F.O., Gunnar Wiedenfels, and other advisors to try to figure out their next steps. The recent quarter’s financials were scary—scary even for Hollywood in 2024—with that $9 billion write-down of the television assets, revenue declining 6.2 percent across all its units, and the “irreparable harm” the company says is coming from losing its most important TV franchise: the NBA. With subscribers and advertisers permanently abandoning linear TV, and a credit downgrade by S&P Global from “stable” to “negative,” there are few signs of light at the end of this two-and-a-half-year Warner Discovery tunnel.

So, what should an embattled and comically overpaid media C.E.O. do? On the heels of that BofA Securities report suggesting drastic measures were needed to save WBD, the Financial Times revealed in July that Zaslav was considering breaking up the company into separate entities—one built around the linear TV assets and a significant amount of WBD’s $39 billion in debt (bad); and the other a growing studios/streaming business (presumably good). But if that was a trial balloon, it didn’t float. Internally, many quickly tamped down those suggestions, saying they would tie the company’s hands on strategic decision-making and create a logistical nightmare. The whole “one Warner Bros. Discovery” argument, in Zaz-speak. And after a temporary stock jolt, the investor community agreed. “We think debtholder concerns and dis-synergies are limiting breakup enthusiasm for now,” Steven Cahall, the Wells Fargo analyst, wrote in a note this month. In a follow-up story, sources also told the FT that the split was considered only as a “nuclear option.”