• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

Zaz, Licht & The Media Hot Seat

David Zaslav and Warner Discovery have bigger problems than CNN, namely the worsening decline of the linear TV ecosystem. But Chris Licht’s trainwreck demise suggests that Zaz is still learning on the job, too.

Before David Zaslav took over WBD, his friend Brian Roberts, C.E.O. of Comcast, warned him that the news division would suck up far more oxygen than its business might suggest. Photo: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
June 9, 2023

The Warner Bros. Discovery share price popped a bit this week, did you notice? Don’t get too excited. WBD is hardly catching up to Netflix, which has shot up from less than $300 to more than $400 per share this year. But for a company whose stock started the year at $9.50 per share, way down from the $24 and change where it was trading in April 2022, when David Zaslav took over as C.E.O. of the spun-off and combined company, a little 7 percent uptick today, to $14, isn’t nothing.