HBO, CNN, Warner Bros. TV and 27 cable networks under one roof — and where two people hold the same job, one will go.
Once David Ellison's Paramount Skydance closes its $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Hollywood faces its largest executive reshuffle in years. HBO and HBO Max, CNN, Warner Bros. Television and some 27 linear cable networks move into the Paramount camp at once, leaving the streaming, studio and cable operations with two executives holding each top job.
Jung Han
The root of the coming clash is the cost math of streaming. Competing with Netflix demands both heavy content spending and subscriber scale, and the fastest route to that scale is acquisition. The bill is debt: the deal saddles Paramount with $79 billion in borrowings, a figure that has cooled Wall Street on the transaction. Ellison has already pledged $6 billion in savings, and the quickest way to find them is to eliminate duplicate divisions and the executives who run them. Drawing on interviews with 10 industry insiders, U.S. trade outlet The Ankler maps where that pressure will surface across three fronts.