Leave it to Warner Bros. Discovery to brag that it saved $100 million due to the strikes
The company is still operating at a loss, but now it's slightly less of a loss since they're not paying actors or writers
Aux News Warner Bros. Discovery
David Zaslav’s run as the head of Warner Bros. Discovery has seemingly been driven by one guiding principal: Art is bad and money is good. Blame for the recent trend of studios deleting original content from their streaming services to save money can be placed directly at his feet, as can the dopey HBO Max rebrand and the dilution of the priceless HBO label with trashy Discovery reality show stuff. Plus, as the CEO of WBD, he’s part of the AMPTP—the organization that the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are currently striking against—meaning he’s partially responsible for the shutdown of the whole entertainment industry.
So it’s not particularly surprising that Warner Bros. Discovery thought it was a good idea to frame its Q2 earnings report—where the company lost $1.24 billion, via Variety, which is up from losing $3.42 billion at this time last year—with the following silver lining: They saved $100 million thanks to the strikes! And it’s only going to get better if the strikes go on through the end of the year! Since they’re not spending money making anything or paying the artists who make it for them, any cash that’s coming in can be used for other things, which is… good?
It’s lousy optics, especially coming from this company, but Zaslav did at least hop onto the earnings call (as reported by Variety) to repeatedly insist that WBD is “in the business of storytelling” and that they can’t do that “without the writers, directors, editors, producers, actors, the whole below-the-line crew.” He also added that it’s the company’s job “to enable and empower them to do their best work” and that he hopes “these strikes get resolved in a way that the writers and actors feel they are fairly compensated and their efforts and contributions are fully valued.” Oddly, Variety doesn’t say whether or not Zaslav was wearing a hot dog suit or driving a hot dog car while saying that.
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Hey, if WBD is looking to save a little more money by not paying people, I’ve got one doozy of a suggestionhttps://deadline.com/2023/05/warner-bros-discovery-shareholder-david-zaslav-compensation-pay-1235362635/
Fire some never working ‘executives’ and really start saving money.
Set fire to executives, you say? On it!
This dude and Elon are in a never-ending slapfight to determine the most awful person in the world.
Most top level executives are this way. They are useless.
This is the same reasoning as people who complain about paying Capital Gains Taxes. It is amazing how often I have to remind people that taxes on gains are better than tax breaks on losses.
But I’m getting slightly less money that I earned for having done no work!
Blame for the recent trend of studios deleting original content from their streaming services to save money can be placed directly at his feet, as can the dopey HBO Max rebrand and the dilution of the priceless HBO label with trashy Discovery reality show stuff.Er… if they removed hbo from hbo Max, I’m not sure how adding trashy Discovery reality show stuff to _ Max dilutes the hbo brand.
They can save even more by closing up shop entirely. No inventory! No overhead! And they pass the savings on to you!
What a Bargain!
Sure they are saving money in the short term, good news everyone!, but in the long term they will have a period where they don’t have movies to put in theaters or new shows to license or stream themselves, bad news everyone!. So these “savings” are really just an illusion because it will come back to bite them in their bottom line later.
They could just shoot feature length episodes of Discovery “reality” shows and release them to theatres. Think about it, ”Ice Road Truckers, The IMAX Experience”.
‘”They could just shoot feature length episodes of Discovery “reality” shows and release them to theatres. Think about it, ”Ice Road Truckers, The IMAX Experience”.”’You have heard about the new reality show stat union that Bethany Frankel’s forming right?
If nothing else, they are looking at Pandemic incomes and are willing to take that ride again. The subscribers are still paying and the payroll keeps shrinking… It’s Machiavellian and I would give them credit if I thought they didn’t just fumble into it!
“Good news everyone, I paid off the money we owe to that Paul guy! But just a heads up, Peter’s gonna be really mad at us for a little while.”
And when AI takes over completely they’ll save Billions!
And on the wrestling board(s) they are still all hoping for WBD to pay AEW a “billion” dollars. Sigh….Seriously fuck these evil fucker at WBD.
“Oddly, Variety doesn’t say whether or not Zaslav was wearing a hot dog suit or driving a hot dog car while saying that.”I best Zaslav is the kind of guy to try starting a pay it forward chain at a fast-food drive-through window and then race around to order 55 burgers, 55 fries, 55 tacos, 55 pies, 55 cokes, 110 tater tots, 100 pizzas, 100 tenders, 100 meatballs, 100 coffees, 55 wings, 55 shakes, 55 pancakes, 55 pasta, 55 peppers and 155 taters.
‘”They saved $100 million thanks to the strikes! And it’s only going to get better if the strikes go on through the end of the year! Since they’re not spending money making anything or paying the artists who make it for them, any cash that’s coming in can be used for other things, which is… good?”’What they should do is put whatever perceived savings they’ve got as a result into a savings account, instead of just sitting on it. That way whenever the strike is over they’ll have more money on hand to pay the higher Residuals AND (before paying said residuals) they can boast about their net income growth (as a result of said savings interest) course they’d need it to last a whole nother year to do that. If not they should just pay the actors/actresses now. Either way at some point you’ve got to pay the piper.