, which has positioned itself as a top-tier streamer after two years of operation, has found itself at the center of all sorts of wild speculation for the past couple of months — from a supposed shutdown and folding into Discovery+ to a buying freeze and dramatic cull of its development slate.
There have been a handful of layoffs so far — along with high-profile executive departures like Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff and Warner Bros. President of Global Kids, Young Adults and Classic Tom Ascheim — in the first three months since the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger was completed, but the majority of cuts are expected to start in August and wrap by Thanksgiving. Thousands of workers are expected to be affected as the company deals with a “bigger mess” than initially expected.
WBD has already made cuts in its sales division, led by Jon Steinlauf, with around 1,000 roles, or 30% of that workforce, axed. Sales remains a primary target for cuts, with marketing, distribution and engineering also rumored to be among the areas impacted the most as the company looks to eliminate redundancies. While most post-merger departures so far have been WarnerMedia employees, rumor is that layoffs on the Discovery side may come first this time.
A major restructuring at WarnerMedia was a defining moment of AT&T’s troubled stewardship of the company. Longtime silos between divisions were removed and a large roster of seasoned execs walked out the door. The joining together of two media companies in WarnerMedia and Discovery, each with cable TV portfolios, production operations and a streaming platform, has created different challenges.
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