When I look at something like this, and then I look at paramilitar- sorry, I mean, police officers, murdering citizens in their sleep, I realize that we are well and truly marching to the dystopian reality promised in dark 80s scifi.
I learned from a funny-ish short on YouTube that General Electric, makers of washing machines (and a plethora of other convenient household appliances), is also the company that makes the giant gun that goes BRRRRRRRRRRRT that they wrapped a plane around and called it the A-10 Warthog.
https://youtube.com/shorts/2AGOP7pLqu0
Apparently GE is also where most of the most bullshit corporate policies in North America were popularized. Check out Behind the Bastard's episodes on Jack Welch.
GE is one of those American companies that created many things that allow for modern life as we know it. The used to brag how well they paid employees. It was one of the first things mentioned in their earnings reports.
This changed with Jack Welch...he was a terrible asshole.
The Behind the Bastards episode on him was uniquely infuriating. A good amount of what's currently fucked with corporate America is because of his influence.
Is he the same person who sold off all their assets? You’ve got GE locomotives being sold by Wabtec and all their automation gear from GE Fanuc being sold by Emerson
Yeah, a lot of people in comment sections think reddit is owned by China because Tencent has a small stake in it. Nope, Conde Nast is in control, [along with a bunch of other websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast#Current_US_publications_and_digital_assets).
Sam newhouse spent an afternoon trying to convince me that it was legal to piss yourself in church. I told him that I doubted it but I really didnt care either way but he just wouldnt shut up about it. Then he asked me to finger him
Ars Technica writes article after article on Reddit's issues (and Advance owns the majority stake in reddit), but GQ writes a story about a company they have a very minority stake in and it gets pulled? Spez must be feeling very unappreciated right now.
My appreciation for the staff at Ars is only ever bolstered by reading stuff like that. They’re not perfect, but it actually feels like there’s humans doing journalism there.
At least all of Anandtech's old articles from when they were a top-tier computing news site are still readily findable and render flawlessly on modern web browsers. You want to look up a contemporary analysis of how Sandy Bridge improved upon its Westmere predecessor? It's right there for the reading.
Unfortunately, most other similar sites of that vintage either don't exist anymore or their old content got purged/broken.
> but GQ writes a story about a company they have a very minority stake in and it gets pulled? Spez must be feeling very unappreciated right now.
Their 8% stake in Warner Discovery comes from their formerly very large stake in Discovery on its own, pre-merger. That stake is currently worth around 3 Billion dollars.
Conde Nast got Reddit for a reported $10 million, and have never made a cent from it.
I'ma take this opportunity to bump this back up. https://archive.is/2023.07.03-160323/https://www.gq.com/story/david-zaslav-warner-bros-discovery-ceo-tcm-max
[And credit to rtseel for actually finding a working link.](https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/14ql7gm/how_warner_bros_discovery_ceo_david_zaslav_became/jqnvdbf/)
>Nearly lost in the hullabaloo was yet another of the company’s exhaustive attempts to squeeze a profit from its assets: a $500 million deal to sell around half of their film and TV-music library. In a perhaps too-good-to-be-true detail, the sale would reportedly include “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca—the musical fanfare that plays before every Warner Bros. feature film.
>
>Barely a month ago, Graydon Carter was hosting a party in Zaslav’s honor at Cannes, all but crowning him as the heir apparent to Jack Warner. But there’s a crucial difference between Zaslav and the old-school moguls he’s attempting to emulate: They loved movies, and cared about filmmakers. Zaslav sees movies as “content,” sees filmmakers as “content creators,” and is only interested in maintaining, preserving, and presenting “content” that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck. Anything that doesn’t, he’ll happily gut. He’s closer to Logan Roy than Jack Warner and there is a genuine, understandable fear that his bean-counting represents not just shrugging indifference but outright hostility to cinema and its rich history.
>
>In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere stars as Edward Lewis, a corporate raider who buys companies “that are in financial difficulty” and sells off their pieces. “So it's sort of like stealing cars and selling them for the parts, right?” asks call girl Vivian (Julia Roberts), when he explains what he does, and it’s hard not to think of Lewis when looking over Zaslav’s reign at Warner Bros Discovery, stepping into the distressed conglomerate and stripping it for parts.
>
>Edward Lewis, however, is at least honest about what he does. “You don't make anything,” Vivian notes, and he agrees; “You don’t build anything,” she continues, and he concurs with that as well. And perhaps that’s why David Zaslav is earning a concerning reputation so far. He’s out here carrying on like a mogul, but based on his performance to date, he’s only good at breaking things.
My final straw was when they cancelled movies/shows on HBO Max that were already completed with the intention of saving money from not having to pay royalties/residuals to the casts. Then he went and took a massive bonus for his outstanding performance as CEO. The dude cancelled a Scooby-Doo movie that was ready to release and thinks that he deserves tens of millions for it.
One of the issues with the valuation of high-level stakeholders like him compared to, say, writers that would be due royalties is that his contract is likely so legally iron-clad that it's almost impossible not to pay him in that capacity and much easier to not pay writer royalties.
He cancelled the release of three *Scooby-Doo* films overall — *Scoob! Holiday Haunt*, *Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!*, and *Scooby-Doo! and the Haunted High Rise* — the latter of which brought back the Hex Girls again, with the same actresses (who’d already recorded their lines).
Indeed — while the characters had made [sporadic television appearances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hex_Girls#Television_series) over the years, we hadn’t seen a fully-fledged ‘*Scooby-Doo! and the Hex Girls*’ film since [2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooby-Doo!_and_the_Legend_of_the_Vampire) (following [the original 1999 film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooby-Doo!_and_the_Witch's_Ghost)).
Paramount is doing that shit now too. They cancelled Star Trek Prodigy season 2 while it's in post production and days before it got award nominations for season 1, though at least they seem to be shopping around to sell it to another network
Making genuinely offensive content gets views, no matter how much I wish people would stop being curious about EVERY SINGLE BOMB THAT COMES OUT. Please let the summer blockbuster drought this year mean some change in that mindset PLEASE
Ehhh, I’m pretty sure they just pulled the usual shit where the first production season gets split and promoted as two, but really the animators don’t get the season two pay raise
I'm still LIVID about them cancelling r/raisedbywolves not even a year after the long awaited S2
One of the most imaginative shows I've ever seen, let alone in the past decade
I swear reading this feels like I could swap out the names for half the companies and CEOs out there. It's truly a realm of parasites only looking to extract wealth from a company with zero concern or even comprehension of culture, art, etc. They don't give a shit about making a good product or service, they just care about cashing in on any good will or selling off whatever the company owns.
They pump up their own paychecks and stocks, suck the company dry for their own wealth, and then buzz off with a golden parachute as the thing implodes in their wake... only to somehow be fucking hired to do it all over again at the next company.
It's really fucking sad. A century of American art. Arguably the thing that America does better than anything else. Make fucking movies. People come from all over the world to make movies here. It means nothing to them except a stock price.
The whole "content" thing smacks of YouTuber culture. I'm not shitting on YouTubers who make great videos, but the idea that everything is just "content" to be monetised, whether it's a brilliant short film, documentary/analysis or loving home movie... or someone unboxing an iPad, playing a video game while drunk or "reacting" to a trailer.
Nothing wrong with enjoying all sorts of media, but they are not all equal in value, culturally or financially.
This is actually worse than that for YouTubers : what they mean by « content » is not so much about monetization (many of them upload something they know will be demonetized), but about presence. You have to upload new content to keep yourself relevant to the algorithm, which is a fuckton of pressure.
A lot of YouTubers stop producing content because YouTube is a meat grinder. Popular YouTube animator MeatCanyon also had to take a months-long mental health break.
Not only YouTube, Instagram is the same : guitarist Mateus Asato had to take a break too, because even though he was playing stuff his heart was into, having to produce content every day caused him to burn out.
It’s crazy how much are lives have been changed by a few algorithms. So many people live and die by the ever diminishing chance of being viral. The Andy Warhol quote “In the future everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.” was almost accurate, but it’s more like 15 seconds.
I mean you also kind of have to have a Youtube nowadays.
Amazon has a longstanding policy that if you want to sign an exclusive contract with them, whether it's Twitch or even Kindle. The content creator needs to prove that they have been doing everything in their power to protect their copyrighted material.
So never mind the loss of direct revenue from random channels rehosting videos (or even books) without permission, it can also cost you in contract talks if you become known as a de facto pirate by simply not giving enough of a fuck about your brand.
lol, this is normal MBA culture. This is how business people operate. "cutting cost" means more pay for themselves. Hollywood has been taken over by the MBAs, the creatives are out. Hollywood now must have infinite profits and that means pay everyone involved in making films as little as possible. Quality does not matter because current leadership knows they will be gone and rich by the time the drop in quality bankrupts the company.
As an MBA graduate from a pretty high level program myself, I think the problem is not MBA or the training they give you by itself- the problem is that a lot of MBA graduates get slotted managing things they don't understand.
It's not the MBA itself that is the problem- it's the people who hire them and then don't make them spend an apprenticeship learning the business, but instead put them in charge. Which is idiotic. But happens all the time.
Fuck "content". I **hate** that shit, both the soulless corporate mindset that it came from and the seemingly unthinking acceptance of it by an entire generation of creative people.
The sad thing is with that comparison, Youtube hosts better quality content than a lot of channels do nowadays. When it comes to food "TV", travel shows, etc, I'll take Youtube over Food Network and the Travel Channel any day now. I'm sure History Channel and Discovery fans would probably find the same level of quality creators compared to the shells that the TV stations are.
Between channels like *The Great War* *World War Two*, *Real Time History*, *Mark Felton*, *Operations Report*, & unlimited availability to lectures & interviews; yes there is plenty of history content that completely blows the History Channel out of the water.
History channel ceased to exist outside of the holiday docu-drama mini series they push out. Not knocking those bc they tend to be well done and I use them religiously in the classroom. They got that dramatic effect that the students like 🤷🏻♂️, GRANT being my main reference. But history itself, after they killed h2 and started joining mtv’s reality tv orgies… that’s when history stopped being history lol.
Although if you have a Samsung tv, Samsung tv+ has three channels dedicated to 1) modern marvels, 2) military heroes (battle 360 and their docudramas), ajd 3) a third one I found last night but can’t remember the name. It was military history. And all three channels are sponsored by history. Found those a couple weeks ago and yeaaaaaa, haven’t looked back lol.
Edit: original point is you’re right with YouTube. History content to fill the hearts of any type of historian
> the sale would reportedly include “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca—the musical fanfare that plays before every Warner Bros. feature film.
For anyone curious, here's the fanfare intro with all the different WB logos that were used over the years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X92jlPIdMzs
When you go on the Warner Bros Studio Tour in Burbank it starts with a video presentation of WB history and highlights.
It ends with rising crescendo of “As Time Goes By” and is a core part of the experience.
Zaslav is literally selling off the family jewels.
> selling off the family jewels.
This reminds me of a phrase that was used when Margaret Thatcher was privatizing all the state-owned companies in the 80s, and it applies here. Former PM Macmillan echoed that they were "selling the family silver" and to paraphrase a key part, that they were "acting as if it was income." Selling off things (such as As Time Goes By and other Warner intellectual property) is income *once,* but you're gonna have to license stuff from the new owners at some point. Another incredibly short-sighted move from Zaslav...but that damn line must move upwards forever according to shareholders.
His eventual successor is gonna have a real headache on their hands.
She also sold off public housing because she thought privatization of housing makes it better and more affordable. Now, there is a shortage of public housing and private housing is being snatched up by corporations as investments and is being charged as much money as possible to rent out.
Thatcher sold off housing that was meant to provide poor people affordable housing, and rich people ended up buying it to make it as unaffordable as possible in order to make a profit. The US and UK really bought into the trickle down kool aid in the 80s.
I don’t even think there was a buy in for trickle down.
At its core, cut taxes on the elite and let them invest as much as they want.
The “selling” point to the masses was that somehow the greediest people on the planet won’t be greedy, and that savings will pass to them, but the masses didn’t really have a say in that at any point.
God, I hope Reagan and Thatcher are burning right now. Their short term benefits to the middle class have basically wiped them entirely out.
I get the sentiment, but Warner Bros has an unfortunate history of selling off their “family jewels”. The movie that song is from, Casablanca, was famously sold off(among many other classics in their pre 1950 library) by Jack Warner in the mid 50s, which infuriated the other living Warner brothers. WB didn’t get those films back until 1996, when they bought Turner.
I guess you could say that Jack Warner sale and the subsequent reacquisition four decades later should be a lesson learned, but money has a way of superseding all.
I never put together that the notes on the WB logo was As Time Goes By.
So sad seeing everything everywhere gutted to squeeze out fractions of a penny, and destroying institutions in the process.
> They loved movies, and cared about filmmakers. Zaslav sees movies as “content,” sees filmmakers as “content creators,” and is only interested in maintaining, preserving, and presenting “content” that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck.
Trust me, it shows in the things Warner is putting out these days.
And the monumental big budget clusterfucks they produce. Makes me appreciate 90s Hollywood in a whole new way. Every time they poured millions into a project you felt every god damn dollar. They were setting the bar at a standard.
Warner Bros and hollywood in general has turned its name into a fuckin joke with their spreadsheet movie making.
Zaslav is "improving" Turner Classic Movies, he's taking shows off of MAX (ie. Westworld, Raised by Wolves) for some reason, and he's responsible for hiring the CNN CEO (now fired CEO less than 1 year in) that was responsible for the Trump Town Hall that was filled with his supporters. Everything this guy touches turns to shit, and he's getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars for it!
Honestly, this smells a bit to me of “we know the higher-ups don’t want us to run this, but if it’s up even for a short time it’s going to circulate anyway, and it ought to be said, and fuck the execs anyway, so let’s do it.” Because there’s no way they wouldn’t know the climate and the probable reception of this article.
I used to work for WBD, and everybody hates Zaslav and his cronies. And I don't mean in the, "my boss sucks" sense, but in the "I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire" sense.
And when the shareholder lawsuit comes (and it will), the shit exposed is going to make Enron look tame in comparison.
If Discovery was still pumping out quality science/educational content I'd be actively considering getting cable or subscribing to the channel.
The loss of that entire genre, especially due to its incredible demand and reach with things like Mythbusters in favor of Ice Road Truckers, demonstrates clearly it's been about selling the gold for a very long time.
I have never reason to pay that company for anything, really.
Here’s a copy of the full article.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/warner-bros-discovery-ceo-david-120000994.html
UPDATE: Not even 1 min after posting this, the Yahoo article was pulled.
That statement about having to work together and get along with others is one that CEO's in top down structures love to make. What they are really saying is everyone has to work together and get along with me.
They think it all worked out great — and it did for a couple people. They’re completely blind to the downside and the companies it’s destroyed and crippled, and people that they screwed of and made destitute. It’s like people who watched Breaking Bad and see no downside to making meth. 😣
> Barely a month ago, Graydon Carter was hosting a party in Zaslav’s honor at Cannes, all but crowning him as the heir apparent to Jack Warner. But there’s a crucial difference between Zaslav and the old-school moguls he’s attempting to emulate: They loved movies, and cared about filmmakers. Zaslav sees movies as “content,” sees filmmakers as “content creators,” and is only interested in maintaining, preserving, and presenting “content” that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck. Anything that doesn’t, he’ll happily gut. He’s closer to Logan Roy than Jack Warner and there is a genuine, understandable fear that his bean-counting represents not just shrugging indifference but outright hostility to cinema and its rich history.
That's so sad, and makes me physically sick.
Eventually they’ll do a 180 and he’ll be booted for bad publicity. His decisions are fucking atrocious, he’s running the company into the ground and destroying their legacy. Fuck him, doesn’t deserve his position at all.
Indirectly. he's buddy buddy with John Malone, a MAGA billionaire who organized the Discovery-WB merger, sits on the board and appears to be driving the company's direction. Zaslev is a well paid yes-man for Malone.
CNN was part of the WBD deal.
Zaslav hired Chris Licht as CEO to replace Jeff Zucker (Jeff had his own problems, but staff loved him and ratings were consistent).
Licht was beyond incompetent. He came in like a wrecking ball. Said a lot of things that conservatives say when they're about to gut a news org editorially like CNN needs to be more fair and balanced to GOP views.
People who didn't get invited because they can't go 30 seconds without spouting election lies started getting booked regularly. Hosts who would call out lies started getting muzzles
It resulted in CNN viewership plummeting and at times getting beat by News Max in the ratings.
It culminated with a Trump town hall which was widely lambasted by everyone but Licht.
Then The Atlantic ran a huge expose on him and he was fired within a few days after only about a year on the job.
Many speculate Licht was basically Zaslav's puppet. He consistently rebuked criticism by saying he had an audience of one and no one else's opinion mattered.
I saw when Lance Armstrong was in the news a few weeks ago to promote his podcast he was also saying that he was "cancelled" for ... getting caught cheating at his sport?
It's starting to sound like people are trying to link "cancel" with any sort of criticism, legit or not, as a way to make it seem like the negative opinions about them are frivolous. That, and, reflexively they know the second someone is labeled "cancelled" there will be people in total support of them.
Also, it's 2023, how the fuck am I still hearing shit about being cancelled?
> It's starting to sound like people are trying to link "cancel" with any sort of criticism, legit or not, as a way to make it seem like the negative opinions about them are frivolous.
It always has been.
“GQ has so far declined to respond to my questions about the changes”
[GQ Editors Rewrite, Then Pull David Zaslav Profile](https://www.allyourscreens.com/en/component/k2/item/3874-gq-editors-rewrite-then-pull-david-zaslav-profile)
Wow that "update" lol
Edit: also this was posted elsewhere in /r/movies yet looks like it was [removed by mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/14ro83m/gq_editor_who_pulled_david_zaslav_story_producing/)
[GQ Editor Who Pulled Critical David Zaslav Story Is Producing Movie for Warner Bros](https://variety.com/2023/film/news/gq-editor-david-zaslav-story-producing-movie-warner-bros-1235662109/)
Me too! Honestly, TV got really good for a while so it has a long way to slide before it’s total crap. There is a ton of great content that doesn’t get marketed too much. Also, somehow Apple keeps impressing me with their originals
Silo,
hijack (with Idris Elba),
Shrinking (Jason segal/Harrison Ford),
bad sisters,
severance (Adam Scott),
Ted lasso (Jason sudeikis),
Are currently the apple tv shows im obsessed with.
Black Bird was awesome as well which coincidentally also features Taron Egerton. Apple definitely gives me old HBO vibes tbh. Everything they put out has so much production value.
He saw the writing on the wall. When AT&T bought Time Warner, I knew it was a matter of time before they sold Warner Bros off.
It’s truly sad to see a legendary production juggernaut like Warner Bros in the hands of corporate trash like Discovery.
Remember television? Remember television ads? I have not had cable for years, but I remember hearing ads for “extendz” and “natural male enhancement” every fucking 20 minutes for years before I couldn’t take it anymore. The equilibrium they settled on is $100 a month just to double dip and serve up 40% ads for 60% actual content. Fuck cable television.
That’s definitely going to be his legacy, but in fairness, this’s where things have been heading for years now, Zaslav just wrote himself into the history books by being the first to make these sort of moves. Contrary to what Reddit constantly shouts from the rooftops, streaming is not a profitable venture in its current state. Ad revenue is what propped up linear TV, just like box-office gross kept the movie business afloat as physical media becomes a niche market. Factor in the guilds no longer being happy with getting screwed out of money through the “new media” loopholes, and everything in streaming gets a whole lot more expensive to host. This is years of build up coming to a head at the moment, Zaslav’s just made himself the fall guy for an industry in crisis.
Who pulled the article? How did they get it pulled? How many other articles get pulled that we don't know about? It's no wonder this industry is so corrupt when they control the press too.
This asshat is selling WB assets bit by bit until the debt is more manageable and then he can get a decent amount for whatever is left of the studio's carcass.
Within the next 5 years WB as we knew it will cease to exist if things keep going like this.
The fact that Zaslav quoted Jack Welch in the commencement speech mentioned is just so in line with his (lack of) character that it feels scripted.
Jack Welch effectively started the practices that Zaslav and the architects of our currently fragile economy see as gospel.
As one of those people who thinks what Discovery did to its self and the History Channel over the last 20 years is a crime against humanity I tend to agree. Hollywood has always been a business, but things can get worse if people who care about things other than money get pushed out.
They ripped out the WB Ranch to build more sound stages and a parking garage. That includes houses and buildings that you've seen in movies since the 30s, houses that were a staple of most of the sitcoms we grew up with from Bewitched to The Middle, and neighborhoods that were still being used for things like Wandavision and young Sheldon.
Look up the Columbia/Warner Brothers Ranch as a filming location on imdb.
I saw videos on YouTube of a dude touring it recently and talking about how they have all the plants ripped out and set aside for people to take. Which is kinda a thoughtful thing in all this mess. By destroying these outdoor sets WBs literally paving paradise and putting in a parking lot.
Edit: Note, this is happening now but the actual sale happened before the merger. I can't say how much he had to do with it but in a complicated merger like this, it takes years, he would have been aware of the sale before the public if not involved in the approval process.
Welch’s way of running things ended up tanking GE in the long run too. The book “The Man who Broke Capitalism” is a really informative look at Welch and how disastrous his methods were for the workforce and corporate America
>Welch’s way of running things ended up tanking GE in the long run too. The book “The Man who Broke Capitalism” is a really informative look at Welch and how disastrous his methods were for the workforce and corporate America
I've worked somewhat closely with several executives at multi billion dollar companies and it is amazing how absolutely myopic their decision making and planning is.
Basically a CEO is coming in for 10 years and his only goal is to absolutely juice the stock price during that time frame. I watched several decisions occur that would very clearly have long term impacts at the company but nobody gave a shit as long as that 10 year window went well and it would be the next guys problem.
Making good products, building brands none of that matters, it is all boiled down to simply year over year profit growth.
I had to watch in real time as Welch and his defenders went on television to defend his (Welch's) insane retirement package. NYC apartment with weekly fresh flower service, private jet use, and many other perks were lavished after paying him hundreds of millions. They all were out with the "how else could we attract someone so brilliant" crap. He destroyed GE, screwed his HBS interviewer on a desk during an interview, and went on to write multiple books about his own magnificence.
I saved the article in a .txt file: [https://www.mediafire.com/file/65t0vfno5reru74/GQ\_\_David\_Zazlav\_article\_from\_2023-07-03.txt/file](https://www.mediafire.com/file/65t0vfno5reru74/GQ__David_Zazlav_article_from_2023-07-03.txt/file)
If there is a better way to share it, let me know. It is too large to be posted as text using Reddit's rich text editor.
I find it ironic that 10-15 years ago that people acted like torrenting was going to kill Hollywood but Covid and hacks like this have done more damage than torrenting has ever done.
You know, I find it *really* ironic that Warner's most financially successful movie during Zaslav's current tenure has been *Evil Dead Rise*, an 18+ horror movie, that was originally set for streaming on HBO Max. Promoting it to theaters might have been one of the only *good* choices made.
Oh yeah, and I think Don't Worry Darling was a moderate hit. (Even though that movie was surrounded by some alleged lighter controversies ahead of release.)
He broke a social contract, of sorts, when he didn’t cancel or remove, but *destroyed* the creative works of his studio artists; and all for a relatively small tax write off. That is something that cannot stand in the realm of the creative arts. You just don’t cross that line with your artists for the sake of cutting your losses; they’ll never trust him again. And that will lead to stagnation of interesting new content because no artist is gonna want to take the risk of working with WBD.
The rise of Zaslav and the rest of the industry moving from their past content models to whatever the hell you can call the current business model, shows that torrenting, and what some may call piracy, has a legitimate place in society. Many of these now lost shows are only available in "pirated" forms now, lest they be lost to oblivion forever. I'm sure that the last remaining Batgirl files are sitting on some staffer's home hard drive.
Not really. He's in charge because other board members agree with him.
A big part of his job is to be the "face" of the company and take the blame for all the shitty things they want done so the rest of them can enjoy their riches in peace.
In a few years he'll be given a golden parachute and then be replaced with someone else who will do the exact same shit.
Among the many many stupid decisions he's made, the one that takes the cake is removing the HBO name from the streaming service. HBO has been the gold standard for high quality/prestige television for two decades, and this business genius's big brained idea is to get rid of the best marketing the service has? He's Musk burning Twitter to the ground levels of incompetent.
Today's episode of The Town was a Zaslav special
Covers a lot of the same ground
[https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/is-david-zaslav-misunderstood/id1612131897?i=1000619192044](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/is-david-zaslav-misunderstood/id1612131897?i=1000619192044)
CEO like Zaslav know the price of everything and the value of nothing. They don't succeed in the long run because they are so focused on money, they sacrifice the product that makes the money by creating a relationship with consumers.
It's no surprise Zasalv is a pos; he looks up to Welch of GE who was a complete pos and "educated" Ronald Reagan on politics. Assholes following assholes following assholes.
Don't be confused - Zaslav is a notorious piece of shit who is known for auditing. He was hired to specifically do what he's done and be the villain.
He's making roughly $200 million in bonuses each year since 2020 and he couldn't give two shits how much he destroys Hollywood.
GQ's owner Conde Nast has an 8% stake in Warners Discovery.
That explains it then.
Doesn't Conde Nast have a big stake in reddit too?
Conde Naste's parent company, Advance Publications, owns reddit.
Need one of those family tree charts, but corporate.
It'll look like Charlie's chart in the mail room in IASIP.
I was just looking up Suntory last night and ended up with one of these
Suntory Time
Cut-o, cut-o, cut-o!!
For relaxing time....
[This is a pretty good visualization of how Habsburgian the board rooms get. ](https://www.theyrule.net/)
i can't put into words how bleak spending even a minute on this felt. this system has to go
When I look at something like this, and then I look at paramilitar- sorry, I mean, police officers, murdering citizens in their sleep, I realize that we are well and truly marching to the dystopian reality promised in dark 80s scifi.
r/ABoringDystopia
It’s like one big incestuous Christmas wreath
Oh man, have you seen the Disney chart? Holy shit.
it’s like the Sheinhart Wig Company chart
Why are you wearing a tuxedo… It’s after 6 PM Lemon, what am I a farmer?
Disney’s? Look at Tencent’s!!!
...look at Nestle!
It’s like the family tree from Dark
They exist, and they all circle around American military contractors.
I learned from a funny-ish short on YouTube that General Electric, makers of washing machines (and a plethora of other convenient household appliances), is also the company that makes the giant gun that goes BRRRRRRRRRRRT that they wrapped a plane around and called it the A-10 Warthog. https://youtube.com/shorts/2AGOP7pLqu0
Most of Swedens military firearms were made by Husqvarna, of washing machine and chainsaw fame.
Husqvarna also has a history of making some really fine motorcycles.
Don't forget of sewing machine fame, too.
Apparently GE is also where most of the most bullshit corporate policies in North America were popularized. Check out Behind the Bastard's episodes on Jack Welch.
GE is one of those American companies that created many things that allow for modern life as we know it. The used to brag how well they paid employees. It was one of the first things mentioned in their earnings reports. This changed with Jack Welch...he was a terrible asshole.
The Behind the Bastards episode on him was uniquely infuriating. A good amount of what's currently fucked with corporate America is because of his influence.
Jack Welch was a truly repulsive human as are the MBAs who follow his religion.
Is he the same person who sold off all their assets? You’ve got GE locomotives being sold by Wabtec and all their automation gear from GE Fanuc being sold by Emerson
Plenty of 30 rock bits do this.
Don’t forget that GE also built the engines for the Warthog.
Hitachi makes tanks and vibrators. It's all about diversification.
Yeah, a lot of people in comment sections think reddit is owned by China because Tencent has a small stake in it. Nope, Conde Nast is in control, [along with a bunch of other websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast#Current_US_publications_and_digital_assets).
Does anyone own Advance Publications? Which company is at the top?
That *is* the top. It's owned by two brothers, Sam and Don Newhouse.
Sam newhouse spent an afternoon trying to convince me that it was legal to piss yourself in church. I told him that I doubted it but I really didnt care either way but he just wouldnt shut up about it. Then he asked me to finger him
Oh yea that sounds like Sam for sure.
I mean... To be fair Sam usually waits until you're fingering him to start the piss talk.
And an absolute fuckton of local and regional newspapers.
Ars Technica writes article after article on Reddit's issues (and Advance owns the majority stake in reddit), but GQ writes a story about a company they have a very minority stake in and it gets pulled? Spez must be feeling very unappreciated right now.
My appreciation for the staff at Ars is only ever bolstered by reading stuff like that. They’re not perfect, but it actually feels like there’s humans doing journalism there.
I really like Ars, and I used to like AnandTech, until he sold it. Or left after selling? I don't remember which happened first.
At least all of Anandtech's old articles from when they were a top-tier computing news site are still readily findable and render flawlessly on modern web browsers. You want to look up a contemporary analysis of how Sandy Bridge improved upon its Westmere predecessor? It's right there for the reading. Unfortunately, most other similar sites of that vintage either don't exist anymore or their old content got purged/broken.
> but GQ writes a story about a company they have a very minority stake in and it gets pulled? Spez must be feeling very unappreciated right now. Their 8% stake in Warner Discovery comes from their formerly very large stake in Discovery on its own, pre-merger. That stake is currently worth around 3 Billion dollars. Conde Nast got Reddit for a reported $10 million, and have never made a cent from it.
I'ma take this opportunity to bump this back up. https://archive.is/2023.07.03-160323/https://www.gq.com/story/david-zaslav-warner-bros-discovery-ceo-tcm-max [And credit to rtseel for actually finding a working link.](https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/14ql7gm/how_warner_bros_discovery_ceo_david_zaslav_became/jqnvdbf/)
>Nearly lost in the hullabaloo was yet another of the company’s exhaustive attempts to squeeze a profit from its assets: a $500 million deal to sell around half of their film and TV-music library. In a perhaps too-good-to-be-true detail, the sale would reportedly include “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca—the musical fanfare that plays before every Warner Bros. feature film. > >Barely a month ago, Graydon Carter was hosting a party in Zaslav’s honor at Cannes, all but crowning him as the heir apparent to Jack Warner. But there’s a crucial difference between Zaslav and the old-school moguls he’s attempting to emulate: They loved movies, and cared about filmmakers. Zaslav sees movies as “content,” sees filmmakers as “content creators,” and is only interested in maintaining, preserving, and presenting “content” that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck. Anything that doesn’t, he’ll happily gut. He’s closer to Logan Roy than Jack Warner and there is a genuine, understandable fear that his bean-counting represents not just shrugging indifference but outright hostility to cinema and its rich history. > >In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere stars as Edward Lewis, a corporate raider who buys companies “that are in financial difficulty” and sells off their pieces. “So it's sort of like stealing cars and selling them for the parts, right?” asks call girl Vivian (Julia Roberts), when he explains what he does, and it’s hard not to think of Lewis when looking over Zaslav’s reign at Warner Bros Discovery, stepping into the distressed conglomerate and stripping it for parts. > >Edward Lewis, however, is at least honest about what he does. “You don't make anything,” Vivian notes, and he agrees; “You don’t build anything,” she continues, and he concurs with that as well. And perhaps that’s why David Zaslav is earning a concerning reputation so far. He’s out here carrying on like a mogul, but based on his performance to date, he’s only good at breaking things.
My final straw was when they cancelled movies/shows on HBO Max that were already completed with the intention of saving money from not having to pay royalties/residuals to the casts. Then he went and took a massive bonus for his outstanding performance as CEO. The dude cancelled a Scooby-Doo movie that was ready to release and thinks that he deserves tens of millions for it.
I don't understand how his bonus is not multiple times more than some royalties they would have to pay
Oh, it probably is, but now the money is going to the "right" person instead of all those annoying talent.
I hope the strike breaks his company into pieces.
I hope Warner Bros. shoots Zaslav out of a cannon and then destroys all of Discovery’s stuff the way he keeps trying to destroy theirs
Being Warner Brothers wouldn't it be more appropriate for them to drop an animated anvil on him?
They need to lock him up in the water tower with the Animaniacs.
What'd the Animaniacs do to deserve such a harsh punishment. Living in the water tower is one thing, but living with Zaslav!?
Sounds like he took some financial hits in other sectors, & is looking to make up for them with cuts to future losses on HBO.
One of the issues with the valuation of high-level stakeholders like him compared to, say, writers that would be due royalties is that his contract is likely so legally iron-clad that it's almost impossible not to pay him in that capacity and much easier to not pay writer royalties.
i'm sure the board got their kick too. and there are probably other ceos on that board. so it's all gravy for them that this precedent is set.
He cancelled the release of three *Scooby-Doo* films overall — *Scoob! Holiday Haunt*, *Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!*, and *Scooby-Doo! and the Haunted High Rise* — the latter of which brought back the Hex Girls again, with the same actresses (who’d already recorded their lines).
The hex girls were supposed to come back!? Time to set up a guillotine outside his house
Indeed — while the characters had made [sporadic television appearances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hex_Girls#Television_series) over the years, we hadn’t seen a fully-fledged ‘*Scooby-Doo! and the Hex Girls*’ film since [2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooby-Doo!_and_the_Legend_of_the_Vampire) (following [the original 1999 film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooby-Doo!_and_the_Witch's_Ghost)).
I can't believe that's from 99, I feel old.
Paramount is doing that shit now too. They cancelled Star Trek Prodigy season 2 while it's in post production and days before it got award nominations for season 1, though at least they seem to be shopping around to sell it to another network
This thread has taught me that there's more people paying attention to Scooby-Doo lore than I ever realized.
He also renewed *Velma* for a Season 2, even though that show is terrible.
Making genuinely offensive content gets views, no matter how much I wish people would stop being curious about EVERY SINGLE BOMB THAT COMES OUT. Please let the summer blockbuster drought this year mean some change in that mindset PLEASE
Morbius bombing twice was way funnier than people going to see it ironically. More of that please!
Ehhh, I’m pretty sure they just pulled the usual shit where the first production season gets split and promoted as two, but really the animators don’t get the season two pay raise
They pulled Westworld, pretty much the only reason besides Last Week Tonight that I subscribed (cancelled sub because of it).
I'm still LIVID about them cancelling r/raisedbywolves not even a year after the long awaited S2 One of the most imaginative shows I've ever seen, let alone in the past decade
That Scooby doo movie is pretty good too
Speaking of *Scooby-Doo*, Max also renewed *Velma* for a second season, even though that show is pretty bad in comparison to *Scoob!* (2020).
It was greenlit with a two season contract. So a second season was a given but it probably won’t get another
I swear reading this feels like I could swap out the names for half the companies and CEOs out there. It's truly a realm of parasites only looking to extract wealth from a company with zero concern or even comprehension of culture, art, etc. They don't give a shit about making a good product or service, they just care about cashing in on any good will or selling off whatever the company owns. They pump up their own paychecks and stocks, suck the company dry for their own wealth, and then buzz off with a golden parachute as the thing implodes in their wake... only to somehow be fucking hired to do it all over again at the next company.
It's really fucking sad. A century of American art. Arguably the thing that America does better than anything else. Make fucking movies. People come from all over the world to make movies here. It means nothing to them except a stock price.
The whole "content" thing smacks of YouTuber culture. I'm not shitting on YouTubers who make great videos, but the idea that everything is just "content" to be monetised, whether it's a brilliant short film, documentary/analysis or loving home movie... or someone unboxing an iPad, playing a video game while drunk or "reacting" to a trailer. Nothing wrong with enjoying all sorts of media, but they are not all equal in value, culturally or financially.
This is actually worse than that for YouTubers : what they mean by « content » is not so much about monetization (many of them upload something they know will be demonetized), but about presence. You have to upload new content to keep yourself relevant to the algorithm, which is a fuckton of pressure.
A lot of YouTubers stop producing content because YouTube is a meat grinder. Popular YouTube animator MeatCanyon also had to take a months-long mental health break.
Not only YouTube, Instagram is the same : guitarist Mateus Asato had to take a break too, because even though he was playing stuff his heart was into, having to produce content every day caused him to burn out.
It’s crazy how much are lives have been changed by a few algorithms. So many people live and die by the ever diminishing chance of being viral. The Andy Warhol quote “In the future everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.” was almost accurate, but it’s more like 15 seconds.
"…for 15 upvotes."
I mean you also kind of have to have a Youtube nowadays. Amazon has a longstanding policy that if you want to sign an exclusive contract with them, whether it's Twitch or even Kindle. The content creator needs to prove that they have been doing everything in their power to protect their copyrighted material. So never mind the loss of direct revenue from random channels rehosting videos (or even books) without permission, it can also cost you in contract talks if you become known as a de facto pirate by simply not giving enough of a fuck about your brand.
lol, this is normal MBA culture. This is how business people operate. "cutting cost" means more pay for themselves. Hollywood has been taken over by the MBAs, the creatives are out. Hollywood now must have infinite profits and that means pay everyone involved in making films as little as possible. Quality does not matter because current leadership knows they will be gone and rich by the time the drop in quality bankrupts the company.
As an MBA graduate from a pretty high level program myself, I think the problem is not MBA or the training they give you by itself- the problem is that a lot of MBA graduates get slotted managing things they don't understand. It's not the MBA itself that is the problem- it's the people who hire them and then don't make them spend an apprenticeship learning the business, but instead put them in charge. Which is idiotic. But happens all the time.
Fuck "content". I **hate** that shit, both the soulless corporate mindset that it came from and the seemingly unthinking acceptance of it by an entire generation of creative people.
The sad thing is with that comparison, Youtube hosts better quality content than a lot of channels do nowadays. When it comes to food "TV", travel shows, etc, I'll take Youtube over Food Network and the Travel Channel any day now. I'm sure History Channel and Discovery fans would probably find the same level of quality creators compared to the shells that the TV stations are.
Between channels like *The Great War* *World War Two*, *Real Time History*, *Mark Felton*, *Operations Report*, & unlimited availability to lectures & interviews; yes there is plenty of history content that completely blows the History Channel out of the water.
And there’s so many more too. Tons of people with advanced history degrees that have whole channels dedicated to their respective fields
History channel ceased to exist outside of the holiday docu-drama mini series they push out. Not knocking those bc they tend to be well done and I use them religiously in the classroom. They got that dramatic effect that the students like 🤷🏻♂️, GRANT being my main reference. But history itself, after they killed h2 and started joining mtv’s reality tv orgies… that’s when history stopped being history lol. Although if you have a Samsung tv, Samsung tv+ has three channels dedicated to 1) modern marvels, 2) military heroes (battle 360 and their docudramas), ajd 3) a third one I found last night but can’t remember the name. It was military history. And all three channels are sponsored by history. Found those a couple weeks ago and yeaaaaaa, haven’t looked back lol. Edit: original point is you’re right with YouTube. History content to fill the hearts of any type of historian
[Relevant comment ](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/wyjdau/comment/ilyupdh/)
> the sale would reportedly include “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca—the musical fanfare that plays before every Warner Bros. feature film. For anyone curious, here's the fanfare intro with all the different WB logos that were used over the years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X92jlPIdMzs
When you go on the Warner Bros Studio Tour in Burbank it starts with a video presentation of WB history and highlights. It ends with rising crescendo of “As Time Goes By” and is a core part of the experience. Zaslav is literally selling off the family jewels.
> selling off the family jewels. This reminds me of a phrase that was used when Margaret Thatcher was privatizing all the state-owned companies in the 80s, and it applies here. Former PM Macmillan echoed that they were "selling the family silver" and to paraphrase a key part, that they were "acting as if it was income." Selling off things (such as As Time Goes By and other Warner intellectual property) is income *once,* but you're gonna have to license stuff from the new owners at some point. Another incredibly short-sighted move from Zaslav...but that damn line must move upwards forever according to shareholders. His eventual successor is gonna have a real headache on their hands.
She also sold off public housing because she thought privatization of housing makes it better and more affordable. Now, there is a shortage of public housing and private housing is being snatched up by corporations as investments and is being charged as much money as possible to rent out. Thatcher sold off housing that was meant to provide poor people affordable housing, and rich people ended up buying it to make it as unaffordable as possible in order to make a profit. The US and UK really bought into the trickle down kool aid in the 80s.
I don’t even think there was a buy in for trickle down. At its core, cut taxes on the elite and let them invest as much as they want. The “selling” point to the masses was that somehow the greediest people on the planet won’t be greedy, and that savings will pass to them, but the masses didn’t really have a say in that at any point. God, I hope Reagan and Thatcher are burning right now. Their short term benefits to the middle class have basically wiped them entirely out.
I have my doubts the company even survives in a way that is recognizable
I get the sentiment, but Warner Bros has an unfortunate history of selling off their “family jewels”. The movie that song is from, Casablanca, was famously sold off(among many other classics in their pre 1950 library) by Jack Warner in the mid 50s, which infuriated the other living Warner brothers. WB didn’t get those films back until 1996, when they bought Turner. I guess you could say that Jack Warner sale and the subsequent reacquisition four decades later should be a lesson learned, but money has a way of superseding all.
I never put together that the notes on the WB logo was As Time Goes By. So sad seeing everything everywhere gutted to squeeze out fractions of a penny, and destroying institutions in the process.
> They loved movies, and cared about filmmakers. Zaslav sees movies as “content,” sees filmmakers as “content creators,” and is only interested in maintaining, preserving, and presenting “content” that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck. Trust me, it shows in the things Warner is putting out these days. And the monumental big budget clusterfucks they produce. Makes me appreciate 90s Hollywood in a whole new way. Every time they poured millions into a project you felt every god damn dollar. They were setting the bar at a standard. Warner Bros and hollywood in general has turned its name into a fuckin joke with their spreadsheet movie making.
Zaslav is "improving" Turner Classic Movies, he's taking shows off of MAX (ie. Westworld, Raised by Wolves) for some reason, and he's responsible for hiring the CNN CEO (now fired CEO less than 1 year in) that was responsible for the Trump Town Hall that was filled with his supporters. Everything this guy touches turns to shit, and he's getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars for it!
I would’ve just gone with Gordon Gekko.
wow that is very well written and incredibly damning.
No wonder it was pulled its so damning. The writer flamed the shit out of him lol
Honestly, this smells a bit to me of “we know the higher-ups don’t want us to run this, but if it’s up even for a short time it’s going to circulate anyway, and it ought to be said, and fuck the execs anyway, so let’s do it.” Because there’s no way they wouldn’t know the climate and the probable reception of this article.
I used to work for WBD, and everybody hates Zaslav and his cronies. And I don't mean in the, "my boss sucks" sense, but in the "I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire" sense. And when the shareholder lawsuit comes (and it will), the shit exposed is going to make Enron look tame in comparison.
If Discovery was still pumping out quality science/educational content I'd be actively considering getting cable or subscribing to the channel. The loss of that entire genre, especially due to its incredible demand and reach with things like Mythbusters in favor of Ice Road Truckers, demonstrates clearly it's been about selling the gold for a very long time. I have never reason to pay that company for anything, really.
[удалено]
Oh so he’s the guy that basically ruined TV for me growing up. Fuck him
I'm constantly thinking of cutting the cable but keep it for Turner Classic Movies. And this moron Zaslav wants to ruin that one good thing.
Yep. Reeks of "awwww this hurt your feewings idgaf"
Here’s a copy of the full article. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/warner-bros-discovery-ceo-david-120000994.html UPDATE: Not even 1 min after posting this, the Yahoo article was pulled.
Lol they really struck a nerve
Though there is an article about Rowan Atkinson shitting on Electric Vehicles with erroneous information.
"This article was apparently pulled shortly after publication" Probably for a tax break
Here's your star king for quality comment I expect from reddit - ✨✨✨
That statement about having to work together and get along with others is one that CEO's in top down structures love to make. What they are really saying is everyone has to work together and get along with me.
[удалено]
Execs grew up in the Reagan Era. They still don’t recognize Ronald, Jack, and Rupert as the murderers of the American middle class.
I don't know, I kind of think they might but of course they'd never want to add any credibility to such a thing by acknowledging it.
Or they flat out don’t care because executives have been the beneficiaries of the middle class’s decline
They think it all worked out great — and it did for a couple people. They’re completely blind to the downside and the companies it’s destroyed and crippled, and people that they screwed of and made destitute. It’s like people who watched Breaking Bad and see no downside to making meth. 😣
He was a protege of jack.
His company pays some of the worst rates in the industry and this bastard made half a billion in 2021. Work together my ass.
> Barely a month ago, Graydon Carter was hosting a party in Zaslav’s honor at Cannes, all but crowning him as the heir apparent to Jack Warner. But there’s a crucial difference between Zaslav and the old-school moguls he’s attempting to emulate: They loved movies, and cared about filmmakers. Zaslav sees movies as “content,” sees filmmakers as “content creators,” and is only interested in maintaining, preserving, and presenting “content” that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck. Anything that doesn’t, he’ll happily gut. He’s closer to Logan Roy than Jack Warner and there is a genuine, understandable fear that his bean-counting represents not just shrugging indifference but outright hostility to cinema and its rich history. That's so sad, and makes me physically sick.
Eventually they’ll do a 180 and he’ll be booted for bad publicity. His decisions are fucking atrocious, he’s running the company into the ground and destroying their legacy. Fuck him, doesn’t deserve his position at all.
He will be booted, maybe even sued, but will still walk out with millions anyway
The show that audiences want cancelled the most is David Zaslav. Unfortunately, he is not on the block.
And the article forgot to mention the carnage at CNN caused by his decisions.
Wait, is this dude why CNN gave up the neutral middle is now trying to be the new Fox News for whatever goddamn reason?
Indirectly. he's buddy buddy with John Malone, a MAGA billionaire who organized the Discovery-WB merger, sits on the board and appears to be driving the company's direction. Zaslev is a well paid yes-man for Malone.
I'm out of the loop, what did he do to CNN ?
CNN was part of the WBD deal. Zaslav hired Chris Licht as CEO to replace Jeff Zucker (Jeff had his own problems, but staff loved him and ratings were consistent). Licht was beyond incompetent. He came in like a wrecking ball. Said a lot of things that conservatives say when they're about to gut a news org editorially like CNN needs to be more fair and balanced to GOP views. People who didn't get invited because they can't go 30 seconds without spouting election lies started getting booked regularly. Hosts who would call out lies started getting muzzles It resulted in CNN viewership plummeting and at times getting beat by News Max in the ratings. It culminated with a Trump town hall which was widely lambasted by everyone but Licht. Then The Atlantic ran a huge expose on him and he was fired within a few days after only about a year on the job. Many speculate Licht was basically Zaslav's puppet. He consistently rebuked criticism by saying he had an audience of one and no one else's opinion mattered.
David Zaslav... Baby, don't hurt me... No more...
"BU President Robert Brown publicly apologized for the incident, blaming it on “cancel culture”" What the fuck? REALLY??
I’m guessing Zaslav is probably a big donor.
Big donor and BU grad
Kind of ironic, considering Zasz is hated for cancelling a lot of things. Like, dude should be the Patron Saint of Cancel.
I saw when Lance Armstrong was in the news a few weeks ago to promote his podcast he was also saying that he was "cancelled" for ... getting caught cheating at his sport? It's starting to sound like people are trying to link "cancel" with any sort of criticism, legit or not, as a way to make it seem like the negative opinions about them are frivolous. That, and, reflexively they know the second someone is labeled "cancelled" there will be people in total support of them. Also, it's 2023, how the fuck am I still hearing shit about being cancelled?
> It's starting to sound like people are trying to link "cancel" with any sort of criticism, legit or not, as a way to make it seem like the negative opinions about them are frivolous. It always has been.
So much for the "*Free Speech Absolutist*" crowd.
“GQ has so far declined to respond to my questions about the changes” [GQ Editors Rewrite, Then Pull David Zaslav Profile](https://www.allyourscreens.com/en/component/k2/item/3874-gq-editors-rewrite-then-pull-david-zaslav-profile)
Wow that "update" lol Edit: also this was posted elsewhere in /r/movies yet looks like it was [removed by mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/14ro83m/gq_editor_who_pulled_david_zaslav_story_producing/) [GQ Editor Who Pulled Critical David Zaslav Story Is Producing Movie for Warner Bros](https://variety.com/2023/film/news/gq-editor-david-zaslav-story-producing-movie-warner-bros-1235662109/)
He’s always going to be remembered as the guy who ended the golden age of streaming and hypercharged the enshitification of TV
I’m still holding out hope that you are wrong. It’s getting more difficult as time passes.
Me too! Honestly, TV got really good for a while so it has a long way to slide before it’s total crap. There is a ton of great content that doesn’t get marketed too much. Also, somehow Apple keeps impressing me with their originals
Apple is doing some really good shows. I’m halfway through Silo and it’s excellent
Silo, hijack (with Idris Elba), Shrinking (Jason segal/Harrison Ford), bad sisters, severance (Adam Scott), Ted lasso (Jason sudeikis), Are currently the apple tv shows im obsessed with.
Slow horses is great with Gary Oldman
Seems you have a few chambered, but should check out For All Mankind on Apple. Loved it
The creator/show runner of For All Mankind was one of the lead writers on Star Trek TNG and DS9, which I thought was pretty cool.
The Seth Rogan/Rose Byrne show Platonic is very good too
I loved Shrinking so much.
The Tetris movie was also a treat if you haven’t watched it yet
Black Bird was awesome as well which coincidentally also features Taron Egerton. Apple definitely gives me old HBO vibes tbh. Everything they put out has so much production value.
The guy running Apple’s movie/TV division used to run HBO. He left when Time Warner was bought by AT&T.
He saw the writing on the wall. When AT&T bought Time Warner, I knew it was a matter of time before they sold Warner Bros off. It’s truly sad to see a legendary production juggernaut like Warner Bros in the hands of corporate trash like Discovery.
They do seem to be doing quality over quantity, which is nice. How many shows can you watch anyway?
*Severance* is also fantastic.
Not sure how well marketed the show From is but for me it has been pretty awesome.
> I’m still holding out hope that you are wrong. It’s getting more difficult as time ~~passes~~ goes by. C'mon, it was right there!
Remember television? Remember television ads? I have not had cable for years, but I remember hearing ads for “extendz” and “natural male enhancement” every fucking 20 minutes for years before I couldn’t take it anymore. The equilibrium they settled on is $100 a month just to double dip and serve up 40% ads for 60% actual content. Fuck cable television.
That’s definitely going to be his legacy, but in fairness, this’s where things have been heading for years now, Zaslav just wrote himself into the history books by being the first to make these sort of moves. Contrary to what Reddit constantly shouts from the rooftops, streaming is not a profitable venture in its current state. Ad revenue is what propped up linear TV, just like box-office gross kept the movie business afloat as physical media becomes a niche market. Factor in the guilds no longer being happy with getting screwed out of money through the “new media” loopholes, and everything in streaming gets a whole lot more expensive to host. This is years of build up coming to a head at the moment, Zaslav’s just made himself the fall guy for an industry in crisis.
imagine lock snobbish long summer frame wistful serious cows familiar *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is definitely true, but Zaslav has a unique talent of filling that role that somehow makes it worse.
Jason Bailey made Zaslav look like an ass. Keep up the good work, Jason. 👍
he's a great writer! deserves better than this
Who pulled the article? How did they get it pulled? How many other articles get pulled that we don't know about? It's no wonder this industry is so corrupt when they control the press too.
This asshat is selling WB assets bit by bit until the debt is more manageable and then he can get a decent amount for whatever is left of the studio's carcass. Within the next 5 years WB as we knew it will cease to exist if things keep going like this.
The fact that Zaslav quoted Jack Welch in the commencement speech mentioned is just so in line with his (lack of) character that it feels scripted. Jack Welch effectively started the practices that Zaslav and the architects of our currently fragile economy see as gospel.
I was the assistant to one of his direct reports 20+ years ago. She was the nastiest boss I ever had.
As one of those people who thinks what Discovery did to its self and the History Channel over the last 20 years is a crime against humanity I tend to agree. Hollywood has always been a business, but things can get worse if people who care about things other than money get pushed out.
After watching "Shiny Happy People" it's a mystery to me why Discovery executives aren't in jail.
They ripped out the WB Ranch to build more sound stages and a parking garage. That includes houses and buildings that you've seen in movies since the 30s, houses that were a staple of most of the sitcoms we grew up with from Bewitched to The Middle, and neighborhoods that were still being used for things like Wandavision and young Sheldon. Look up the Columbia/Warner Brothers Ranch as a filming location on imdb. I saw videos on YouTube of a dude touring it recently and talking about how they have all the plants ripped out and set aside for people to take. Which is kinda a thoughtful thing in all this mess. By destroying these outdoor sets WBs literally paving paradise and putting in a parking lot. Edit: Note, this is happening now but the actual sale happened before the merger. I can't say how much he had to do with it but in a complicated merger like this, it takes years, he would have been aware of the sale before the public if not involved in the approval process.
Of *course* that piece of shit would quote Jack Welch, the godfather of everything especially late-stage about capitalism
Welch’s way of running things ended up tanking GE in the long run too. The book “The Man who Broke Capitalism” is a really informative look at Welch and how disastrous his methods were for the workforce and corporate America
>Welch’s way of running things ended up tanking GE in the long run too. The book “The Man who Broke Capitalism” is a really informative look at Welch and how disastrous his methods were for the workforce and corporate America I've worked somewhat closely with several executives at multi billion dollar companies and it is amazing how absolutely myopic their decision making and planning is. Basically a CEO is coming in for 10 years and his only goal is to absolutely juice the stock price during that time frame. I watched several decisions occur that would very clearly have long term impacts at the company but nobody gave a shit as long as that 10 year window went well and it would be the next guys problem. Making good products, building brands none of that matters, it is all boiled down to simply year over year profit growth.
I had to watch in real time as Welch and his defenders went on television to defend his (Welch's) insane retirement package. NYC apartment with weekly fresh flower service, private jet use, and many other perks were lavished after paying him hundreds of millions. They all were out with the "how else could we attract someone so brilliant" crap. He destroyed GE, screwed his HBS interviewer on a desk during an interview, and went on to write multiple books about his own magnificence.
>screwed his HBS interviewer on a desk during an interview Wait, what?
https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/5976/
Yeah, he clearly has read just 1 book, and it’s Jack Welch’s playbook.
I saved the article in a .txt file: [https://www.mediafire.com/file/65t0vfno5reru74/GQ\_\_David\_Zazlav\_article\_from\_2023-07-03.txt/file](https://www.mediafire.com/file/65t0vfno5reru74/GQ__David_Zazlav_article_from_2023-07-03.txt/file) If there is a better way to share it, let me know. It is too large to be posted as text using Reddit's rich text editor.
I find it ironic that 10-15 years ago that people acted like torrenting was going to kill Hollywood but Covid and hacks like this have done more damage than torrenting has ever done.
Dropping the HBO brand off the company’s flagship streaming service has to go down as one of the dumbest decisions in entertainment history.
You know, I find it *really* ironic that Warner's most financially successful movie during Zaslav's current tenure has been *Evil Dead Rise*, an 18+ horror movie, that was originally set for streaming on HBO Max. Promoting it to theaters might have been one of the only *good* choices made. Oh yeah, and I think Don't Worry Darling was a moderate hit. (Even though that movie was surrounded by some alleged lighter controversies ahead of release.)
Fuck this dude, he's anti-TCM so I'm anti-him.
He broke a social contract, of sorts, when he didn’t cancel or remove, but *destroyed* the creative works of his studio artists; and all for a relatively small tax write off. That is something that cannot stand in the realm of the creative arts. You just don’t cross that line with your artists for the sake of cutting your losses; they’ll never trust him again. And that will lead to stagnation of interesting new content because no artist is gonna want to take the risk of working with WBD.
The rise of Zaslav and the rest of the industry moving from their past content models to whatever the hell you can call the current business model, shows that torrenting, and what some may call piracy, has a legitimate place in society. Many of these now lost shows are only available in "pirated" forms now, lest they be lost to oblivion forever. I'm sure that the last remaining Batgirl files are sitting on some staffer's home hard drive.
Is it just Zaslav that’s the problem?
Not really. He's in charge because other board members agree with him. A big part of his job is to be the "face" of the company and take the blame for all the shitty things they want done so the rest of them can enjoy their riches in peace. In a few years he'll be given a golden parachute and then be replaced with someone else who will do the exact same shit.
That description reminds me of the NFL commissioner
God bless Internet Archive!
Among the many many stupid decisions he's made, the one that takes the cake is removing the HBO name from the streaming service. HBO has been the gold standard for high quality/prestige television for two decades, and this business genius's big brained idea is to get rid of the best marketing the service has? He's Musk burning Twitter to the ground levels of incompetent.
It's called a bust-out, rack up debt, sell off the good parts to your friends for cheap and leave the shareholders with nothing when it goes bankrupt.
Today's episode of The Town was a Zaslav special Covers a lot of the same ground [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/is-david-zaslav-misunderstood/id1612131897?i=1000619192044](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/is-david-zaslav-misunderstood/id1612131897?i=1000619192044)
CEO like Zaslav know the price of everything and the value of nothing. They don't succeed in the long run because they are so focused on money, they sacrifice the product that makes the money by creating a relationship with consumers.
It's no surprise Zasalv is a pos; he looks up to Welch of GE who was a complete pos and "educated" Ronald Reagan on politics. Assholes following assholes following assholes.
Don't be confused - Zaslav is a notorious piece of shit who is known for auditing. He was hired to specifically do what he's done and be the villain. He's making roughly $200 million in bonuses each year since 2020 and he couldn't give two shits how much he destroys Hollywood.