Right, because they felt it was too low brow to carry.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/b...new-chief.html

I'm not sure you can say that in the era of reality tv, though. I feel like since then TNT and TBS have gained an identity and it's not high brow entertainment.

Zaslav wants more theatrical releases over streaming

Looks like we have another victim of the merger. JJ Abrams show Demimonde is now dead at HBO due to budget issues: https://deadline.com/2022/06/jj-abra...aa5dee56334940

Bad Robot insisted this had to have a $200M plus budget and the network and studio wanted a reduction.

And now 'Chad' is dead on tbs:
https://deadline.com/2022/07/chad-tb...me-1235048605/This is kind of crazy because the ratings weren't terrible, the critics seemed to like it and they were advertising this like crazy, and up to this point the new premiere date was supposed to be... today.

They also just announced that they're selling their Knoxville offices. Another good reason, I'm glad I didn't go work there. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bu...rt-1235176598/

Another victim of the merger. This time at CNN

Twitter

Reliable Sources, which has been on almost 30 years, was cancelled. The host is leaving the network.

Twitter

The entire production staff was laid off

Twitter

I won’t be surprised if CNN is sold off.

Makes sense to sell it. Can't really do much reality TV on there....

Now separating into 2 separate companies now. Film, TV, and HBO Max side will be back to just

"Warner Bros."

Cable networks and Discovery+ will be under "Discovery"

Brilliant!!

X - Formerly Twitter

JFC. They have no idea what they're doing over there. Warner/Discovery/HBO Offices:

Now you know why management consultants can charge so much money. It's so executives can blame them when decisions like mergers are made. The merger I think only made sense over arcane merger accounting tricks.

I'm guessing this was always in the plans once the merger went through.

It's worse that you may think. Mckinsey consulting was the company that advised Discovery to buy Warner, rename HBO to Max, revert Max to HBO and now separate into the studios/HBO/Bravo and cable companies. All for amount $155 million in fees. The old Discovery CEO is now gong to be head of basically old Warner minus the TNT/TBS/CNN/Sports and spinning off the slow growth cable of his original company and the debt.

Heh.

McKinsey is the fall-guy for hire.

And post-split announcement. WB lays off 10% of their staff. I guess the late surge of box office hits didn't help their bottom line.

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/w...up-1236474652/

Warner Bros
A Netflix company

So no use for HBO Max and Netflix will have their own stuff and Warner Bros content?

Welcome to $50+ /mo Netflix.

Yeah the combined price of both at top tier is like $48/month.

I mean if they combined the services and it was $40 or lower, I would say it is a deal, provided they don't ax all the WB content.

Deal is already done... $72 billion later.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transa...on-2025-12-05/

Farewell to the theatrical experience.

I also suspect that physical media is in danger, but theatrical releases will go on, at least for the next couple of years. WB would lose to much talent if they scratch theatrical.

Sounds like they will honor WB's commitments, but then after that......

Netflix Says Warner Bros. Movies Will Remain in Theaters but ‘Windows Will Evolve to Be Much More Consumer Friendly’

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/n...io-1236601073/

As someone who does not pay for Max, and does not like to take advantage of those deals that end in 2-3 months because I tend to forget to cancel the service, I just want to say that at least Netflix would now have a real excuse to increase our subscription price and we would all know why they are doing so, to help recover the costs of buying up all that WB/HBO/etc. content to put up on Netflix.

I agree with you that the price increase would need to be no higher than $10-15 above what the top tier price is now for Netflix (I think I am at the $25-27 a month tier, so the top Netflix tier for someone who is not spending more to add on family members or to stream to a jillion devices at once) for someone like me to not churn.

$40 sounds right, and as long as they kept it at that price point for at least the next 2 years after the merger is completed, than Netflix could easily weather the storm of folks screaming they are going to cancel because the flip side is folks like me who will happily pay more to get so much more content all in one place.

I have also given up at grumbling that this would make Netflix more of a monopoly when it comes to streaming content than it already is, especially with this administration. I am sure Reed Hasting's and Ted Sarandos can figure out a creative way to explain why they are giving Trump what amounts to a bribe of say 50-100 million (maybe even as much as a half billion) to let this merger get completed.

I guess it depends on how big of a bribe Ellison gives him.

The Last of Us

A Netflix and HBO Original series