NYT Magazine Zaz Profile
PGage
I did not have time to read the epic profile of WBD’s David Zaslov published in the NYT Magazine this week until this morning. Thought I would post a link here to the list for the record.
Unlike the similarly epic profile on Chris Licht in June, there is not a lot of new information; this is more of a recap of the Zaz WBD era - kind of like a long “Previously” reel for a miniseries you may have heard a lot about. Zaz may have thought this was going to be a PR boost, but it reads mostly like a reminder of all the specific reasons why he is “perhaps the most hated man in Hollywood” (as he was called in an earlier profile, and cited again here).
It also makes clear that, even though he may be hated by the people who actually create the product that he says he loves for his company, he is also hated by the people who bought shares in his new company, as they have lost about half their original value. He has cut even more then the THREE BILLION dollars he promised two years ago, but he had to borrow so much to pull off the merger that he still owes around $44 Billion, and Wall Street apparently still doubts that the film, cable or streaming business is strong enough to avoid drowning in all that red ink. I think the most important quote in the piece is from Zaz friend Barry Diller - “Cut costs and pay down debt….that’s his job. It’s not complicated.”
The future of WBD is still unclear. Puck News has discussed rumors that they may be in the market to buy Paramount, but also the (to me more likely) option that they will be sold off to someone like Comcast. For that to work Zaz does not need to make WBD profitable, or pay down all the debt, just get it down enough that it does not give Comcast indigestion. It also means that selling off parts of WBD that would not combine nicely with Comcast would make sense - so look for someone to gobble up CNN (unless it could just be merged with MSNBC?)