Discovery and AT&T CEOs discuss media deal

New York (CNN Business)WarnerMedia and Discovery have revealed the name that their soon-to-be-combined companies will take once they are fused together: Warner Bros. Discovery.

Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced the name Tuesday to WarnerMedia employees in a conversation hosted by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar.
“We thought we need to represent, really, who are we? Who are we? What’s our belief system? What’s important to us? What do we get up and do every day,” Zaslav said. “And we thought about Warner Brothers and the fact that Warner Brothers is something that the greatest content that over the last 98 years that has been produced. Most of it has been produced where at the end you see the word Warner Brothers. It’s imprinted in all of us and what it says is it makes you smile, and it says this is a creative content company. This is where the best and the brightest come to tell their stories, and so we wanted to bring back the Brothers.”

Zaslav also said the company’s new tagline would be “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of,” a line from Warner Bros. movie “The Maltese Falcon.”

AT&T (T) announced last month its plans to spin off WarnerMedia and combine it with Discovery. Zaslav was named CEO of the new standalone media company, but the new name had been kept a secret until Tuesday. The mystery prompted guessing by media observers, some suggesting DiscoveryWarnerMedia, similar to ViacomCBS (VIACA), and others hoping for DiscoMedia.

The initial “Warner Bros. Discovery” wordmark for the proposed company.

Discovery said the new company will “own one of the deepest libraries in the world with nearly 200,000 hours of iconic programming” and bring together more than 100 brands. The transaction includes CNN, which is part of WarnerMedia. The deal is subject to regulatory approval.
Last week, Kilar –— whose future had been the subject of some speculation after the deal was announced, and who reportedly retained lawyers to negotiate with the company about that — said he planned to remain in his job until at least 2022.
Source: Read Full Article