Warner Bros. Discovery Write Downs Are Done, Relaunching and Building Will Happen in 2023 According to CFO
Warner Bros. Discovery's CFO says that the write downs are done and they're focusing on relaunching and building in 2023. Gunnar Weidenfels talked at a Citibank conference and The Hollywood Reporter has the comments that he made about their recent moves in removing content and canceling programming. Such maneuvers have come under heavy fire from both fans of the shows affected and the creative teams that put their hearts and souls into these shows and movies. The CFO said that the decisions to cut content stemmed from, "a reflection of an industry that went overboard, that went on a spending frenzy." He also noted that pulling some programming "rectified a lot of that content exuberance, as I would call it." Check out more of what he had to say down below.
"We're coming from an irrational time of overspending with with very limited focus on return on investment, and I think others are going to have to make some adjustments that we frankly have behind us now," Weidenfels said. "We have every intention to continue spending, content is the lifeblood of this company. It's obviously a hit-driven business, you win some you lose some. But if you look at the creative lineup that David [Zaslav] has been able to assemble, this is this is a first flight lineup of creative talent."
"The idea of collapsing seven windows into one and selling it at the lowest possible price doesn't sound like a very smart strategy. And I think there was this partly capital market-fueled phase of land grabbing, and you couldn't lose enough money and couldn't grow subscribers fast enough. I think that's behind us," he continued. "If you look at trend lines over the past 20 or 36 months, a number of players have started gradually bringing up prices. So I think there's a building consensus that this phase of dumping pricing is over."
What Is The Path For Warner Bros. Discovery Going Forward?
Here's what CEO David Zaslav had to say about his decision to cut so many programs viewers held dear. "Casey Bloys (HBO Chief Content Officer) was able to look at all the content on HBO and when 37 series went away...He was able to look over the last year and a half, what are people watching and what are they not watching? Where are people spending time? Where are they being nourished?" Zaslav argued. " We have the ability to look at across our cable channels, what are we spending on on shows and where are they working and where are we getting a good return. All those write offs, that we took shows off these platforms, we didn't take one show off a platform that was going to help us in any way. It's going to help us to get it off the platform so that we can now invest, with the knowledge of what is working, and replace those shows with content that has a chance to be more successful, have larger audience, and we're reallocating the capital."
Do you think this explanation holds water? Let us know down below!
