Warner Bros Discovery, one of the largest entertainment studios and the owner of HBO and CNN, has offered more details about planned cost reductions since forming in a $43bn merger of WarnerMedia with Discovery in April. Chief executive David Zaslav promised investors he would find $3bn in cuts while also delivering $14bn in annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation. The company has $55bn in debt.
Zaslav's first company town hall on April 14 pointed to the task ahead. He invited Oprah Winfrey to interview him and declared the merger to be "our rendezvous with destiny".
Later on during that "bright and shiny day" — as Zaslav had described it — he and his deputies decided to axe CNN Plus, an ambitious news streaming project that had launched only a month earlier.
Now Zaslav and his team, led by chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels, are in the midst of another unpopular task: auditing Warner-Discovery's expenses to find where to trim.