(Bloomberg) — Discovery Inc. has chosen the team that will run its business once it completes its megamerger with WarnerMedia, a deal that will transform Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav into one of the biggest players in Hollywood.
Jean-Briac Perrette, a longtime lieutenant of Zaslav, will run the company’s streaming businesses, Discovery said in a statement Thursday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. Bruce Campbell will take a new role as chief revenue and strategy officer, with a portfolio that includes U.S. advertising sales, distribution revenue and content licensing.
Kathleen Finch will oversee more than 40 of the company’s cable channels as chairman and chief content officer for the newly created U.S. Networks Group, while Chris Licht will retain leadership of CNN Global as its chairman and CEO. Remaining in their roles will be HBO programming chief Casey Bloys and Warner Bros. studio chiefs Channing Dungey and Toby Emmerich.
Zaslav is leaning on his own executives to run the business and operations of the combined company, while relying on WarnerMedia to supply the creative ideas. Zaslav already said goodbye to WarnerMedia chief Jason Kilar, as well as nine of his 11 direct reports, while eliminating layers of executives between himself and the creative chiefs so he can take a more hands-on role in their work.
The CEO pursued the purchase to give the combined company the scale to compete with Netflix Inc., Walt Disney Co., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. in streaming. WarnerMedia’s HBO Max was one of the faster-growing services in the world last year. With more than 70 million subscribers, drawn largely by high-quality HBO programs and Warner Bros. movies, it’s still small relative to some peers.
Streaming Strategy
The combined company has yet to outline a streaming strategy. HBO Max is one of three streaming services WarnerMedia and Discovery operate between them. When the combination is complete later this week, the company will have one of the largest film and television libraries in the world.
Zaslav has taken on tens of billions of dollars in debt to complete the deal, and pledged to cut $3 billion. He may eliminate staff duplication across advertising sales and TV distribution, among other areas. Though streaming is the future, the company still makes most of its money from linear cable networks and film distribution.
The executive spent the last decade-plus running cable networks that air reality TV programs, and has spent the last year meeting with top agents and producers to develop his plans for one of the most famous companies in Hollywood.
AT&T is set to receive $43 billion in cash and debt considerations as part of the deal, with its stockholders slated to own 71% of the post-merger company, which will be called Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.
(Updates with Discovery announcement of appointments in second and third paragraphs.)
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