Last month, Warner Bros. Discovery followed up on its decision to cancel Westworld by pulling the show from HBO Max, another part of CEO David Zaslav's plan to get the company back in the black. According to the CFO of Warner Bros. Discovery, the entertainment conglomerate is getting ready to shift gears and put more of its energy into creating new things.
At the annual Communications, Media & Entertainment Conference today, Wiedenfels said that the year of 2023 would be a year of rebirth. WBD had to get its cost-savings out of the way before it could move forward.
To leave the purchase accounting behind us, leave those initial strategy changes behind us, get it all out there in terms of our restructuring estimates and then be able to turn the page was very important to all of us. The team has laid a good foundation, and I'm excited about the growth from here.
After watching the service lose so many of its series, the idea of going through a growth spurt is questionable. At a time when there was a lot of thinking of, "let's do more, more," the Warner Bros. Discovery cost-cutting measures were a reflection of that overspending.
It is great to hear that WBD doesn't plan on writing off any more content as it prepares to launch a new cable channel this spring. It wouldn't be surprising if the write-offs were over just yet, as Zaslav's WBD is a business focused on profit above everything else.
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