Warner Bros Discovery Town Hall Features Oprah Winfrey And Studio Heritage
deadline.comWarner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav and other top execs are meeting with employees in a town hall this morning on the Warner lot in Burbank.
It’s the first large-scale staff meeting since last Friday’s close of the $43 billion merger.Attendees told Deadline the event began with Oprah Winfrey interviewing Zaslav onstage, getting him to describe how the deal came together.
AT&T CEO John Stankey wanted to move quickly with spinning off the company’s entertainment assets, he explained. Plus, both WarnerMedia and Discovery were seeking scale in streaming in order to better compete with Netflix and Disney.Winfrey’s OWN began in 2008 as a joint venture with Discovery but is now mostly controlled by Warner Bros Discovery.
At the end of 2020, she sold almost her entire stake for $36 million in Discovery stock via her company, Harpo. That move gave Discovery nearly 95% of the entity (up from 73%) but Winfrey also signed on to remain a key contributor and creative overseer at OWN through 2025.In addition to Winfrey, notable figures from Warner Bros’ history are in the audience for the town hall.
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