David Zaslav Is a Small, Petty Man

By Dustin Rowles | Film | July 5, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Film | July 5, 2023 |

Warner/Discovery CEO David Zaslav has become one of the most infamous CEOs in the past year. The fact that a large percentage of the public can even name the CEO of Warner/Discovery is, in itself, indicative of his widespread unpopularity. By nearly all accounts, this animosity is justified. He is viewed as a bean counter in a creative industry and a large toe masquerading as a human being. He is, as Kayleigh noted, a cultural vandal.

During his tenure as CEO of Warner/Discovery, Zaslav has presided over the abandonment of CNN+, the hiring and subsequent firing of Chris Licht resulting in a damaged reputation for the news network, the shelving of Batgirl for tax reasons (while continuing to promote the toxic The Flash), the near-collapse of the beloved (and profitable) cable network TCM, and the removal of numerous streaming series from a platform he’s rebranded as Max, effectively diluting the company’s most esteemed brand, HBO. He is also negotiating the sale of half of Warner’s film and TV music-publishing assets for $500 million.

However, it must also be noted that David Zaslav, despite the criticism he has received, has managed to achieve much of what he was appointed to do: Reduce the company’s debt load and steer it back toward profitability. Has this had a positive effect on the value of the stock? Not yet. In fact, the value of the stock has halved from nearly $25 when Zaslav took over.

Why? One could argue it’s because investors do not trust him. And why should they? While he may have reduced debt at CNN and HBO, he has also created long-term damage to their reputations. His attempt to dismantle TCM was an avoidable error that he was later forced to reverse. He also held a party at Cannes during the writers’ strike — of which he is the villainous face — where a bottle of wine was probably equivalent to the salary of an entry-level writer.

Assuming that some of these decisions were necessary to reduce the debt load, the communication surrounding them has been disastrous, and communication is half the battle. Furthermore, he did himself no favors when Jason Bailey— a freelance critic and one of Film Twitter’s best bomb throwers — wrote a critical piece for GQ about David Zaslav. Bailey was honest but not kind in his appraisal, calling him “the most hated man in Hollywood” and likening him to Logan Roy of Succession.

In the normal course of events, Bailey’s piece would have been read and mentally cataloged among many other critiques of David Zaslav. However, this one was different: GQ reportedly received a phone call, which led to the softening of the piece. Instead of being “the most hated man in Hollywood,” for instance, the criticism of Zaslav was toned down. It read, instead, that the complaints about Zaslav have “felt personal,” effectively recasting Zaslav as a victim, a victim who was paid $246 million in 2021.

Bailey, to his credit and because he’s one of the last of the good ones, took issue with the changes and asked GQ to remove his byline. GQ, which has a policy of not running pieces without bylines, chose to pull the piece entirely. “I wrote what I felt was the story I was hired to write,” Bailey told The Washington Post. “When I was asked to rewrite it after publication, I declined. The rewrite that was done was not to my satisfaction, so I asked to have my name removed and was told that the option there was to pull the article entirely, and I was fine with that.”

GQ, meanwhile, claimed that the article was originally posted before being properly edited, which is a bullshit claim. The magazine is not only throwing Bailey under the bus but also its editor. And now, one of many pieces critical of Zaslav’s stewardship is Streisanding, attracting even more attention because GQ — whose parent company is owned by a major shareholder of Warner/Discovery — failed to stand up to its corporate superiors. Consequently, GQ now appears as a cowardly publication that can’t uphold the trust of its writers, and Zaslav comes off as a small, petty individual using his connections to suppress negative press.

It’s exactly the kind of thing that ended Chris Licht’s career at CNN.

(For those interested, here is Bailey’s original article.)