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David Zaslav wants a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery – and he’s looking for assistance from Donald Trump’s Justice Department to make it happen, On The Money has learned.
I know it sounds crazy. As The Post was first to report, the Trump administration wants Zaslav’s media conglomerate known as WBD to be sold to the president’s pals at Paramount Skydance, run by its CEO David Ellison and his father Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle.
While Larry is worth about $350 billion, maybe more important is his close friendship with The Donald. As first reported by The Post, Trump wants WBD in the Ellisons’ hands, and insiders say it’s because he wants favorable coverage from its CNN news channel, which has been accused of anti-MAGA bias.
The Ellisons, meanwhile, want WBD because it has the No. 1 ranked studio, the No. 3 ranked streaming services, as well as cable channels like HBO and CNN despite its lowish ratings, still makes a ton of money.
But Zaslav – known as Zas in the media business – thinks he can get the Ellisons to pay more than the $23.50 a share they’ve already offered. He believes he can entice Netflix, Amazon and most importantly Comcast – despite Trump’s distaste for the latter over its ownership of MAGA-hating cable channel MSNBC – to bid because of the quirky way such deals are approved.
This one in particular would go before the more free-market oriented DOJ antitrust division versus the Federal Communications Commission, which is run by conservative firebrand Brendan Carr who would be less inclined to throw a bone to, say Comcast CEO Brian Roberts.
As it turns out, Carr does not have an official vote in the sale of all or part of WBD because none of it involves the transfer of local broadcast licenses that the FCC regulates. In other words, the decision – at least on paper – would be up to DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater, another Trump appointee, but also her staff, longtime DOJ staff attorneys who exercise considerable discretion on such matters as deal approval.
Zas is also betting that “even if the DOJ says ‘no’ to any of these potential suitors, he can turn to the federal courts to overturn its decision because the antitrust case isn’t very strong,” said a person with direct knowledge of the WBD chief’s thinking.
A rep for Zaslav declined to comment; a DOJ antitrust rep didn’t return a call for comment.
There is precedent backing Zas’s plan: A federal court famously overruled during Trump 1 his antitrust department’s veto of AT&T purchase of TimeWarner. Antitrust argued it created too much consolidation of media power that would be bad for consumers, while a federal judge said changes in technology, more competition in programming, is making those concerns less worrisome.
Ironically, it’s the unravelling of that deal, leading to the merger of Discovery, then run by Zas, and WarnerMedia that led to the creation of WBD in 2022.
The question for everyone but the Ellisons is whether they have the stomach for a potential, and protracted, legal battle with Trump. It’s also no layup that the courts would agree to overturn the antitrust verdict with any of the potential combos other than Paramount Skydance. You can see how the antitrust arguments would be framed: Netflix is the No 1 streamer seeking to combine with WBD’s No. 3. Amazon already owns a studio, as does Comcast.
Brian Roberts is addressing some of those concerns by spinning off properties like MSNBC so he won’t be owning two cable channels. Plus, some media insiders believe Roberts needs to do a deal with WBD to stay relevant in a business where content is king. His studio Universal Studios has lagged behind Warner Brothers this year and he’s in desperate need of a growth strategy.
“He’s got to bid,” Rich Greenfield, the prominent media analyst at LightShed Partners told On The Money.
Greenfield recently wrote that Roberts could win over Trump by copying some of the things done by the Ellisons, including hiring a right-leaning ombudsman and journalist Bari Weiss, a critic of progressivism to oversee its left-leaning television network CBS. He’s called for Roberts to hire Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, who now runs his Turning Point USA conservative nonprofit as editor-in-chief of NBC.
“Sure, at first blush it sounds crazy, but Trump loves a deal and Brian Roberts needs to think big and differently.”
A Comcast spokesman declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Zas thinks the other antitrust concerns are overblown given the rapidly changing marketplace for programming and news consumption. He also thinks Netflix, Amazon, and Comcast need his content, and even his IP for whatever AI-driven programming is created, so they might just roll the dice in court if the DOJ does object.
True, Zas is privately reminding people that he isn’t against selling to the Ellisons, but he wants them to pay more than their last bid at $23.50 a share. The way he does that is to get other bidders making offers now that he has opened the process to all, and by explaining that the antitrust case might not be such a biggie.
