Part of me thinks he's an idiot, and part of me thinks he just wants to make money off of reality TV content saturation (so still an idiot). He views his bread and butter as the stuff he did for Discovery and finds stuff like The Looney Toons, and Sesame Street as unnecessary money sinks. Fuck him!
Because Zaslav's motivation everyday when he wakes up is what do I destroy next? He makes a fuck load of money for being such a shit CEO. The only good thing that he's done in my opinion was giving James Gunn the keys to the DCU.
Caped Crusader ended up moving to Amazon, but it still begs the question. How does someone have no faith in a Batman TV show by Bruce Timm, Greg Rucka, and Ed Brubaker?
We were trying to get a new IP approved so yeah, if something with that pedigree had to go begging elsewhere, what chance did we have? And our creatives had some pedigree!
If he wasn’t so incompetent at everything else, I’d say Sesame Street is a special case because Sesame Workshop retained the rights to all of the characters and merchandising (which was smart of them!).
The Space Jame sequel did this (but replace Sesame Street with Harry Potter and a hundred other properties). It was such a disaster 😂 They really have no idea what they’re doing over there.
🇵🇸😭💔🍉🍼“In the midst of this devastating war, my infant daughter is deprived of her most basic rights, just like the children of Gaza who endure unimaginable suffering. I appeal to all kind hearts to extend their support and help ease their pain. Your donation could save lives and bring hope.”
Women who've never watched the show because the current season literally has a character who gets abused the injured by her ex-boyfriend and it's never directly addressed
The problem is He's a fecking idiot. He came from reality TV shite &, thus, has no brain. He is a stupid pissbaby who wouldn't know actual programming if it came up and shoved a thing up his stupid arse. Really a huge cocksucking motherfecker & an unlikable cunt. He turned the whole company tits up.
It is because he is a human-sized thumb. No slight to opposable thumbs, which supposedly made a big difference in hominid evolutionary progress, but Zaslav is dumb.
He's a suit filled with a Christmas ham is the thing I'm trying to articulate.
Also, that the ham is thumb-shaped, and human-sized.
He's taking the Modern Business Major Shortcut to Profit: Parasitizing your host until it has nothing left to drain then vacating for the next target. "Profit" comes from "lost estimated revenue" for the stuff that "didn't work" so they can skip taxes when they make billions but kill the goose too.
Oh I agree, but I think it's gonna be really funny when he puts like 100 million into a TV show thar gets canceled after 2 seasons (being generous and hoping it gets shitcanned after 1). But at one point it was a profit bonanza and him and Rowling fucking that up is very funny.
Sounds like what is called "burning the brand" in other industries. Take a good and established brand, lessen the quality and ride on the coat tails of its reputation until the public catches on and moves elsewhere.
This is the man who took a reputable documentary network, ripped it up, and forced it to regurgitate Honey Boo Boo and other garish reality programmes 24/7.
Sesame Street has already done this, doesn't need Zaslav, making money off of the most vulnerable kids, paid for its programs on tablets in refugee camps. Hundreds of young kids, trapped in the camps, look at screens instead of having real classes with teachers.
I'm sure he knows how to make money, he's just reeeally trying to figure out how to make that money (and more) without having to pay people to make things
Because David Zaslav only cares about one demographic: Teenaged white boy edgelords who love to yell racist and homophobic shit at people while gaming online.
He took the most respected premium brand in home entertainment (HBO) and just… threw it out, replacing it with a really dumb bland word in everyday use.
But all the CEOs are doing it, so it must be good, right?
Elon should buy US Steel just to get the ticker symbol.
These people are all morons!
I think the underlying broader problem here is that these people’s concept of value is completely at odds with the rest of human civilization. The value of human lives, brands, products, money. And the value of a beloved children’s television program too.
I had to get HBO Max to watch a movie for one of my classes. So glad that I only paid the Black Friday sale price because if I paid full price, I woulda been so mad over the lack of variety of shows or movies. It's mostly just reality TV & most of WB's actual catalog isn't even on it.
Marvel made billions of dollars with C-list characters like Iron Man, so clearly it must be that WB’s comic book characters aren’t famous or are really hard to make movies about
Once y’all realize CEOs are sometimes hired for bloodbaths by layoffs, tax write offs, and cancellations so they can increase shareholder value by getting lean on expenses (mostly employee wages and benefits followed by cost cutting content cancelations)
The fact that he wants Harry Potter to be the mascot of WB instead of Bugs Bunny or Superman arguably the most influential characters of all time is insane. Also, literally no one likes Harry Potter anymore, why is WB still milking it?
“Literally, no one likes Harry Potter anymore.” Really? The top selling video game of 2023 was Hogwarts Legacy. Harry Potter is a major focal point of the upcoming Epic Universe theme park.
Sales of Harry Potter books are going up year over year. Might want to get out of that echo chamber.
wb completely owns gotham academy, a much better spooky boarding school series, that spun off one of the world's most popular characters woh they also own, plus it has no ties to mad old drunk nazi women.
but i guess they just love mad old drunk nazi women too much to use it
Not to mention that Warner Bros is supposed to be an American company. Yet, Zaslav is more focused on a British made IP that wasn’t even made by WB to begin with outside of their movie adaptations.
Like I love how immersive the Harry Potter themed land areas are at the parks but like enough already. Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley are good enough representations of the franchise for a theme park. We don’t need more.
I pitched sesame street and they didn't select me and it still was a super awesome experience for me. Made my whole career personally. I was a huge sesame street kid and probably why I am smart asf.
Still figuring out how shitty he can make everything while still turning a profit - still looking for the sweet spot but of course he's got to err on the side of "too shitty" to avoid raising expectations
It's capitalism taken to its logical conclusion - abusing workers and customers as much as possible is the whole point and must be prioritized over everything, including profit (if only slightly)
His genius method of making money is to take beloved superheroes, Bugs Bunny, and Sesame Street and throw them into a meat grinder for a one time tax break.
I'm less convinced he can't figure out a way and more convinced he doesn't want to figure out a way, and sees no value in them when reality TV costs way less to produce
This is the answer. The man’s greatest success was turning nearly every educational cable channel into a wasteland of cheap exploitation and spectacle. He won’t be happy until everything WB/Discovery produces has an identical ROI to Pawn Stars and doesn’t GAF how he gets there.
Yeah to him the only value in their established IP is how much they can get from farming it out, I suspect.
I'm a bit bewildered with that in mind that James Gunn got put in charge of DC's movie output as that feels like an actual smart decision, unless it was an attempt to set up failure.
It's breathtaking how objectively bad he's been at the business side, not just the creative side. Like if he was a monster but the brand was making money like never before, you could almost give him his flowers. But he's lousy across the board.
I feel like CEOs back in the day *at least* had to have a sense of taste, but now they’re obsessed with making an IP as big as Avengers or Pokémon that will make passive revenue for their shareholders until the sun burns out and everything slightly less successful can just wither away.
I'm always so bewildered as to how the shareholders haven't lost their patience with him long ago. I know they have a habit of encouraging corrupt practices but like... how is all this benefiting even them? Are they his drinking buddies?
To me it's damning proof of how broken economics have become.
I think the world of private equity has trained them to think a brilliant businessman is one who makes a lot of money very quickly and leaves the business a smoking crater.
This is the thing – at this point what the US system is isn't even capitalism as it's historically been, it's the top executives all agreeing to cannibalize the companies for their own benefit at the expense of any future profit.
youre forgetting that he also cuts theatrical runs short for movies that make moneh (dune 2, beetlejuice beetlejuice) by bringing them to streaming early
He is the final boss of what happens when people who's #1 (and maybe only) skill is managing the promo process at work. Doesn't do anything actually productive, strictly focuses on making connections and being seen. Finally gets to the top and is the personification of the Peter Principle.
He doesn't need to now that he had CNN ensure his/WBD shareholders primary money revenue will be fascism
[and a future bailout once all their bubbles pop, assurances the striking Hollywood unions that beat them will be destroyed, assurances they'll be spared when CNN is destroyed, etc]
I don't think they got a lot of merchandise revenue, pretty sure most of that went to the seaseme workshop. This was just a first run publishing deal, not a copyright ownership one.
Right? And Sesame Street managed right is a cash cow. Relatively low production costs, beloved characters that have for decades sold lots of toys and games. It should be nearly impossible to not make a good profit off it.
Moving your crew to Botswana to film for 30 days and provide food and shelter to 300 people while caring for machinery and props vs. having ten people animate on computers? Yes.
Having 20 people perform on the same four-camera warehouse set every day for 30 days? No.
Exactly! Sesame Street has limited sets, each Muppet lasts for years before needing to be replaced, the regular actors aren't high paid stars, and when there are guest appearances by stars theyre not paid a lot of money. If I remember correctly guest stars get SAG minimum.
Also, I believe that because the sesame warehouse is a 501c3, they can't make a profit. Whatever revenue they make has to go into the show or other outputs.
Sesame Workshop (not "Warehouse") is a 501(c)(3), yes, but that doesn't mean they can't make a profit. It just means they don't have shareholders. The organization can make money and sit on it, invest it, spend it on anything mission-related, etc.
True but it should be a no-brainer to keep it on the line up of shows. It's beloved by most, guaranteed to have decent viewing figures AND on top of that should be profitable. Win-win-win.
Comments
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/08/994738544/the-story-of-sesame-street-from-radical-experiment-to-beloved-tv-mainstay
I hate crossovers and even I'D see Waldorf, the Joker and Daffy shit talking for a feature length movie.
And Reindog blows, btw.
https://bsky.app/profile/jesseltaylor.bsky.social/post/3ldbq3cvank2n
Like...the story is so fucking convoluted and full of plot holes, who the fuck is it even for?
Nah, the MOMENT you abuse or lay a hand on your romantic partner... regardless of gender, that is assault and you become human scum
He's a suit filled with a Christmas ham is the thing I'm trying to articulate.
Also, that the ham is thumb-shaped, and human-sized.
They want to make money off ai generated slop
I’ve just been over here mad about Coyote Vs Acme and Batgirl. You mean to tell me we could’ve had Bo Burnham Big Bird?!?!
But all the CEOs are doing it, so it must be good, right?
Elon should buy US Steel just to get the ticker symbol.
These people are all morons!
How the hell is he still there? There just simply has to be other options?!?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_production_incentives_in_the_United_States
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion_in_the_United_States
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering
Whether the studio makes a return or not is going to make little difference to him.
He is doing what the board hired him to do
Sales of Harry Potter books are going up year over year. Might want to get out of that echo chamber.
but i guess they just love mad old drunk nazi women too much to use it
I'm a bit bewildered with that in mind that James Gunn got put in charge of DC's movie output as that feels like an actual smart decision, unless it was an attempt to set up failure.
To me it's damning proof of how broken economics have become.
[and a future bailout once all their bubbles pop, assurances the striking Hollywood unions that beat them will be destroyed, assurances they'll be spared when CNN is destroyed, etc]
Merchandising can make you money. It's a money printer, even. it's just that simple.
Moving your crew to Botswana to film for 30 days and provide food and shelter to 300 people while caring for machinery and props vs. having ten people animate on computers? Yes.
Having 20 people perform on the same four-camera warehouse set every day for 30 days? No.
Big Z's only move of note is to hide properties, playing some sort of tax shell game