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When they talk about David Zaslav, even the most cynical executives can barely stop themselves from sprouting. Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, struggles to think of anything critical, or even neutral, to say about his lifelong friend.
“I don’t usually like people. It is a kind of exception. It’s hard for me to be clever about him, “says Blankfein.” If you go out to dinner, he wears those stupid insignia vests…. I have to rest. But everything is positive. “
This week, the energy of the Tigger, cut with relentless ambition, helped Zaslav design the media coup of the decade: not just uniting his much smaller Discovery group, with WarnerMedia, but then taking command of the combined entity, the second largest entertainment company in the world by revenue.
Although technology groups are overtaking a business that is moving to broadcast, Zaslav’s rise has shown that the old alpha-male media guard, who cut his teeth in an era of satellite dishes and VHS, still you can shoot in Hollywood. With a deal, Zaslav has approached the power state of his business idols: his old boss Jack Welch, his mentor John Malone, CNN’s Ted Turner, and brothers Harry and Jack Warner.
An executive known for reality shows included 90 days of promise i Man against bones will preside, if the merger is completed, over one of Hollywood’s most coveted assets, covering HBO, CNN and the Warner Bros. studio. “It’s a kind of East Coast sweater dress, dressed in a kind of cable TV,” says a former colleague. “And a lot of people in Hollywood are shocked that someone as slender as him can run away with crown jewels.”
But these crown jewels come with them Debt of $ 55 billion taken as part of the AT&T agreement. Zaslav has to master a new broadcast business model, which requires huge losses before it can reach profitability and which may never reach the margins enjoyed by traditional television. And it has to do it globally with WarnerMedia, a company devastated by restructuring in recent years.
Zaslav was born in Brooklyn in 1960 and grew up in Rockland County, New York, about an hour north of the city. After graduating from law school, he quickly moved into the television business with NBC in the 1980s, when broadcast television was king and cable was largely considered unknown. In 1987 he married his beloved high school, Pam, in the Hamptons, where they now hold a legendary late-summer party.
When Zaslav joined Discovery in 2007, the financial crisis was approaching and Netflix was about to start airing. It managed to triple revenue, generate 57% profit margins in the US and expand with the acquisitions of Scripps and Eurosport.
However, Zaslav’s biggest success was getting his $ 43 billion contract this week with his golf friend John Stankey, the AT&T chief executive who three years earlier had paid $ 85 billion for it. The conversations were so secretive that Zaslav didn’t even hint at close friends like CNN’s Jeff Zucker or Jeff Bewkes, the former Time Warner boss who met him days before he was announced.
The discovery was instantly transformed from a likely player to a player with the potential to face Netflix and Disney. Zaslav’s challenge: building a wide range of Warner-Discovery brands, stations, and streaming services on a platform with more than 200 million subscribers, must be part of the handful of large groups standing in a revolutionized Hollywood.
Richard Plepler, the former HBO director who left shortly after AT&T took over in 2018, is optimistic. “[Zaslav] he is an energetic force and an excellent strategic mind with a love for the real business he runs. He loves HBO, he loves CNN and Warner Bros., ”he says. “This is the secret sauce.”
Bewkes, who sold Time Warner to AT&T in 2016, believes Zaslav will bring a “necessary shake-up of confidence” from Warner employees. “They are saying, ‘Thank God.’ AT&T wasn’t listening. The discovery will be heard, ”he says.
For all bonhomies, Zaslav can be a difficult teacher, sending emails at all hours of the night. An old colleague called him “mercurial” and sometimes “shouting” at the staff. “But then they love it a little bit, even the people who have been fired,” the former executive says.
“He’s the kind of person everyone is rooted for,” Blankfein says. “I’ve taken root and I’ve taken root, and it’s much better to be the person that people take root for.”
His drive is combined with his beautiful package: his $ 129 million in 2018 made Zaslav the top executive in the United States. On the eve of the WarnerMedia deal, he was given options on shares currently valued at about $ 190 million.
On Tuesday, the moving executive listed his Greenwich Village townhouse for sale, where he met with Stankey to choose the deal that will send him to Los Angeles more often. Last year he paid $ 16 million for a Beverly Hills mansion owned by godfather producer Bob Evans, a purchase that foreshadowed his next act.
“I will find an office on the Warner Bros. lot,” Zaslav said Monday. “I will be in New York. I will be anywhere in the world where creatives are. . . because that is what will make us great ”.
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