The American flag flies at Warner Bros. Studios on September 12, 2025 in Burbank, California.
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of warner bros discovery The board may have enriched shareholders when it chose Thursday. paramount skydanceThe acquisition offer for NetflixBut it also terrified many employees.
While some of these people own WBD stock and may prefer the financials of Paramount’s $31 per share bid to Netflix’s $27.75 per share offer, CNBC spoke to 10 WBD employees who serve in various roles at the company. All 10 people, who requested anonymity for fear of potential backlash, expressed concerns about potential job losses and the question of who would ultimately run the division if Paramount and WBD were to eventually merge.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that people are depressed watching the news,” said one WBD executive.
Nevertheless, as California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated yesterday, the WBD-Paramount merger is “not a done deal.”
The deal is subject to regulatory approval in both the United States and Europe. WBD CEO David Zaslav acknowledged during an all-hands meeting Friday that the deal could still be blocked and expressed sympathy for those experiencing whiplash from the move from Netflix to Paramount, according to people familiar with the matter.
“The deal may not go through. If it doesn’t go through, I’ll take $7 billion and go back to work,” Zaslav said, according to leaked audio provided to Business Insider.
Still, multiple WBD employees told CNBC they wish Netflix had acquired WBD, citing several factors.
Paramount and WBD both have core competencies in news, sports, feature films, and streaming TV, but Netflix has far less overlap. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has repeatedly stated that the company plans to leave its WBD business alone and separate its theatrical business from Netflix while keeping HBO Max as a separate and independent streaming service for the time being.
Netflix also did not acquire WBD’s linear cable business in its bid. Employees from CNN, TNT Sports, and the former Discovery Network would have stayed on to help pave the way for the company to become an independent, publicly traded company.
Currently, WBD employees are looking at the possibility of large-scale layoffs. Chief Strategy Officer Andy Gordon said Paramount executives previously said they planned to save $6 billion by eliminating “duplicate operations” in “back office, finance, corporate, legal, technology, infrastructure and more.” Both WBD and Paramount have already cut thousands of jobs in recent years.
There are also questions about culture and leadership. Mark Thompson currently runs CNN, while Bari Weiss is editor-in-chief of CBS News, and CNN could be added to her purview.
The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Paramount CEO David Ellison promised President Donald Trump that the company would make sweeping changes if he took control of CNN. Three CNN employees who spoke to CNBC said there was widespread concern among colleagues that Weiss would bring about drastic changes in the cable network’s anchors and tone.
“Despite all the speculation you have read during this process, I would encourage you not to jump to conclusions about the future until we have more information,” Thompson said in a memo to employees Thursday.
CNN media reporter Brian Stelter said CNN “is a highly profitable business and its owners would be foolish to risk it.”
On the entertainment side, WBD employees are concerned that having too many cooks in the kitchen could stifle creativity and innovation in both film and television.
One WBD executive noted that Paramount President Jeff Shell, Direct-to-Consumer Chairman Cindy Holland and Television Chairman George Cheeks are all accustomed to being senior leaders of the organization. Shell was CEO of NBCUniversal. Cheeks served as co-CEO of Paramount before its merger with Skydance. Holland spent 18 years as a top executive at Netflix.
How that combination meshes with WBD’s entertainment leadership group is an open question and could lead to a culture clash.
TNT Sports is run by Louis Silberwasser and has primarily steered WBD toward younger audiences through programming decisions and investments such as Bleacher Report and House of Highlights. CBS Sports, on the other hand, is driven by the demographic that watches CBS and has historically catered to an older audience. This can lead to culture clashes, or the departments may mesh well as complementary assets.
Silberwasser, like other divisions, will have to work with CBS Sports President David Berson on employee duplication issues, but there is reason for optimism for the sports division, as WBD and CBS have worked together for years to produce March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. This assumes that each unit has some knowledge of each other.
WBD also lost its NBA rights last season. Combined with CBS’ robust sports rights portfolio, including the NFL and the Masters, WBD will once again be a major player in the sports world, even though it is a subsidiary of CBS.
Another recurring concern among employees is that the deal will result in $64 billion in debt as part of the $111 billion enterprise value. Several employees said large debt payments have hampered WBD in recent years and they fear this could lead to more of the same. Two employees said they feel safe being part of a giant company like Netflix, which has a market capitalization of more than $400 billion. Paramount Skydance’s market valuation is just $15 billion.
