Warner Bros. Discovery has at long last crossed 100 million direct-to-consumer subscribers — but that will not be what the second quarter of 2024 is remembered for. No, the history books will mark spring 2024 as the time WBD realized its TV networks were worth $9 billion less than it originally thought.
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President and CEO David Zaslav doesn’t want to talk about it. His prepared remarks accompanying the company’s Q2 2024 financials:
“At Warner Bros. Discovery, our top priority is our global direct-to-consumer business and we are extremely pleased with the growing momentum we are seeing, as demonstrated by another strong quarter of growth with 3.6 million net adds, fueled by our ongoing international expansion and investment in high quality, diverse content. In light of industry headwinds, we have and will continue taking bold steps, like reimagining our existing linear partnerships and pursuing new bundling opportunities, with the goal to get Max on the devices of more consumers faster and at a fraction of the acquisition cost, and we are seeing clear evidence that these and other actions we are taking will help drive segment profitability in the second half of the year and into 2025 and beyond.”
You, ah, left something out there, David. (But can you blame him?)
Zaslav and his CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels will be forced to face the matter on this afternoon’s coming conference call with media analysts. We’ll be there.
Certainly, Zas will attempt to steer much of the Q&A back to his solid subscriber growth. With those 3.6 million new subs, Max, Discovery+, and linear HBO now total 103.3 million subs. But even that segment lost money ($107 million) in Q2. All told, the company posted a massive $10 billion loss in the quarter, primarily due to the reevaluation of its asset portfolio.
To say it was a mixed bag is the understatement of the summer (about the spring).
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At the box office, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” flopped in the quarter, but “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” (its opening weekend was in Q1) was a pleasant surprise . The second half of 2024, with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Joker: Folie à Deux” should be kinder to Warner Bros.
Small-screen highlights for the recently-wrapped quarter include the first chunk of “House of the Dragon” Season 2. “Hacks” Season 3 performed well and “Dune: Part Two” pitched in for film (on Max).
As previously announced, Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and Fox plan on launching sports-centric streaming service Venu ($42.99 per month) this fall. Unless Fubo — or the U.S. government — gets its way.
Earlier on Wednesday, Disney reported its own earnings from the quarter. The company turned a profit from streaming for the first time since Disney+ launched, despite modest (at best) subscriber growth.
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