“I would far prefer this adventure to go on for 10, 20 years, but that’s not the way corporate America works,” outgoing WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar admitted today.
“The last year and a half have been among the most fulfilling of my professional life,” the man who invoked Hollywood’s wrath with his decision late last year to move all of Warner Bros 2021 slate to same day release on HBO Max told MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle today at the Code Conference with no small degree of nuance.
“I will be running WarnerMedia in Q1,” Kilar, a tightly smiling man, declared his happiness later on in the sit-down. He also avoided answering questions about future plans. However, the controlled executive allowed a peek into his true state of mind when asked by Ruhle is he was disappointed at the coming end of his WarnerMedia tenure: “I’m human, so in that context, yes.”
Facing a sell-by date of next year once AT&T’s planned multi-billion spinoff of WarnerMedia into a new entity run by Discovery CEO David Zaslav takes hold, pending regulatory approval, Kilar’s future is in flux. As to what role Kilar could have in the new company, AT&T CEO John Stankey called the former Hulu CEO a “fantastic talent,” but punted on specifics.
“David’s got decisions he’s gotta make across a broad cross-section of how he wants to organize the business and who will be in what roles moving forward in this transition period,” According to the former WarnerMedia chief and telecommunications boss, Kilar could be back at AT&T.
Whispers are that Kilar could end up back at Amazon, where he was one of Jeff Bezos’ brain trust execs from 1997 to 2006. If joining up again with the now Andy Jassy run everything giant doesn’t come to pass, the bet is the ambitious Kilar will find a perch high up in the tech world one way or another. Perhaps leaning into that, Kilar said “I won’t bet against Andy” and praised Bezos before the well-heeled Beverly Hilton crowd.
Promising to spend “north of 18” billion dollars on content over the next year in the competitive streaming space of Netflix, AppleTV+, Disney+, Amazon Prime and more, Kilar acknowledged he botched the landing with his late 2020 decision to take a hybrid release approach with Warner’s 17-movie slate. “We endeavored to do the right thing in terms of communication,” Kilar said. “Change is hard,” Kilar also noted and exclaimed he and his team should have spent a month or more time having “170 conversations” with creatives, talent and agencies.
“Our intentions were good.”
Unfortunately, those intentions have been rebuffed by hard facts.
Since May 17, when AT&T announced a $43 billion deal to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery in a separate new entity, the telecom giant’s shares have dropped 19%. Today’s trading session ended at $27.24, a slight decline from their previous high of $27.34. (Discovery’s have fallen 34%, suggesting Wall Street wariness of the transaction, which is still under regulatory review.)
The lag in AT&T’s share price is nothing new. Apart from brief spurts of optimism about the company’s forays into entertainment with the acquisitions of Time Warner and DirecTV, shares have largely moved sideways for a decade. Unlike the institutional control of most other blue-chip stocks, 48% of AT&T shares are owned by individual investors. This structure means that the company must use its financial resources to pay quarterly dividends, rather than redirecting funds for debt repayment or any other purpose.
The Code Conference will continue until tomorrow.
Dade Hayes contributed in this report