Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It was formed on April 8, 2022, through the merger of Discovery, Inc. with AT&T subsidiary WarnerMedia.
Warner Bros. Discovery operated via two divisions: Streaming & Studios and Global Linear Networks. Streaming & Studios includes the flagship Warner Bros. studios, HBO, DC Entertainment, and streaming services such as HBO Max and Discovery+. Global Linear Networks largely includes advertising-supported cable networks. Those networks were inherited from its predecessors Discovery (such as the Discovery Channel among others), Scripps Networks Interactive (such as HGTV among others), and Turner Broadcasting System (however, it closed down in 2019) (such as CNN, TBS, and TNT among others). Warner Bros. Discovery International is also included in the division, which manages broadcasting operations outside of the United States.
In June 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to spin off the less-profitable Global Linear Networks division and its debt as a separate company, retaining the more profitable Streaming & Studios division. However, on October 21, 2025, the company changed course and was put on sale, resulting in a bidding war that involved Paramount Skydance, Comcast, and Netflix; in December 2025, Netflix won the bidding war to buy the Streaming & Studios business for $82.7 billion. Paramount Skydance outbid them with a $110.9 billion offer for the entire company on February 24, 2026, with the acquisition agreement confirmed three days later. The acquisition closed on October 6, 2026; following that, Paramount Skydance was restructured and renamed to Skydance Corporation and its stock was transferred to the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "SKYD".
Background
1923–1979 Warner Bros., Turner Broadcasting System, Scripps Networks Interactive and Discovery, Inc. have conjoined histories. Warner Bros. was founded on April 4, 1923, by four brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner in Hollywood. Warner Bros. established itself as a leader in the American film industry before diversifying into animation, television, and video games. It is one of the "Big Five" American film studios, as well as a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). In 1965, Turner Broadcasting System was founded by Ted Turner in Atlanta, Georgia. A year later, Kinney National Company came into existence. It reincorporated as Warner Communications in 1972.
1979–1996 In 1979, Warner Communications formed a joint venture with credit card company American Express called Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment. American Express acquired a 50% stake in Warner Communications' cable television holdings for $175 million. This company owned such cable channels as MTV, Nickelodeon, The Movie Channel, and VH1 (which was launched in 1985 on the channel space left by Turner's Cable Music Channel). Warner Communications bought American Express's half in 1984 and sold the venture a year later to the original iteration of Viacom, which renamed it MTV Networks (now known as Paramount Media Networks). In 1982, Warner Communications purchased Popular Library from CBS Publications. Warner Communications merged with Time Inc. in 1990 to become Time Warner.
In 1982, Cable Education Network was founded, launching The Discovery Channel three years later. It was named Discovery Communications in 1994.
1996–2021 Time Warner acquired Turner Broadcasting System in 1996, allowing it to reenter the cable industry. In 2001, it merged with America Online (AOL) to form AOL Time Warner, but the merger proved disastrous, and the company reverted to its former name, Time Warner, in 2003. Time Warner spun off its cable division (later known as Spectrum, owned by Charter Communications) in 2009, AOL (later owned by Yahoo! Inc.) in 2009, and Time Inc. in 2013, which was later acquired by Meredith Corporation and became Dotdash Meredith.
In 2018, Discovery Communications acquired Scripps Networks Interactive (a 2008 spun off from E. W. Scripps Company's cable division) and was renamed as Discovery, Inc. AT&T acquired Time Warner, becoming WarnerMedia. In 2019, AT&T integrated its related assets into Warner's business divisions as part of its reorganization, effectively breaking up Turner Broadcasting System.
History Formation (2021–2022)
On May 17, 2021, AT&T and Discovery announced that AT&T would spin off WarnerMedia to its shareholders, which in turn would be merged with Discovery Inc. to form Warner Bros. Discovery. The merger would be structured as a Reverse Morris Trust, with AT&T shareholders holding a 71% interest in the new company's stock and appointing seven board members, and Discovery shareholders holding a 29% interest and appointing six board members. AT&T would receive US$43 billion in cash and debt. The merger was expected to be completed in mid-2022.
The merged company would be led by Discovery's current CEO, David Zaslav; WarnerMedia's CEO Jason Kilar's position in the new company was uncertain. Zaslav stated that the two companies would spend a combined US$20 billion annually on content (outpacing Netflix). The company aimed to expand their streaming services, which included WarnerMedia's HBO Max, to reach 400 million global subscribers.
On June 1, 2021, it was announced that the merged company would be known as Warner Bros. Discovery, and an interim wordmark was unveiled with the tagline "The stuff that dreams are made of"—a quote from the 1941 Warner Bros. film The Maltese Falcon, itself paraphrasing Shakespeare's The Tempest.
In an SEC Filing on November 18, 2021, Discovery revealed that talks with AT&T had fallen through, in April 2021, due to disagreements over the ownership of the new company between AT&T and Discovery shareholders, and the amount of debt transferred to Discovery when they merged with WarnerMedia, before talks resumed on May 17, 2021.
In November 2021, during an earnings call, Discovery Streaming CEO JB Perrette discussed possible options for its Discovery+ streaming service post-merger, including bundling the service with HBO Max and eventually merging them under a single platform with a mixture of both companies' technologies. He noted that WBD may prioritize launching Discovery+ and HBO Max as a unified platform in markets where Discovery+ had yet to launch, such as other parts of Asia-Pacific.
On December 22, 2021, the transaction was approved by the European Commission. On January 5, 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that WarnerMedia and Paramount Global (at the time named ViacomCBS) were exploring a possible sale of either a majority stake or all of The CW, and that Nexstar Media Group was considered a leading bidder. The reports also indicated that WarnerMedia and ViacomCBS could include a contractual commitment that would require any new owner to buy new programming from those companies, allowing them to reap some continual revenue through the network. The CW's then-president-and-CEO Mark Pedowitz confirmed talks of a potential sale in a memo to CW staffers, but added that "It's too early to speculate what might happen."
On January 26, 2022, AT&T CEO John Stankey stated that the merger was expected to close sometime during the second quarter of 2022. On February 1, 2022, it was reported that AT&T had finalized the structure of the merger: WarnerMedia would be spun off pro rata to AT&T's shareholders, and then merge into Discovery Inc. to form the new company. The transaction was approved by the Brazilian antitrust regulator Cade on February 7, followed by the United States Department of Justice on February 9. On March 11, 2022, the merger was approved by Discovery's shareholders. Due to the structure of the merger, it did not require separate approval from AT&T shareholders.
In an SEC filing on March 25, 2022, AT&T stated that two-way trading of WBD stock with that of AT&T would begin on April 4, 2022, and that a special dividend would be issued the next day to give AT&T shareholders a 0.24 share in WBD for each share of AT&T common stock they held. The merger was officially completed on April 8, 2022. Trading began on Nasdaq on April 11. At this time the company unveiled its final logo, designed by Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, which features a rendition of Warner Bros.' long-time shield logo.
The combined company retained several top executives from WarnerMedia, including film and television heads Toby Emmerich and Channing Dungey, and HBO and HBO Max chief content officer (CCO) Casey Bloys. Most of the company's top executive roles are filled by their Discovery counterparts, including Gunnar Wiedenfels as Warner Bros. Discovery's chief financial officer (CFO), JB Perrette as president and CEO of global streaming and interactive, and Discovery's chief lifestyle brands officer Kathleen Finch—whose role expanded to cover most of the combined company's U.S. linear networks, besides CNN (which was taken over by Chris Licht, replacing the outgoing Jeff Zucker), Magnolia Network (which reported to Bloys, after reporting directly to Zaslav under Discovery), and the Turner Sports unit (which would be overseen by the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery Sports division).
In an introductory town hall hosted by Oprah Winfrey, Zaslav stated that the combined company would need to have "one culture" that "starts with people feeling safe, people feeling valued for who they are", as opposed what he described as a culture of internal competition between WarnerMedia's businesses. He expected that "investment avoidance" via the consolidation of redundant business units (such as streaming) and staff would be one of the main ways that the company would achieve its promised $3 billion in cost savings. On April 21, 2022, Licht and Perrette announced the shutdown of CNN's streaming service CNN+, which had launched only two weeks prior to the completion of the merger; the new leadership considered it to be incompatible with their goal of a unified streaming service for WBD properties.
In an investors' call on April 26 (concurrent with the first quarter earnings reports for Discovery Inc., its last prior to the merger), Zaslav contrasted the company's streaming businesses with Netflix (whose stock declined after a quarterly loss in subscribers), describing Warner Bros. Discovery as a "far more balanced and competitive company" that would "invest at scale smartly" and not "overspend" on growth and that its streaming businesses would complement its linear networks. He stated that HBO Max had "meaningful subscriber churn", and that the planned merger of it with Discovery+ would help to reduce churn by offering a broader content mix. It was reported that the company had suspended scripted development at TBS and TNT, to evaluate their strategies. The following day, Zaslav purchased approximately $1 million worth of WBD stock.
On May 11, 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery eliminated several executive positions carried over from WarnerMedia, including Kids, Young Adults and Classics head Tom Ascheim, and general manager of TBS, TNT, and TruTV head Brett Weitz. These networks would be overseen by Finch as head of U.S. Networks, while the studios and one network under the Kids, Young Adults and Classics division (Warner Bros. Animation, Cartoon Network Studios, Turner Classic Movies and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe) was moved under Warner Bros. Television. That day, it announced an agreement with British telecom company BT Group for it to contribute its BT Sport channels into a 50/50 joint venture with its UK Eurosport channels, and eventually merge them.