Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav largely evaded questions on NBA talks and Paramount World‘s potential as a WBD merger companion, however he did weigh in on the new matter of govt pay.
“All CEOs must be paid with alignment with shareholders,” he declared. In 2023, a 12 months when his firm’s inventory worth hovered round $10 a share, lower than half of its worth when it started buying and selling in 2022, Zaslav collected a complete payday of $49.7 million, up greater than $10 million from the prior 12 months.
The feedback got here throughout a Milken Convention panel titled “The Company Compass: Charting the Position of the CEO.” Zaslav appeared alongside three different chief executives: EY’s Carmine Di Sibio, Time journal’s Jessica Sibley and FedEx’s Raj Subramaniam.
All through his practically twenty years within the nook workplace, Zaslav has usually turn out to be enmeshed in controversy over govt compensation. In 2021, the 12 months when he spearheaded the $43 billion merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, Zaslav acquired $247 million, of which $203 million got here within the type of choice awards.
“Nearly all of compensation needs to be aligned with the efficiency of the inventory,” the exec mentioned. “If the inventory does properly, then the CEO ought to do actually ought to do a lot better. And if the inventory doesn’t do properly, the CEOs mustn’t. And so, I feel alignment is critically essential.”
Zaslav acknowledged that compensation wound up changing into a difficulty within the twin strikes of 2023, however he mentioned a lot of the labor strife stemmed from “the truth that the trade was altering so shortly.” Negotiating events “didn’t fairly know precisely the best way to pretty compensate and we had been arguing about how do you pretty compensate on a streaming service versus a cable channel. … In the end, the purpose must be pay your folks and have them really feel that they’re paid pretty and seen and valued.”
Zaslav was requested immediately by moderator Andy Serwer in regards to the “scrum” over Paramount World, whose controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is evaluating a number of merger provides. Requested if he’s all for doing a take care of Paramount, which he and former CEO Bob Bakish mentioned final December, Zaslav didn’t provide a simple reply.
“I do know Shari properly they usually have a variety of nice folks there,” he mentioned. “It’s in our curiosity for them to achieve success. So nonetheless it seems, I hope that they’re profitable,” he mentioned. “Our focus is to create extra content material and be on extra platforms so that individuals spend extra time and are keen to spend more cash for what we create.”
Equally, a request for an replace on NBA rights talks netted solely a partial reply. Zaslav mentioned the corporate stays “in constructive negotiations with the NBA.” He added, “It’s an incredible league. The TNT group does a terrific job. And we love the NBA.” Zaslav then took a left flip into the film enterprise and HBO programming, saying it’s a “shared expertise” just like stay sports activities.
With the NBA anticipated to formalize offers within the coming days with Amazon and Disney-ESPN, one main chunk of rights stays contested. NBCUniversal has reportedly made an aggressive provide within the vary of $2.5 billion a 12 months to take over WBD’s place. WBD has the best to match NBCU, however the firm is laboring to pay down debt and is managing by way of a interval of ongoing linear TV decline. Final month, the unique negotiating window for incumbents Disney and WBD expired.