AT&T may join the likes of Disney, Comcast, CBS and Fox in bidding for live sports rights, as new WarnerMedia Chair of News & Sports Jeff Zucker said the subsidiary "will certainly continue to be a significant player in the sports-rights arena," according to Brian Steinberg of VARIETY. Zucker added WarnerMedia will "continue to be aggressive when appropriate and strategic." Zucker said that he has "already made outreach to the commissioners of the major sports leagues." Steinberg noted many traditional and digital media companies are "focused on the next cycle of rights" for the NFL, which will come up for renewal in '21 and '22. Zucker said AT&T is "not going to take anything off the table." However, Zucker also said that he "does not expect to manage AT&T sports business day to day." He will instead have "larger oversight of the business, and he likened the relationship to the company's sports properties to the one he had with NBC Sports when he was CEO of NBCUniversal" from '07-10. Zucker said that he "expects to put more emphasis on Bleacher Report and CNN's digital properties" going forward. He said, "Turner Sports has been incredibly well run and incredibly successful, and I'd just like to make sure I don't screw that up" (VARIETY.com, 3/4).
TOP-DOWN CHANGES: WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey, on the resignations of Turner President David Levy and HBO Chair & CEO Richard Plepler after 32 and 27 years, respectively, said, "I was disappointed but I don't know that I was completely surprised. When you have someone who had a tremendous amount of autonomy, they tend to covet that." In N.Y., Lee & Koblin cite sources as saying that Stankey "plans to be a much more active steward" of WarnerMedia than its executives had anticipated. He has begun to "consolidate advertising, distribution and production departments across Turner and HBO," as well as other functions such as HR, accounting and technology. Sources said that those moves "effectively took away large chunks of matters once overseen" by Plepler and Levy (N.Y. TIMES, 3/5).
NEW LOOK: The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Joe Flint noted the Turner unit -- which included TNT, TBS, CNN and the Cartoon Network -- was "essentially dissolved." TNT, TBS and other channels will now be part of new WarnerMedia Entertainment Chair Robert Greenblatt's "entertainment business," while CNN will be "part of a newly created sports and news division." The "deepest cuts are likely to occur at Turner, which accounted for roughly as much operating income at Time Warner as HBO and Warner Bros. combined." Consolidation could "force more jobs to relocate from Turner's longtime base in Atlanta" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/5).
