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Hello enterprise subscribers,
News last week that John Malone was stepping off the Liberty Media board into a chairman emeritus role might have signaled that the billionaire architect of what became the modern cable business is ready to fade away. Don’t bet on it.
What hasn’t received much attention in the past few weeks with the high-profile guessing game of Warner Bros. Discovery’s future is the 84-year-old’s influence with WBD CEO David Zaslav. Malone sits on the WBD board and is one of the company’s largest individual holders of its stock, with nearly 19 million shares, as of April.
More importantly, Malone has been a mentor to, and crucial sounding board for Zaslav for more than two decades. Zaslav, 65, has often referred to Malone as his “Yoda.” The two reportedly talk to each other every day.
To better understand that relationship, I reached out to Mark Robichaux who I have known since our days in the media reporting scrum some 20 years ago. Robichaux is the author of the still-definitive biography of Malone, 2002’s “The Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the rise of the modern cable-TV business” and helped the mogul write his own new book, just published in September, “Born to Wired: Lessons from a Lifetime Transforming Television, Wiring America for the Internet and Growing Formula One, Discovery, Sirius XM and the Atlanta Braves.”
Robichaux made it clear that he’s not speaking from any inside knowledge of recent conversations or about deals.
He did say: “John and David have an almost instinctive understanding of each other — they’ve been trading ideas and building things in parallel for decades. Malone brings the structural genius, the way he can see around corners in a deal, and Zaslav brings the operator’s instinct and relentless energy. Together they’ve built and rebuilt media companies in ways that have shaped the entire industry.”
Malone is a staunch defender of Zaslav. From the new book: “You can’t captain the ship if you listen to all the voices yelling at you. I have watched David in sticky situations many times … I trust him to get this right. You don’t shoot the captain of the ship because the seas are stormy.”
Malone is a “Dr.” and his mind grinds like someone who has a Ph.D. For any media reporter who’s had to cover how he structures his companies and his deals, you know the complexity can make your head explode. We know Malone is tight with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and Barry Diller, with whom he shares ownership of Expedia, so there’s that.
By having Malone in any mix on dealmaking will make the weeks and months ahead far from predictable. And we know Zaslav is listening.
Here’s hoping you spend some time this week with your own Yoda.
Tom Lowry
Senior Vice President/Editorial Strategy
tom.lowry@thewrap.com
1. Sneak Peek on The Funding File On Monday, we will publish another monthly installment of The Funding File, our partnership with PitchBook that digs into the data for venture capital activity in media and entertainment.
We are giving you a first look here in The Reset. See below the year-to-date money flow into startups and young companies for entertainment software, publishing and media and information outfits. October showed the same pacing as September in terms of dollars being invested, and number of deals: 38 deals raising $176 million.
AI was big part of the story with October raises.
Don’t forget to check out the full The Funding File on Monday where we will also share the top M&A deals for October.
2. TV’s 📺 Big Nine One more example here of the migration from linear TV to streaming, showcasing how just a handful of companies command screen time.
See the chart below from Screen Wars Media.
Now that was a week.
In the category of executive wins, Donna Langley notched one of the biggest Ws in recent history in entertainment. Producer Taylor Sheridan jumped ship from his longtime home of Paramount in a $1 billion-plus deal to join NBCU, largely because of Langley’s tactical and relentless pursuit to bag one of streaming TV’s biggest creators.
Here’s a taste of how Langley, the chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment, operates from our founder and Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman’s WaxWord column this past week: “NBCU Chairman Donna Langley flew down twice to Sheridan’s base in Weatherford, Texas, over the past several months to build a relationship with the superstar television showrunner, an individual with knowledge of the deal told WaxWord. Sheridan is the creator of a dozen hits for Paramount starting with ‘Yellowstone’ down to his latest hit ‘Landman,’ and a critical pillar of the studio’s television business.”
Ninety-percent of success is showing up, as they say. And Langley’s air miles paid off.
The 57-year-old British-born executive’s entree to Los Angeles came as a waitress before being hired as an assistant to a talent agent. Then it was on to the launchpad of a career developing film and TV projects from New Line Cinema before ascending to Universal Pictures. In the fickle world of executive leadership in Hollywood, Langley’s tenure running a studio is unusually long and steady, overseeing more than 100 films and TV series a year.
She has been a champion of women in an industry that is still often unforgivingly sexist, serving on the board of the non-profit Vital Voices as well as overseeing other mentoring projects.
What Langley chose to put on her Instagram account to describe herself may just say it all.
“Chairman, Mother, Wife.
Never all on the same day and rarely in that order.”
Langley has been known to cite and repeat a line from a Viola Davis’ acceptance speech: “I hope my ceiling is somebody else’s floor.” Then she adds: “Let’s just keep doing the work. It’s never-ending.” On to the next big GET.
Why So Many Publishers Are Launching Brand Marketing Campaigns Right Now, Adweek
Strategies and Tools for Exhausted Leaders, The Insider, Harvard Business Review
Ed Zitron Gets Paid to Love AI. He Also Gets Paid to Hate AI, Wired