In September, the day before news broke that Paramount was lining up a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the action that ultimately led to the seismic news that Netflix is buying the hallowed studio for $83B, Gunnar Wiedenfels was in the Food Network Kitchen for a ceremonial “passing of the baton” to discuss him running a newly spunoff cable group.
The split, to create Discovery Global, was officially put on pause before Thanksgiving as it looked like David Ellison’s company would swallow all of WBD. However, now that Netflix is only buying the studios and streaming side of WBD, it appears Wiedenfels will get his own mini-empire after all.
Wiedenfels, his current boss David Zaslav and WBD’s Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell just concluded a leadership call with around 150 top employees, Deadline understands, where some of the potential financial details and structure of the new company were discussed.
Watch on Deadline
Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery said earlier that the latter’s Global Networks Division will be separated into a new publicly-traded company, which is expected to be completed in Q3 of 2026.
It will include cable networks such as CNN, Discovery Channel, TNT, HGTV, Animal Planet, Food Network, Investigation Discovery, TLC, TruTV, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network as well as Warner Bros. International Television Production, which will ostensibly become the in-house production arm of this group.
While the vast majority of the focus around Hollywood will be on Netflix owning HBO, DC Studios, Harry Potter and one of the most cherished movie libraries (which one exec called like a “futuristic sci-fi movie where one place delivers all entertainment”), the deal will also essentially recreate Discovery Communications with a few more networks.
Discovery plus, if you will.
The company still operates some of the biggest networks around; TLC, HGTV, Discovery and Food Network are top 15 networks excluding news channels.
But while many of these networks have had their programming budgets cut over the last few years as the focus has been on streaming but they still make a lot of television shows.
Discovery Channel has franchises such as Naked and Afraid, which could well describe the state of the new business, Gold Rush and Deadliest Catch; HGTV has hits like The Flip Off; TBS has the Impractical Jokes franchise; TLC has the 90 Day Fiancé franchise and reality series with Alec Baldwin and his family and Investigation Discovery has been pulling up trees in true-crime with the likes of Quiet on Set, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace and The Fall of Diddy.
The new group will also likely include Chip and Joanna Gaines, two of Zaslav’s favorite talents. Magnolia, the Allison Page-run network the Fixer Upper pair created, previously sat under the purview of HBO boss Casey Bloys, but it was recently moved under Discovery Global.
There have been questions around the ownership of IP, however, with the split, many of which haven’t been answered.
These include major questions around sports rights, particularly the Olympics in Europe, which will have to be answered and Wiedenfels and Campbell are understood to have quarreled about these in the past, while there will undoubtedly be a change of control clause in its deal with the International Olympics Committee (IOC). “The idea of Netflix having the Olympics is pretty f*cking crazy,” one source told Deadline.
CNN is also a whole other topic that will likely be discussed ad nauseam, particularly in Washington.
The thousands of employees who will work on the Discovery side of the business are now waiting to hear more about its plans, which may now look remarkably similar to those of Versant, the collection of cable networks that Comcast-owned NBCUniversal is spinning off.
“It seems like we’re going to be wading through the mud for the next 18 months,” concluded one staffer.