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CNN’s Bari Christmas

In the wake of Netflix’s Warner Bros. coup, the folks at CNN are, perhaps naively, looking on the bright side: They may not have to work for Bari Weiss after all. But times in Spinoffville are going to get tough—and fast.

Bari Weiss
Unsurprisingly, the majority of CNN insiders impulsively view this as a better outcome than being owned by David Ellison, who until now had been seen as the frontrunner to acquire all of the WBD assets. Mostly, they seem relieved that they will not have to work for Bari Weiss, the crusading Free Press founder and newly appointed CBS News editor-in-chief who was set to expand her remit to a combined CNN-CBS newsroom if Ellison had landed the deal. Photo: Mike Vitelli/BFA.com for TimesTalks
Dylan Byers
December 5, 2025

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On Friday, shortly after Ted Sarandos announced that Netflix had reached a landmark deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming and studio business, a buyside source noted the depressing symmetry of David Zaslav’s three-and-a-half-year journey through the public market. On its first day of trading, in April 2022, WBD opened at $24.08 a share. After news of the Netflix deal broke, it was trading about a dollar or two higher. In that same period, the S&P 500 had grown by 58 percent. “So Zaz stewardship underperformed the market by that,” the source said. “And he was well compensated for this underperformance!” (To the tune of around $660 million, per CNBC.)