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The Secret Power Behind Zazworld

It’s the Newhouses, not John Malone, who will have the leverage to help Zaslav steer the soon-to-be Warner Bros. Discovery toward streaming glory.

Steven Newhouse
Photo by Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty
William D. Cohan
February 16, 2022

The conventional wisdom has it that John Malone—or Dr. John Malone as he is referred to in public securities filings, presumably because of his Ph.D. in operations research from Johns Hopkins University—is the power behind David Zaslav’s throne, and that Malone will be the man pulling Zaslav’s strings as he prepares to take control of Hollywood’s latest flashy toy, Warner Bros. Discovery. And that might make some sense, at least in a New York-L.A. parlor game sort of way.