# David Zaslav **David Zaslav** is the media executive who built Discovery into a cable powerhouse, merged it with WarnerMedia in 2022 to create [[Warner Bros. Discovery]], and then sold WBD to the Ellisons' Paramount Skydance in 2026. He **left the company when that deal closed on October 6, 2026**, with a golden parachute that shareholders had voted against. His tenure is the vault's case study of a media company run for the deal rather than the newsroom. ## Career - **Discovery CEO, 2007–22.** He turned a documentary network into a portfolio of cable channels (HGTV, Food Network, TLC). - **WBD CEO, 2022–26.** The $43B merger with AT&T's [[WarnerMedia]] left a heavy debt load. His answer was deep cuts: write-offs of finished films, layoffs, and cancelled shows. - **CNN.** He installed [[Chris Licht]] at [[CNN]] in 2022 with a mandate to move the network toward the center, then fired him a year later. ## The sale In June 2025 WBD announced a plan to split into two companies. That December it agreed to sell its studios and streaming to Netflix. Paramount Skydance went hostile, and in February 2026 Zaslav took its $31-a-share offer for the whole company. The deal closed on October 6, 2026; see [[Paramount Skydance - Warner Bros. Discovery Deal]]. ## Pay | Year | What happened | |---|---| | 2024 | Pay of $51.9M; in June 2025 only about 40% of shareholders backed it in the advisory vote | | June 2025 | Ten days later, a new contract with about 21M options worth more than $100M | | 2025 | Pay of about **$165M**, more than triple 2024 | | Apr 23, 2026 | Shareholders reject his golden parachute (about **$887M**, including about $335M to cover excise taxes) in a non-binding vote, on ISS's advice | | June 9, 2026 | 84% vote against the pay plan (one source) | The votes were advisory, so the board could pay anyway. The figure widely reported at closing, about $550M, excludes the tax gross-up. ## See Also - [[Warner Bros. Discovery]] · [[Paramount Skydance - Warner Bros. Discovery Deal]] · [[Skydance Media]] · [[Skydance-Paramount]] - [[Chris Licht]] · [[CNN]] · [[CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery Timeline]] · [[David Ellison]]