A writer on Netflix’s The Night Agent series, Corey Deshon, went after Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav for allegedly scrapping the original intent of HBO Max as a “younger and more diverse HBO.”
Deshon took to Twitter, where he wrote, “What folks on the outside might not know is that the original intent of HBOMax was to be a ‘younger and more diverse HBO.’ They went out of their way to seek out creatives and develop projects to fit that. Then one overpaid underseasoned turkey breast comes along and destroys it.”
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Deshon continued to appear to deride Zaslav saying, “No amount of public-facing ‘diversity’ can ever overcome the destructive force that is one old white man who believes everything must conform to his personal worldview.”
“We’ll never experience equity or freedom of expression until we free ourselves from that black hole of thought,” he proclaimed.
Deshon concluded, “This industry could be so much more, and the only reason that it isn’t is because less than a dozen men of the same demographic consciously choose for it not to be. What a f***in waste. I’m going back to sleep. See y’all on the picket lines.”
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In a follow-up thread, Deshon made it clear he was targeting Zaslav writing, “You might be asking yourself, why do I single out Zaslav’s bulls**t so much in all of my tweets, compared to the others? Well…”
He then included a clip of a sketch featuring Dave Chapelle reading, “Cause F*** ‘Em, that’s why!”
He then added, “Also because he’s a Trumper who paid himself an egregious amount of money to strategically erase the work of POC, single-handedly setting back industry efforts to target underrepresented communities by at least a decade.”
During the company’s most recent First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call earlier this month, Zaslav noted how much he’s turned the company around since he took it over.
Zaslav said, “On a trailing 12-month basis we generated $2.1 billion in free cash flow even after absorbing $1.2 billion in cash restructuring and merger related costs. Turning to the quarter, while Q1 is seasonally our weakest and we saw challenging revenue headwinds mainly on the linear TV and studio sides, we are on track to achieve this year’s financial targets. And we see a number of positive proof points emerging across our businesses with direct-to-consumer, perhaps, the most prominent.”
“We have strong command and control over our DTC business,” he continued. “We made a meaningful turn this quarter generating $50 million in EBITDA and adding 1.6 million new subscribers. And we feel really good with the trajectory we are on. We now expect our US DTC business to not only break even ahead of schedule, but to be profitable for the year 2023, this year, a year ahead of our guidance. And it’s worth noting that HBO Max and Discovery+ are still only available to less than half of the global streaming market. So there is significant runway ahead of us and we are attacking this opportunity.”
What do you make of Deshon’s disparagement of Zaslav for scrapping what he claims was the original intent of HBO Max?