When news broke that AT&T was shedding WarnerMedia to create a new company combined with Discovery — essentially admitting that it never should have bought Time Warner in the first place — it did so without announcing a name for the new venture.
We now have that name. And it's extremely boring. Welcome, "Warner Bros. Discovery." Let's hope nobody tries to shoehorn those three words in to an app title.
The name of the proposed company — it's not a 100 percent done deal yet and will, among other things, still require the feds to sign off — was announced today by Discovery Inc., whose current president and CEO, David Zaslav, will run things. (WarnerMedia head Jason Kilar is on the way out.)
"Warner Bros. Discovery will aspire to be the most innovative, exciting and fun place to tell stories in the world," Zazlov said in a press release. "That is what the company will be about. We love the new company’s name because it represents the combination of Warner Bros.’ fabled hundred year legacy of creative, authentic storytelling and taking bold risks to bring the most amazing stories to life, with Discovery’s global brand that has always stood brightly for integrity, innovation and inspiration."
There's nothing particularly bold or risky about the name, of course, mashing up "Warner Bros.," whose movies and shows made up a large part of WarnerMedia, and "Discovery." More bold and risky, however, is the inclusion of this tagline: "The stuff that dreams are made of." It's a line from the classic 1941 Humphrey Bogart Warner Bros. flick The Maltese Falcon. Let's hope the young folks doing all the streaming these days can pick up on that.
Still no word on whether it'll mean a re-branding of HBO Max, which just celebrated its first birthday as the streaming home for all things WarnerMedia, or whether it'll mean a new streaming service is forthcoming. But in any event, the merger will mean a new company with nearly 200,000 hours of programming and 100 brands under one roof. Stay tuned.
