“We believe in the assets we’re buying, and there’s no plans to divest or spin off a package of cable assets at this time. And, in particular, we actually think, given the brands that Warner Bros. is bringing to Paramount, there are a lot of opportunities to think about all the different aspects of what they can do, both on the linear side and the digital side … So that’s our plan right now,” said Gordon.
Expressed another way: “We believe that many of our linear channels have incredible brand that can be reinvigorated for a streaming and digital world.”
Pressed on whether there were any assets at all that feel non-core and could be divested to reduce leverage, he said, “No. Very simply, we have no divestitures planned at this time.”
Comcast recently spun out most NBCUniversal cable networks into a new stand-alone public company called Versant. WBD was planning to do the same in its previous agreement with Netflix by separating its programming assets into another company called Discovery Global.
The deal Netflix inked with WBD last December was just for the Warner Bros studios and streaming assets. Warner terminated that deal last week after receiving a superior offer from Paramount, which is buying WBD in its entirety.
Maybe there’s some life left in cable… or maybe Paramount has other plans for its new cable properties.