“I’ve been impressed by the leadership team,” said Charles Barkley a day before the figurative fan met a smelly vengeance. We were enjoying Sir Charles calling off retirement and staying at TNT yesterday. Then Warner Bros. Discovery suffered a new setback since losing the NBA. Turner’s parent company stock took a massive freefall to near all-time lows. WBD reported a $9.1 billion loss in write-down. But with impairment expenses, the overall loss is a reported $11.2 billion. The blowback is to be felt all over this merged organism of studio franchises and cable diaspora.

Yesterday we were anticipating Barkley developing a new era for TNT after NBA and possibly keeping the cast and crew he’s attached to. In 24 hours, the anxiety is back about how TNT will cut its losses.

Inside Guys the face of TNT’s rebranding

Under David Zaslav, Warner Bros studios and its cable subsidiaries merged into one entity in 2022. That year the Inside Guys renewed their contracts for 10 years. Simultaneously, Zaslav said that they don’t need the NBA. As much as everyone, including Chuck, would disagree, it sounds like they were planning on rebranding its sports catalog.

TNT Sports has been on a spree of gaining sports rights. They lost the NBA but they have the NCAA men’s basketball, Big East basketball, the College Football Playoffs, Roland Garros, and more. Insider rumors claim they plan to turn Inside the NBA into a general sports show with their star crew. Barkley called off retirement to develop new shows while seeing through his $210 million contract.

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They got a massive boost in the streaming side since expanding in Latin America – around 103 million subscribers. It probably is one of the reasons why TNT Sports was confident about matching Amazon and its 200 million worldwide subscribers for the NBA.

Now Turner is in crisis mode considering its stocks have plunged about 70% since the merger in 2022. WBD’s revenue is $9.7 billion, well below analysts’ quarterly predictions. The losses are majorly in the DTC businesses as a shift to streaming is directly proportional to cord-cutting. But given the enmeshed nature of the Warner empire, the impact is felt in every corner. It’s also limiting its options.

Zaslav announced another round of layoffs that will cost 1,000 jobs recently. It might not be the last but no on-air personalities have been affected. WBD can’t cut out bigger assets unless they want to create a new mess over its content. It’s instead looking into offloading smaller assets.

They include detachable intellectual property from their gaming arm like the Potter Universe or Mortal Kombat and stakes in international networks. But there’s word of a nuclear option, selling off some of its legacy networks.

Is TNT part of WBD’s recovery plan?

Other than some of the biggest franchises under the Warner Media umbrella, WBD’s crown jewels include networks like CNN, TLC, Animal Planet, and HBO. A corporate breakup could make operational costs of these networks extremely dicey. Yet there are rumors that the firm could try a strategic breakdown where its growing streaming arm, Max, and the studio would not be affected by the entire stock drop in the cable side.

Apparently WBD has informally reached out to advisers from outside media groups as well as Paramount and NBCUniversal. The details of these discussions are not known. But a small faction on social media speculates a scenario where NBC – the NBA’s new media partner – would acquire TNT Sports. After all, other networks are keen on poaching the Inside Guys. But this is still very speculative.

WBD has not enlisted a bank to make a transaction. And they’d rather de-merge within themselves than do a corporate amputation. It’s not even clear which DTC business would be the sacrifice.

Wall Street analysts state WBD needs to look into strategic options like separating its linear media from streaming services. They also believe this is a fluid situation and not as apocalyptic as it might seem inside WBD.

Stay tuned for more such updates and join us for the exciting second episode of the “Dual Threat Show” as our host BG12 sits down with Georgia Bulldogs star and Mountain West All-Freshman Team Selection, Asia Avinger