What content is going to help us?
How many people do we need?
What should HBO look like?
WGA Strikers, David ZaslavGetty Images
What should Warner Brothers look like?
And so we really decided that we have to have courage, weve got to figure it out.
ItcanceledBatgirllast year, raising the first big ruckus.
Sorkin asked about accounting, which allows companys to take write-downs.
The accounting piece is really a misnomer, Zaslav said.
We dont have any real benefit from it.
And Warner Brothers team and HBO made a number of decisions.
But when I look at the health of our company today, we needed to make those decisions.
And it took real courage.
And here we are 20 months later, the company paid back…$12 billion in debt.
We had to make a lot of very difficult decisions.
On the writers and actors strikes, the chief executive said he fought to end.
But he sidestepped a question about his high compensation, which was a rallying cry on the picket lines.
How do you deal with that personally?
And how do you think about that?
My focus was we need to settle this strike.
This is really hurting people.
Every day that we were on strike, that people werent working was a bad day, replied Zaslav.
Media CEOs are known for higher than the average pay but Zaslavs packages have stood out.
His compensation for 2021 was worth $247 million with stock options valued then at $203 million.
His package for 2022 fell to $39 million.
Pay is disclosed each spring for the previous year for companies on a calendar year.
That cash flow, needed to pay down hefty debt, has been rising, the stock has not.
Zaslav said the change was a board decision.
I did fight, and Bob Iger.
There was a bunch of us trying to end it, he added of the strikes.
I believe what I said.
