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Wednesday, April 6, 2022

CEO Jason Kilar EXITS WarnerMedia


Jason Kilar, the head of WarnerMedia, who came aboard with ambitious plans for the company’s stand-alone streaming service and wound up serving half his tenure effectively as a lame duck, announced on Tuesday that he was leaving the company.

The NY Times reports the departure, which had been widely expected, comes days before WarnerMedia is set to complete a merger with Discovery and a new team assumes leadership.

“Leading this team has been the honor my lifetime,” Mr. Kilar wrote in a memo to staff. “My heart is so full, and I am beyond thankful to each of you. There is no better team on the planet, and I will savor every last step as I wander the lot in Burbank several more times this week, with this team on my mind always.”

Kilar was hired by John Stankey, the chief executive of AT&T, WarnerMedia’s parent company, in April 2020, just weeks into a pandemic and a month before HBO Max, the company’s streaming service, was set to debut.

Kilar, a founder of Hulu and a veteran of Amazon, was focused on getting the company’s streaming service onto steady ground.

Just as Mr. Kilar was enacting his vision, his bosses at AT&T were secretly planning their exit from the entertainment business. In February 2021, Stankey began discussions with David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, about a merger, a conversation that continued into March and April.

Stankey kept Mr. Kilar in the dark about the deal until days before it was announced in May. Zaslav will take over the combined Warner Bros. Discovery company once the merger is final.

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