David Zaslav kills everything he touches, including GQ
I should not know who David Zaslav is. I didn’t know who any of the big media CEOs were back when I was a happy little child, and I shouldn’t have to know who any of them are now. I should be able to fire up HBO Max, see that it’s still called HBO Max, treat myself to two horrible, horrible hours of a “Batgirl” movie, and then read a satisfyingly catty review of it in GQ.
Alas, I’m not that lucky. Because Zaslav is the man in charge of frankencorp Warner Bros. Discovery and, in an impressively short period of time, has managed to f—k up nearly everything within its considerable portfolio. Freelance writer Jason Bailey attempted to note all of those f—k-ups for posterity just this week, when he wrote an article for GQ excoriating Zaslav for his pathetic stewardship of WBD. It noted all of Zaslav’s lowlights, which I will repeat here for reasons that will soon become evident.
Zaslav wrote off that “Batgirl” movie rather than formally release it. He did NOT write off and bury “The Flash,” even though its titular star was an allegedly choke-happy asshole and the movie itself was something that even McG wouldn’t have put his name on (it tanked). He hired a clearly in-over-his-head Chris Licht to oversee CNN, only for Licht to destroy morale within that company even faster than Zaslav could have on his own (Licht has since been fired). And it’s not like CNN was my favorite news source in the universe prior to this. You have to really try to make CNN more inane than it already was. Zaslav did.
Somehow, it gets worse. Zaslav reduced HBO, the most valuable brand name in television, to a “brand hub” on a rebranded Max streaming service. He memory-holed a great many other films and shows that were released — HBO’s “Westworld” series being the most visible of them — from that same service to avoid paying residuals. He changed all of the specified film credits on Max to “creator,” changing them back only after his people said that it was the result of a technical oversight, which no one believes. And he gutted an already highly profitable and artistically priceless TCM, seemingly more for fun than for anything else.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
All of these changes were not only unwelcome but also NOTICEABLE. Same as if Dan Snyder owned your favorite NFL team. That’s why Zaslav got booed by students at Boston University while trying to give a commencement speech. It’s why striking Writers Guild of America writers, myself included, have made him the face of studio bosses who want to reduce TV and film writing jobs to gig work. It’s why Zaslav’s crimes against both art and basic consumer preferences need to be put on the record. It’s why Bailey wrote what he wrote, and why he was right to do so: posterity, so that we all know who’s to blame for this f—kery and why they deserve to be remanded to a space prison.
This was a damning blog post but also still just a blog post. All damning stuff but all easily ignored if you’re a captain of industry. Lord knows such men have capably ignored similar attempts to own them online.
Zaslav didn’t ignore it. Quite the contrary. According to Will Sommer in the Washington Post, a Zaslav spokesperson called GQ to complain about Bailey’s post, after which an unidentified GQ editor dumbed it down (see the changes on Archive.today; Bailey refused to put his byline on them). Then GQ deleted the post entirely and told WaPo that the piece “was not properly edited before going live,” which I don’t believe because I worked at GQ from 2012 to 2019 and never had anything run that hadn’t gone through at least one round of proper and occasionally painful edits, if not many more. Keep in mind that the New York Times has already reported that GQ assigned Bailey this piece, with the explicit pitch that Zaslav was the “most hated man in Hollywood.” GQ knew what it was doing, and it knew what kind of paper-skinned loser it would piss off when it did it.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME
Knowing this, GQ could have, should have, stood by its reporter, especially given that he was a freelancer just trying to earn a living. Maybe if former Editor-in-Chief Jim Nelson was still in charge of the place, it would have. That GQ was both thorough and undaunted. But Variety just reported that current Editor-in-Chief Will Welch is attached as a producer on an upcoming Warner Brothers film that’s based on a GQ story and that he was one of the editors Zaslav’s stooges complained to. So it’s not hard to connect the dots as to why his GQ would abandon its journalistic principles just to please Zaslav. (Multiple sources within GQ told SFGATE they weren't even aware of the controversy until it became public; Bailey politely declined to talk to me for this piece.)
As someone who adored working at GQ, I cannot begin to tell you how much all of this disappoints me. I worked for Nelson. I also worked for the people who annihilated Deadspin and just published their first post written by a bot instead of an actual person. I know the difference between these two leadership styles, and it is stark. You can see it right in the product, and you can see it everywhere in Zaslav’s leadership. Not only is this man a terrible CEO, but he’s also an imperious coward who’s more than willing to swat down anyone who dares question his authority. Our worst kind of rich person.
Maybe Zaslav was able to get Welch to back down from public criticism, but my bosses here at SFGATE won’t be similarly cowed. So, for the permanent record, let me state all of this again flatly: David Zaslav is an eel who sucks at his job. He’s destroying HBO. He’s destroyed what bare credibility the DC Universe had left with moviegoers. He’s forced GQ to willingly debase itself. He’s destroyed TCM. And while he couldn’t get Licht to destroy CNN, he’ll find some other pair of docksiders to finish the job.
It’s a fact that, in an age of mass consolidation, no one person could possibly run all of a billion-dollar entertainment conglomerate effectively. But David Zaslav has distinguished himself not only by being unable to run ANY part of one but also by being such a brazen coward about that fact. I shouldn’t know who this man is. But here he is, and now he should deal, in full, with what he’s wrought. He’s a parasite: a terrible CEO, an enemy to artists, and a lousy, horrible graduation speaker to boot. I hope he’s strapped to a chair and forced to watch “The Flash” on repeat for the rest of his pathetic little existence. And no, I’m not deleting this.
Source: SFGATE
