This Was the Week That Cable TV Died

As Bruce Springsteen might sing today about cable TV : 57 channels, and nothin’ is worth much . Cable television was born in the late 1940s but not heavily adopted in the U.S.

until about 40 years later. It’s taken all of three days this week to pronounce it dead . On Wednesday afternoon, Warner Bros.

Discovery announced that it had reassessed the value of its cable networks. The outcome: the combination of the WarnerMedia channels and Discovery, Inc. networks are worth $9.

1 billion less than David Zaslav & co. originally thought. That’s “billion” with the largest “B” you’ve ever seen in your life .

Not to be outdone, just 24 hours later, Paramount Global announced its Viacom cable channels had previously been overvalued (on the books) by $5.98 billion. It was a whirlwind, and the devastation wasn’t even done yet.

( “Twisters” in theaters now! ) Exactly 15 hours after that , AMC Networks announced its own goodwill impairment charge. At just $97 million, it was much, much smaller (AMC Networks is a much, much smaller company than WBD and Paramount), but as they say, three is a trend. What is going on here? Well, the WBD audit was triggered by its surprising ( and potentially devastating ) loss of NBA rights.

Warner Bros. Sports is set to lose the NBA on TNT after next season now that the league has inked a new $76 billion deal across 11 years with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon. WBD is suing the NBA in an attempt to keep its package of games, but the da.