Warner Media, LLC, doing business as WarnerMedia, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by AT&T and headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally formed in 1990 by Steve Ross from the merger of Time Inc. and the original Warner Communications, and was formerly known as Time Warner from 1990 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2018. The company has film, television and cable operations, with its assets including WarnerMedia Studios & Networks (consisting of the entertainment assets of Turner Broadcasting, HBO, and Cinemax as well as Warner Bros., which itself consists of the film, animation, television studios, the company's home entertainment division and Studio Distribution Services, its joint venture with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, DC Comics, New Line Cinema, and, together with ViacomCBS, a 50% interest in The CW television network); WarnerMedia News & Sports (consisting of the news and sports assets of Turner Broadcasting, including CNN, Turner Sports, and AT&T SportsNet); WarnerMedia Sales & Distribution (consisting of digital media company Otter Media); and WarnerMedia Direct (consisting of the HBO Max streaming service).
Despite spinning off Time Inc. in 2014, the company retained the Time Warner name until AT&T's acquisition in 2018, after which it became WarnerMedia. On October 22, 2016, AT&T announced an offer to acquire Time Warner for $85 billion (including assumed Time Warner debt). The proposed merger was confirmed on June 12, 2018, after AT&T won an antitrust lawsuit that the U.S. Justice Department filed in 2017 to attempt to block the acquisition. The merger closed two days later, with the company becoming a subsidiary of AT&T. Under AT&T, the company moved to launch a streaming service built around the company's content, known as HBO Max.
In May 2021, nearly three years after the acquisition, AT&T announced that it had proposed to spin-off WarnerMedia and merge it with Discovery, Inc. to form a new publicly-traded company, Warner Bros. Discovery, under its CEO David Zaslav.
The company's previous assets included Time Inc., TW Telecom, AOL, Time Warner Cable, AOL Time Warner Book Group, and Warner Music Group; these operations were either sold to others or spun off as independent companies. The company was ranked No. 98 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
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