Warner Bros. Discovery’s separation marks a shift away from media conglomerates towards specialized, agile companies.
Media industry trends indicate a move towards specialization, with Comcast and Disney considering divestitures.
Despite the trend, Netflix and Amazon are doubling down on vertical integration with significant investments.
The media industry’s graveyard is littered with failed mega-mergers, but the high-profile split of Warner Bros. Discovery feels different. It wasn’t just a financial correction; it was a verdict on the entire conglomerate model. The de-merger exposed a hard truth: owning the value chain is no longer a moat, it’s an anchor.
We spoke with Hemant Soni, a Product Management Leader in Capgemini’s Telecom, Media, and Technology practice. He has spent over two decades advising Fortune 50 TMT companies on business transformation.
Doomed from the start: “The operational demands of premium IP versus mass distribution differ significantly in priority, agility, efficiency, and scale,” says Soni, who argues the attempt to unify Warner Bros. Discovery was doomed from the start. He calls it corporate organ rejection, where two entities had fundamentally incompatible DNA. This clash was also cultural, pitting Discovery’s lean, low-cost unscripted production model against the high-budget, prestige-focused creative engine of HBO and Warner Bros.
Incompatible DNA: By separating, each unit gained a sharper focus but also inherited new dependencies, Soni explains. The content arm won creative freedom but now must rely on outside distributors to reach its audience. The distribution network gained operational flexibility but lost the key market differentiator of exclusive content that was core to its brand identity.
End of an empire: Soni argues this split signals an industry pivot away from media conglomerates and toward more specialized, agile companies. For decades, media giants bet on the scale of owning the entire value chain, but that logic is now obsolete. “Instead of trying to do everything, companies are choosing to excel in a specific part of the value chain, whether it’s premium IP, distribution infrastructure, or a tech platform,” he notes. “The message is clear: conglomerate synergies are no longer a competitive advantage.”
The trend is playing out across the industry, with Comcast recently spinning off its legacy cable channels into a separate company, Versant, and even Disney exploring divestitures of its linear networks. But the retreat from the all-in-one model isn’t universal. Tech-native giants like Netflix, with its massive $18 billion annual content budget, and Amazon, which is now building its own global distribution arm for MGM films, are doubling down on vertical integration. Elsewhere, the pending Paramount-Skydance merger signals that for some, consolidation remains the answer.
Redesign, don’t re-skin: This pressure to specialize is forcing leaders to rethink their approach to technology, especially during major restructurings. Soni asserts that for AI to be effective, it cannot be simply layered on top of existing processes; it must be integrated into the core operating model. This principle is the common thread connecting the industry’s diverging paths, with Disney’s StudioLAB using AI to reinvent film production and Netflix building a proprietary AI platform to power everything from personalization to content creation. That integration, however, first requires a solid foundation: a clear strategic vision, robust data infrastructure, organizational readiness, a scalable tech stack, and a strong ethical framework. From there, he advocates for a “dress rehearsal” strategy, warning against the temptation to rush customer-facing AI. He argues companies must develop, test, and refine use cases internally in a low-risk environment to avoid brand-damaging mistakes. “Most of the organizations I see are building up their own in-house Gen AI teams or councils which will review what are potential use cases or products that can be built in-house, because we need to be ethically strong out there.”
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