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Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Begins Rebranded Director Program

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Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD - Free Report) recently announced a new Access Directors Program. This program would develop and nurture television directing talent by shadowing and workshops.

The program ensures that the graduates get an opportunity to direct a Warner Bros. Discovery television episode.

The new director program was previously headed by Warner Bros. Television. It will now be housed by the company’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team.

This program would also include many new opportunities such as, the opportunity to work on shows across Warner Bros. Discovery portfolio, the opportunity to shadow directors for two television episodes, virtual curriculum for best practices and equity mindset sessions and also a childcare stipend while shadowing directors.

The program will start with an in-person class with Mary Lou Belli and Bethany Rooney. They are the authors of the book Directors Tell the Story and they also taught the WBD workshop previously. They will introduce the participants to all the aspects of television, including preparation expectations, process of developing episodes and working together with actors and the crew.

The participants can apply until Mar 20, 2023. The new program will begin from June 2023. The program will also now allow directors who have already directed one episode of television, only if the episode they directed aired more than two years ago from the application date.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Focus on Content to Boost Revenues

This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company’s focus on content to boost revenues in a highly competitive market is looking to shift its focus. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery have declined 40% in the past year, comparing with the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s fall of 16.7% in the same period.

Management is looking to invest in franchises in 2023 as it believes that franchises enable retention of customer as well as generate higher traffic for watching old franchise movies.

Some upcoming Warner Bros. Discovery’s projects are Creed, a few Lord of the Rings movies, around 10 new DC franchise movies including Flash, Shazam and many more.

Content revenues declined by 26.4% year over year for the quarter ended Dec 31, 2022 to $3.63 billion. This was primarily due to lower spent on content for the year 2022.

Management has been planning to boost its top line by focusing on content in a very competitive market. Warner Bros. Discovery faces stiff competition from Disney (DIS - Free Report) , Netflix (NFLX - Free Report) and Amazon’s (AMZN - Free Report) prime video.

Most of the people in the United States have two or more video streaming subscriptions. This indicates that there is substantial growth opportunities for Paramount Global, Netflix, Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery in a healthy competitive environment. This also indicates that content is a major differentiator for video streaming companies.

Upcoming projects which would give stiff competition to Warner Bros. Discovery are Murder Mystery 2, You: Season 4, Still Time from Netflix, The Boys, DOM, Citadel from Amazon and Star Wars: Visions, Loki Season 2, Ironheart from Disney.

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