WBD - Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. (WBD) MoffettNathanson's Media Internet & Communications Conference (Transcript)
2024-05-15 16:57:03 ET
Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD)
MoffettNathanson's Media, Internet & Communications Conference
May 15, 2024 01:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Gerhard Zeiler - President of International
Conference Call Participants
Robert Fishman - MoffettNathanson
Presentation
Robert Fishman
It's Robert Fishman here again, and we are very excited to have a new guest for us and for most here, Gerhard Zeiler at Warner Bros. Discovery. And so instead of me just reading your bio, I thought we'd maybe just kick off with you sharing us -- with us your background, your experience. We have the opportunity to get to know you in a few different iterations of Time Warner/WarnerMedia, now Warner Bros. Discovery.
So I think you joined the company about 12 years ago now, and just love to hear more about your background that you can share with everyone and the responsibilities that you have today.
Gerhard Zeiler
So first of all, thank you for having me. Look, I started quite early in media, in the public broadcasting of Austria. I'm Austrian. I started as the Administrative Director of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, then went to Germany and launched a small channel called RTL 2. Then I went back to Austria to run the Austrian broadcasting company. So just to give you a size, it's a small country but still roughly $1 billion of revenues.
And then after four years, I had enough with public broadcasting TV. So I was offered the job of a CEO of RTL in Germany, the biggest commercial channel in Germany already at that time. There was one network and we increased it to four big networks. And then in 2003, I was promoted to at the whole RTL Group. And RTL Group, it's a public company but its majority owned by Bertelsmann. And at the time, I also became an Executive Board member of Bertelsmann. And I stayed there for 13 years, 13 years since I started at RTL in Germany so nine years as the CEO of RTL Group....
Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) MoffettNathanson's Media, Internet & Communications Conference (Transcript)