AT&T doesn’t own Warner Media anymore; Discovery does. That’s why Warner is in so much debt; AT&T has been a horribly run company for years and had amassed an insane amount of debt. They decided to redistribute a huge chunk of that debt (~$50 billion) to Warner Media when spinning the company off to Discovery. That’s why there’s been a bloodbath at Warner under the new boss Zaslav - the company is going under if they don’t shed a shit ton of debt in the coming years. AT&T was pumping out tons of content in an effort to make HBO Max a Netflix competitor, but the problem is HBO Max hasn’t really grown much since launching three years ago. AT&T also gutted things like DC Comics, pondered selling off the entire video game division at one point (which Zaslav rightfully sees as a huge potential moneymaker and wants more funding to go towards), and managed to weaken major IP like Harry Potter and DC. That’s not getting into AT&T’s comical business blunders like buying DirecTV while cable is dying. They may be a big company, but AT&T is absolutely inept when compared to major players like Amazon and Apple. If Discovery can’t pay off it’s debts and Warner Media folds with them, then the death of one of the legacy studios is on AT&T’s hands, not Discovery’s. I’m not convinced the company is necessarily going to be in better hands with Discovery, but at this point it has a chance of surviving, at least.