Four years ago, David Zaslav clinched a debt-heavy deal to merge cable mainstay Discovery Inc. — which he’d run since 2006 — with what was then called WarnerMedia. The story he told investors was that the two entities’ diverse array of media assets “are better and more valuable together.” He doesn’t believe that anymore.

Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. was downgraded to junk by Moody’s Ratings, cementing the media giant as a fallen angel just years after it sold one of the biggest high-grade bond deals on record.

Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting into two separate publicly traded companies – one oriented around the HBO Max streaming service and Warner Bros. studio, and the other around CNN and other television networks.