Warner Bros. Discovery’s advertising chief is leaving. Read the memo sent to staff.

WBD’s Jon Steinlauf is leaving the company.

Jon Steinlauf, Warner Bros. Discovery’s top ad salesman, will leave the media company at the end of the year, according to an internal memo from Bruce Campbell, WBD’s chief revenue and strategy officer, that was shared with B-17. The memo said the move was Steinlauf’s decision.

No replacement was named; the company said it would perform a search to find Steinlauf’s successor and that he would stay in place until that time.

Whoever gets the job will inherit a big TV portfolio, including CNN, HBO, and Turner, but also a slew of headaches. WBD recently took a $9.1 billion writedown due to the declining value of its TV business, and just lost its most valuable sports rights, the NBA, to Comcast’s NBCU and other rivals. On the other hand, there’s no shortage of top ad salespeople available for hire after painful consolidation cost cuts across legacy media companies like Disney and Paramount (and WBD, for that matter). WBD also could pick someone from inside its ranks; it recently elevated a few salespeople including Marybeth Strobel and Ryan Gould.

Among insiders, speculation has been building for a while that Steinlauf would be hanging it up before long. The longtime lieutenant of CEO David Zaslav was charged with helping rebuild the company after multiple rounds of layoffs and cost cuts following Discovery’s acquisition of WarnerMedia. Steinlauf had to tie together disparate assets like WarnerMedia’s CNN and Turner Sports with Discovery’s lifestyle fare like “Shark Week” and “90 Day Fiancé” for ad buyers, a challenge made harder by a soft ad market and declining linear TV ratings. He also presided over a messy integration of two sales organizations, steep staff cuts, and a tough 2022 TV upfronts period, the time when networks do their biggest deals of the year. Steinlauf admitted at the time that the company was ill-prepared and left money on the table.

Steinlauf led Discovery’s ad sales business starting in 2018 under Zaslav pre-merger, having joined Discovery through its acquisition of Scripps Networks.

Read the memo about Steinlauf’s departure from the company below:

All,
I have news to share that may come as a surprise to many of you. After over 30 years at WBD and its predecessor companies, Discovery, Scripps, and Turner, our Chief US Advertising Sales Officer Jon Steinlauf has decided to leave Warner Bros. Discovery later this year.
Jon is one of the industry’s most respected and well-known ad sales executives and has had an incredible career here at WBD through the major mergers, transformations, and industry pivots. He’s been a critical part of our leadership at the company, and someone both David and I have come to rely on for many years.
Jon became well known to us in 2018 when Discovery acquired Scripps Networks, where he was Scripps’ president of ad sales, and helped make HGTV and Food Network into some of the strongest brands in television. He then led the combined Scripps-Discovery sales organization, managing one of the most powerful advertising portfolios in all of cable. Jon pulled off a hat trick with the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger by creating the ad sales organization that WBD has today – a cash engine that drives such tremendous value for the company.
Jon also established the Max ad-supported sales business last year and led the team that is now delivering double- and triple-digit growth on that platform. He also integrated sports and digital sales into the broader sales structure to create the One WBD portfolio we now offer to all our agencies and clients.
We are very grateful for all Jon has done for us, and while supportive of his personal desire to seek other directions in his life and career, we will clearly miss him.
Jon asked me to share the following with you:
“I have had the privilege of representing this great portfolio of brands for the last 32 years – at Turner, Scripps, Discovery and now at WBD. I’m grateful for the opportunities that David Zaslav, Bruce Campbell, and other leaders have given to me. This is the right time to begin a new chapter both personally and professionally.
It is incredible to look back at my early years at ESPN, and the birth of cable, to see how the business has grown and transformed. I have had the good fortune to have always worked with, and for, the best companies, brands, and people. And this includes all of you. I couldn’t be prouder and more appreciative of this ad sales team and what we accomplished together in both the prosperous and challenging times”.
Jon will continue in his current role while we begin our search for WBD’s next ad sales leader. So, nothing changes in the near term. And in typical Jon fashion – he’s pushing hard to achieve our sales objectives in this important fourth quarter.
We will take time to honor Jon’s legacy here when the time comes, but for now, please join me in congratulating him on his next chapter.
Bruce