Latest on USA, TNT and TBS Spinning off from NBC, Warner Bros. Discovery; Latest on UFC TV deal, Other Business Notes

Comcast and NBCUniversal will be spinning off its cable channels into a new company called Versant.

NBCUniversal made the announcement in early May. Among the channels moving away from NBCU and into the new company would be USA Network, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, SyFy, and the Peacock streaming service.

USA Network has been a home for World Wrestling Entertainment programming for over 40 years. WWE’s relationship with USA began in the 1980s and ran into the 2000s. WWE’s flagship Raw program was a Monday night fixture on the network until 2000, when it moved to TNN for five years. The show returned to USA in 2005.

After Raw left for Netflix at the beginning of the year, USA started carrying SmackDown. It’s the latest WWE show to air on USA, going back to Tuesday Night Titans, Shotgun Saturday Night, Sunday Night Heat, and a plethora of various WWE shows.

According to PUCK, the entertainment industry website, Rotten Tomatoes, Fandango, GolfNow, and other web properties would be part of the move. The CEO of the new company would be Mark Lazarus, who was questioned about the move at the MoffettNathanson annual media conference. Lazarus focused on the success of the company’s GolfNow app, which allows golfers in 52 countries to sign up for tee times, and highlighted the nascent company’s digital offerings.

WWE’s move to Netflix set them with a five-year deal, with possible renewals every five years after. Pulling Raw out of the TV cable fray, and the massive decline in households for major cable channels, was a move built to keep Raw and WWE out of the current cable and media fray. Whether Raw’s move to Netflix is a sign of a complete move to streaming may depend on how successful Versant is at keeping its cable channels as players and finding ways for them to gain homes.

According to Deadline.com, Comcast and NBCU would handle ad sales for Versant for two years. The launch/spin-off is expected to happen before 2025, according to a release from NBCU.

With the exclusive negotiation period expiring last month, Ultimate Fighting Championship is making the effort to work out issues with its partner of the last five years, ESPN.

ESPN out-bid several other companies and signed UFC to a 5-year, $1.5 billion deal in 2018. The deal has had highs and lows, many of them mirroring the struggles of cable and network TV.

ESPN would like to keep UFC on its programming, but the issue is cost. ESPN loves UFC’s dominant numbers among certain demographics, but ESPN’s homes have collapsed. According to John Ourand, ESPN was in 68 million homes in 2024, a number that had dropped from over 100 million half a decade ago. Disney hopes the ESPN streaming service begins a rebound.

UFC has said it’s seeking more than $1 billion a year in its next deal. Given the current media environment, that seems unlikely unless another partner is added to the mix.

Dana White and TKO also want to avoid the fate of Major League Baseball, which announced it is terminating its deal with ESPN after the network wanted to re-negotiate its current contract. MLB felt disrespected by ESPN for the lack of baseball highlights on SportsCenter and other shows, as well as the cancellation of Baseball Tonight.

But sports legitimacy thrives on being part of the conversation on ESPN. The network quickly cut programs and highlights of NHL and NASCAR when ESPN quit airing the sports. While MLB Network is a success (one reason for Baseball Tonight’s cancellation was the success of MLB Network among baseball fans), it doesn’t keep them on the one network that determines what’s hot in sports. UFC understands this well. It wasn’t all too long ago finding UFC on pay-per-view was a chore. Just ask Dana White what ESPN means as far as legitimacy and exposure.

Warner Bros. Discovery was interested in acquiring UFC at one point, especially after it lost the NBA last fall, but that interest has waned as WBD repositions HBO Max and its strategy around its current products, the NHL and much of its popular creative studio offerings.

While Versant will become its own entity by the end of 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to spin CNN off as well. The innovative and heralded news brand has suffered setbacks in recent years; unless there’s major breaking news, CNN hasn’t been the go-to in recent years. The recent upheaval of the network by David Zaslav was a disaster and cratered the network’s ratings and sent journalists running.

PUCK and other media publications believe a company heavy with local channels may purchase CNN – among the suitors could be Cox (which is looking to sell its own TV stations…) and TEGNA. Other players could be Gray, which has worked to get involved in the regional sports game. Nexstar, which owns the most local stations in the country, has spent millions building NewsNation into a viable property and news outlet, one built on competing with CNN’s audience, would seem to be out, especially having to navigate monopoly issues when it purchased the Tribune company in the late 2010s.

With CNN on the block for a spin-off, what does that mean for TBS and TNT? The channels are bleeding homes like everyone else, but marketing them as digital entities needs some more oomph. The NBA is gone, but the NHL is there. All Elite Wrestling is a success, and a regular in the top 5 of cable with strong streaming numbers, but not nearly enough to buoy two entire cable channels.

WBD could work to share properties with other media companies, maybe try to get into the NFL game with a deal with CBS (which it partners with for NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament), but missed the boat on the WNBA and Caitlin Clark-mania. Maybe college football? How a spin-off would work with TBS and TNT would be more complicated than Versant because of HBO Max’s position as a niche but powerful streamer with a ton of popular legacy properties, and no clear strategy for marketing TBS and TNT as not only channels but lifestyle or sports digital properties.

While WBD looked to have done well with losing the NBA rights, especially as ratings plummeted for the league early in the season, having the NBA deal would make those properties much more valuable, especially after playoff ratings this season were up over last season.