27 Cable Channels. How Many Survivors?

Here’s the irony: Even in the age of streaming, about 85 percent of profits from a merged Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. Discovery still would come from linear TV, as Sean McNulty points out. So what do you do with more than two dozen aging cable networks? Spin them off, reinvent them as digital brands or send them to TV’s great dead-brand graveyard in the sky — all while Wall Street watches with a serious stink eye? Enter March Sadness. Sean, Elaine Low and Natalie Jarvey build a bracket to crown the most valuable Warnermount cable asset, with CNN, HGTV, Nickelodeon, BET and more going head-to-head. Which properties are the No. 1 seeds, and which networks are… MTV2? The answers (and the ratings) might surprise you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices