Originally posted Friday, June 15, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Turner CEO John Martin is departing now that the AT&T acquisition of Time Warner is complete.
Clearly, he was awaiting what was a delayed merger due to the Justice Department’s opposition to the deal, which was originally announced in the fall of 2016 but took more than 20 months to happen. A federal judge this week finally cleared the merger’s way.
Martin, who was Time Warner's chief financial and administrative officer, took over for Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting System chief Phil Kent in 2014.
He told the Atlanta Press Club last year that the company's commitment to Atlanta "is unwavering." Turner has about 6,000 employees in Atlanta although important decision makers are now largely in New York and Los Angeles. Martin was based in New York but said he traveled to Atlanta monthly.
He noted in 2017 that the technological guts of Turner Broadcasting is in Atlanta and being part of AT&T will benefit the operations.
AT&T’s communications division also has extensive offices in Atlanta.
John Stankey, AT&T's entertainment chief, sent out a memo today that announced Martin's departure. He said there will be a series of meetings in Atlanta as well as New York and Los Angeles for employees to discuss changes coming ahead.
Martin oversaw the growth of CNN in the age of Trump but also the challenges key networks TNT and TBS have faced in the age of cord cutting. Their biggest rivals are no longer USA Network and Comedy Central but Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple.
"Our biggest challenge is to remain relevant when there's an increasing number of choices for consumers to spend their time and energy — and their money," he told Digiday in March. "Thankfully, we still have big brands and we do have scale, but we have to think about our brands in a more holistic way and not just as basic cable, ad-supported television networks."
He is also well aware that their brands need to accommodate and find ways to make money on alternative non-TV platforms.
“When you’re frenemies with the likes of Google, Facebook and Snapchat, we want to be partners, but we have to get paid at the end of the day. We’re starting to make breakthroughs. We are starting to have conversations with these alternative platforms about potentially getting paid for our content,” Martin said.
By the way, Turner’s former parent company’s name Time Warner will change to WarnerMedia. The historic name Time will disappear. But for now, Turner as an entity within the company survives.
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