Warner Bros. Discovery salaries revealed: Pay data shows how much the company recently offered for j

Publish date: 2024-07-05
Updated 2022-12-20T19:24:59Z

The union of WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc., made official April 8, created a conglomerate of formidable size — with about 30,000 employees from the Warner side and more than 10,000 at the company that acquired it.

As the company spent 2022 digesting the megamerger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav made significant cuts to the workforce, including WarnerMedia chief Jason Kilar and most of his top deputies, 400 roles at CNN, 239 at the short-lived news streamer CNN+, 14% of HBO and HBO Max staff, and 70 people at Turner Sports. In looking to create $3 billion in synergies, there are also goals to trim the ad sales team — including initiated voluntary buyouts for its 3,000 sales workers, with ultimate plans to cut up to 30% of those roles. 

But both parts of the new whole have continued to enlist more staffers: As of this week, there are more than 882 online job listings on Warner Bros. Discovery's careers site.

The bulk of the WBD listings — 167 positions — are in technology, followed by finance and accounting (130 jobs), game development (124 jobs), and creative, content and editorial (103 jobs).

How much do jobs like these pay? Insider analyzed work-visa disclosures through September 30 to see what Discovery and WarnerMedia have offered for certain positions.

The public data, released by the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification, includes the base salaries that Discovery and WarnerMedia offered to foreign staffers they wanted to hire in the US.

These were the minimum wages the companies declared in foreign-labor-certification applications for specific roles, according to Department of Labor documentation. The companies may have ultimately paid more than the figures reflected in the data or compensated staffers in additional ways, including through stock options or grants.

The data included 163 salaries at WarnerMedia and 156 salaries at Discovery, based on foreign-labor applications submitted and certified between October 1, 2020 and September 30, 2022 — which included the April deal close for the two companies' merger.

Most of the salaries on the legacy Warner side, which comprises businesses from CNN to Warner Bros., were tied to jobs at HBO, though there were also some from other parts of the media conglomerate like Warner Bros.' consumer products, distribution, and entertainment arms.

The salaries ranged from $55 per hour to $300,000 per year, with a median annual salary of $143,000 to $170,000.

Roles listed for Discovery — which is known for cable stalwarts HGTV, the Food Network, and TLC — included a mix of business intelligence, data, software engineering, and others with pay rates similar to those at what was formerly known as WarnerMedia. Discovery salaries ranged from $52,333 to $300,000, with a median salary of $143,655 to $160,000 per year. Many of the most recent salaries included in the data were for jobs in data science — a hot field in entertainment where there's still demand for talent.

When contacted, a spokesperson for Warner Bros. Discovery declined to offer further detail on those salary ranges. 

The pay data is detailed below, broken down by company, then division, and job title.

Some of the foreign-labor applications included a salary range, rather than a specific annual salary, for a given role. For example, Discovery offered an ad sales account manager between $131,458 and $149,000 per year, according to the data. Insider included such ranges below. 

In cases where Discovery or WarnerMedia submitted multiple applications for a particular job, such as a senior software developer, we included the median wage rate as well as the lowest and highest salary for the role.

Discovery

The pay data included 156 salaries at Discovery Communications. The base salaries ranged from $52,333 to $300,000, with a median of $143,655 to $160,000 per year.

The positions included (salaries were annual, unless otherwise noted):

WarnerMedia

The pay data included 163 salaries at entities that were previously part of WarnerMedia, such as HBO. The base salaries ranged from $55 per hour to $300,000, with a median of $143,000 to $170,000 per year.

The positions included (salaries were annual, unless otherwise noted):

HBO

HBO Service Corporation

This division of WarnerMedia appears to work on HBO's streaming apps, according to several job listings. The most recent salaries in the pay data for this unit were as of August.

Warner Bros. Consumer Products

Warner Bros. Distributing

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Inc.

WarnerMedia Direct

WarnerMedia Services

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