English Entertainment
BBC World to extensively cover Johannesburg ‘green’ summit
LONDON: BBC World has announced that it will dedicate a large portion of its schedule this month and early September to special programming and news reports related to The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
For BBC World News David Loyn, Hilary Anderson and Nik Gowing will be among the team reporting live from Johannesburg from 26 August. For World Business Report, Mike Sergeant and Richard Scott will be turning the spotlight on the business issues.
In addition to BBC World’s daily news coverage during the World Summit, the channel has commissioned a series of news features and programmes. News presenter Nisha Pillai will be co-hosting a two-part debate, Earth Summit: The Debate filmed at the UNESCO heritage site, ‘The Cradle of Humankind’ outside Johannesburg. Together with Bill Moyers of PBS America, Pillai will lead the discussion between a panel of world leaders and campaigners from all sides of the debate.
Regular BBC World programme, Earth Report, is also featuring a series of specials dedicated to the summit. The Children of Rio will look at the lives of some children all over the world ten years on from the last Summit in Brazil and I Wish offers a unique look at what 21 people from a cross section of global society wish the World Summit would achieve.
The popular interview show, HARDtalk with Tim Sebastian, will run a special week of interviews starting on 26 August with Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexico City Environment Minister. The monthly magazine show, Africa Direct, will offer a local African environmental perspective when it airs 28 August.
The three-part documentary series, State of the Planet presented by David Attenborough attempts to answer some of the big questions about our planet, assessing the gravity of the environmental crisis and asking what lies ahead at this point in human history. Developing World is a magazine series which takes viewers from Armenia to Zanzibar, Nepal to Peru showing what is possible when people work together, while Life is a five-part award-winning series looking at how the newly globalised world economy is affecting ordinary people across the planet.
News bulletins in August and September will include specially commissioned reports from BBC correspondents around the world highlighting the tension between small projects and government-level statements of intent which have been the product of world summits. Tim Hirsch will be looking at Green capitalism in Brazil and some Micro initiatives using solar power in South Africa.
Jonathan Head follows the course of a river to Bangkok looking at various pollution problems and ending in an environmental project which offers a solution. Ian Bruce follows a scheme in Brazil which gathers local people together to decide how government money should be spent in their area. He also looks at a trade union in Colombia which dared to challenge the powers that be and reports the story of a boy from rural India who will be one of the youngest delegates at the World Summit. Mike Donkin reports on one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon which is under threat, despite international agreements to protect them and their environment. Finally, Shirin Wheeler looks at clean power in Iceland as it becomes a global guinea pig by aiming to be the first fully-fledged hydrogen-powered, eco-friendly economy in the world.
World Summit – Johannesburg 2002 Times in GMT
Earth Summit: The Debate
PART 1
31 August 2:10 pm, 9:10 pm
1 September 9:10 am, 5:10 pm
PART 2
7 September 2:10pm, 9:10 pm
8 September 9:10 am, 5:10 pm
State of the Planet, 3 programmes (NOT AVAILABLE IN PAS 2 REGION)
17, 24 August 2:10 pm, 9:10 pm
18,25 August 9:10 am, 5:10 pm
In addition ‘I Wish’ vignettes will air throughout the schedule in August and September. In the lead up to the earth summit in Johannesburg, 21 individuals from a cross-section of global society were given a unique platform to send their messages to the world leaders and decision-makers attending the summit.
English Entertainment
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approve Paramount deal
Investors wave through a $111 billion megamerger but deliver a stinging, if toothless, rebuke over half-a-billion-dollar goodbye packages
NEW YORK: The shareholders said yes to the deal. They said no to the cheque. At a virtual special meeting on Thursday that lasted barely ten minutes, Warner Bros. Discovery investors voted overwhelmingly to approve Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of the company — and then turned around and voted against the lavish exit pay packages lined up for chief executive David Zaslav and his fellow outgoing executives.
Not that it will make much difference. The compensation vote is purely advisory and non-binding. The Warner Bros. Discovery board can, and almost certainly will, pay out as planned.
But the symbolism stings. It is the second consecutive year that WBD shareholders have voted against the executive compensation packages, and this time they had good reason. Zaslav’s exit deal is, by any measure, extraordinary. Under the terms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he is set to receive $34.2 million in cash severance, $517.2 million in equity in the combined company, and $44,195 in continued health coverage — a total of at least $550 million. On top of that, Warner Bros. Discovery has agreed to reimburse Zaslav up to $335 million for taxes assessed by the Internal Revenue Service on his accelerated stock vesting, though the company says that figure will decline depending on when the deal closes. As of March 11, Zaslav also held $115.85 million in vested WBD stock awards — and last month sold a further $114 million worth of WBD shares.
Shareholder advisory firm ISS recommended voting against the compensation measure, citing “problematic” tax reimbursements to Zaslav and the full vesting of his stock awards.
Zaslav will be bound by a two-year non-competition covenant and a two-year non-solicitation of customers and employees after the deal closes.
His lieutenants are not walking away empty-handed either. J.B. Perrette, chief executive and president of global streaming and games, is in line for $142 million, comprising $18.2 million in cash severance and $123.9 million in equity. Bruce Campbell, chief revenue and strategy officer, will receive an estimated $121.5 million, including $18.8 million in severance and $102.7 million in equity. Chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels is set for $120 million, made up of $6.6 million in cash severance and $113.1 million in equity. Gerhard Zeiler, president of international, will get $82.6 million, including $11.9 million in severance and $70.7 million in equity.
The deal itself, clinched in February after Netflix declined to raise its bid for Warner Bros., still needs regulatory clearance from the Justice Department and European authorities. Several state attorneys general are also weighing legal action to block it.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, was unsparing. “The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger isn’t a done deal,” she said after the shareholder vote. “State attorneys general across the country are stepping up to stop this antitrust disaster. We need to keep up this fight.”
If it does go through, the combined entity would be a formidable beast, bringing together Paramount Skydance’s stable — CBS, CBS News, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, BET, MTV and Nickelodeon — with WBD’s portfolio of HBO, Max, Warner Bros. film and TV studios, DC, CNN, TBS, TNT, HGTV and Discovery+. Paramount has said it expects $6 billion in cost savings from the merger, which is Wall Street shorthand for mass layoffs on a significant scale.
The ten-minute meeting was presided over by chairman Samuel Di Piazza Jr., with Zaslav, Campbell, Wiedenfels and chief communications officer Robert Gibbs in virtual attendance. Di Piazza was bullish. “We appreciate the support and confidence our stockholders have placed in us to unlock the full value of our world-class entertainment portfolio,” he said. “With Paramount, we look forward to creating an exceptional combined company that will expand consumer choice and benefit the global creative talent community.”
Zaslav echoed the sentiment. “Over the past four years, our teams have transformed Warner Bros. Discovery and returned the company to industry leadership,” he said. “Today’s stockholder approval is another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction that will deliver exceptional value to our stockholders.”
Paramount Skydance struck a similar note. “Shareholder approval marks another important milestone towards completing our acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery,” it said in a statement, adding that it looked forward to “closing the transaction in the coming months.”
The shareholders have spoken on the merger. On the pay, they were ignored before the vote was even counted.
