By the time Ross and Nicholas began their merger talks, Time was the third largest cable operator in the country, including its 23% stake in Turner Broadcasting System. Despite initiating talks in late 1987, the merger that created Time Warner remained incomplete until 1989, in part because Time executives delayed the merger until official investigations into the financial scandals of both WCI and Ross were cleared up. Ross shared CEO duties until early 1991 when Nicholas left the company. Ross died in December 1992, and Gerald (Jerry) Levin became CEO of Time Warner Inc.

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The Atlanta Braves, a Major League Baseball (MLB) team, played their home games at Turner Field in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1997 to 2016.

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Throughout the 1990s, Time Warner expanded into new markets, including a Spanish-language version of People and a children’s edition of Time. The WB, a broadcast television network founded by Time Warner, first aired in January 1995.

In 1996, the company acquired the outstanding shares of Turner Broadcasting System, which added not only cable television operations, such as CNN, TNT, and Cartoon Network, and the Warner Bros. film archive but the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks sports teams as well. In late 1999 Time Warner began merger talks with America Online, Inc. (AOL).

AOL’s roots start in 1982 when Control Video Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, initially offered online services to users of Apple II and Commodore 64 computers. In 1985, the company became Quantum Computer Services Inc. (QCS). America Online began as a special QCS service dedicated to users of the Apple Macintosh computer.

In 1991, QCS named Steve Case president, then its CEO. That year the company changed its name to America Online. It had 150,000 subscribers and $20 million in annual revenue. AOL became a public company in 1992. In 1993 the company rejected an informal $268 million acquisition offer from the Microsoft Corporation.

In 1994, AOL launched an Internet division, and by the next year it was the leading Internet service provider. AOL surpassed 10 million subscribers in 1997 and the next year acquired CompuServe, its top competitor, along with its 2.6 million members. That year more messages were exchanged over AOL every day than were delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.

In January 2000, merger talks between Case and Levin were announced. Later that year, AOL reached 27 million subscribers. The $106 billion merger between AOL and Time Warner didn’t receive final shareholder and regulatory approval until January 2001. Case was named chairman of AOL Time Warner Inc., and Levin became CEO. That summer AOL’s membership cleared the 30 million mark.

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American businessman Richard Parsons.

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In 2002, AOL Time Warner reported the largest quarterly loss ever for a U.S. company, $54.24 billion, following the collapse of the Internet stock market as investors pulled out of stocks with too much emphasis on Internet content or services. In 2003, under the direction of CEO Richard Parsons, the company changed its name back to Time Warner Inc. In 2009, it formally split with AOL, which became an independent company.

In 2016, AT&T agreed to acquire Time Warner for $85 billion. The deal required federal regulatory review, and in 2017 the U.S. Department of Justice sued to block the sale, citing antitrust issues. The following year a judge approved the merger, and the deal was finalized shortly thereafter, though the Justice Department appealed the decision. Time Warner was subsequently renamed WarnerMedia.

In April 2022, AT&T completed the spin-off of WarnerMedia, which was then merged with Discovery Inc. to form Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal combined WarnerMedia divisions such as HBO, CNN, and Warner Bros. Pictures with Discovery’s group of cable networks, including Discovery Channel, TLC, and Animal Planet. David Zaslav, then CEO of Discovery, was named chief executive of the new company.

The intent of the merger was to strengthen the company’s streaming business by combining original content with a broad lineup of established cable channels and international distribution networks, in an effort to compete more effectively with companies like Netflix (NFLX) and Disney (DIS). Warner Bros. Discovery began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol WBD on April 11, 2022.

In June 2025, Warner unveiled a major corporate restructuring that would have separated the company into two independent businesses, subject to board approval. The decision followed mounting investor pressure after the company lost nearly half its market value since its formation three years before.

The plan called for splitting the company in two:

The move to divide the company followed years of pressure from cord-cutting, as viewers increasingly shifted from traditional television to streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and HBO Max.

Warner’s planned restructuring was similar to efforts by competitors such as Comcast (CMCSA), which spun off its television division in 2024. But after Warner agreed to sell itself to Paramount Skydance in February 2026, the proposed split became secondary.

In October 2025, Warner said it had begun reviewing offers from several potential buyers while continuing to pursue its plan to divide the company into two separate businesses. The announcement came after Paramount Skydance had made three unsolicited bids to acquire Warner in the preceding weeks. Each of Paramount’s proposals was rejected by the company’s board of directors. The last offer valued Warner at $23.50 a share in cash and stock, an 87% premium to its stock price in early September before news of Paramount’s first bid was reported.

After rejecting Paramount’s bids, Warner said it was initiating a “review of strategic alternatives” in response to unsolicited interest from multiple parties for all or part of the company. CEO David Zaslav and Chair Samuel Di Piazza said they believed completing the planned split would ultimately provide shareholders with a better return than selling the entire company. News of the review drew additional attention from other potential buyers, and media reports identified Comcast and Amazon.com (AMZN) as among them.

In November 2025, Warner confirmed that Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount had each submitted formal proposals to acquire some or all of its assets.

The following month, Warner entered an agreement to sell its studio and streaming operations, including HBO and HBO Max, to Netflix in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at about $72 billion, or roughly $82.7 billion including debt. In January 2026, Netflix revised the agreement into an all-cash transaction with no change to the value offered per share. Under the agreement, Netflix would have acquired Warner’s studio and streaming businesses but not its cable networks, including CNN, Discovery, and TNT Sports, which were to be spun off into a separate company as part of Warner’s restructuring plan.

Days after the Netflix deal was agreed, Paramount countered with a hostile all-cash bid for the entire company, offering $30 a share. The bid was backed by CEO David Ellison and his father, Larry Ellison, private equity firm RedBird Capital, and financing commitments from Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), and others.

In mid-December, Warner’s board rejected the initial hostile bid, calling it “illusory” and expressing concerns about the credibility of the equity financing and the structure of the Ellison family’s backing. Paramount responded that its proposal wasn’t its “best and final” offer.

In February 2026, Paramount raised its offer to $31 a share and added terms intended to increase deal certainty, including a $7 billion regulatory termination fee and an accelerated “ticking fee” of 25 cents a share per quarter if the transaction failed to close by late September 2026. Warner’s board determined that Paramount’s revised proposal constituted a superior offer under its merger agreement with Netflix.

On February 26, 2026, Netflix declined to match Paramount’s higher bid, saying that the increased price was no longer financially attractive. Warner subsequently proceeded with Paramount’s offer.

In April 2026, Warner shareholders approved Paramount’s $31-a-share acquisition of the company, valuing the deal at about $81 billion, or roughly $111 billion including debt.

In July 2026, attorneys general from 12 states sued to block the deal, arguing that the merger would reduce competition in film distribution, cable television, and streaming. A federal judge subsequently issued a temporary restraining order pausing the transaction.

In September, Paramount reached an agreement with the states to resolve the lawsuit. Under the proposed settlement, Paramount agreed to establish a board of journalists to protect the editorial independence of CNN and CBS News, distribute 30 movies in theaters each year, and spend an additional $1.5 billion on film production over five years. The agreement, which didn’t require Paramount to sell any of its businesses, was subsequently approved by a federal judge.

On October 6, 2026, Paramount completed its $81 billion acquisition of Warner, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of the newly renamed Skydance Corporation. The acquisition brought Warner’s film studio, HBO, and cable networks—including CNN, TNT Sports, Discovery Channel, and HGTV—under the same corporate parent as CBS and Paramount Pictures.

Clive Hirschhorn, The Warner Bros. Story (1979, reissued 1986), is a large-format book full of photos of Warner movie stars. Here’s Looking At You, Warner Bros. (1993), narrated by Clint Eastwood, Barbra Streisand, and others, is a lively, if self-serving, video history of the movie studio. Robert E. Herzstein, Henry R. Luce: A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Century (1994), stresses Luce’s role as a molder of political opinion in the United States. Connie Bruck, Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner (1994), is a flattering biography of Ross that does not overlook his failings as a businessman, including his financial scandals. Richard M. Clurman, To The End Of Time: The Seduction and Conquest of a Media Empire (1992), is a critical look at how Time Inc. executives profited from the sale of the company to Warner Communications. Kara Swisher, AOL.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web, updated ed. (1999), is an account of AOL’s rise that looks closely at the personalities behind the company and the competition with Microsoft.