Splitting Warner Bros. Discovery has its positives, but is also a ride on a dead-end street. Click here to find out why I am neutral on WBD stock.

Four years ago, David Zaslav clinched a debt-heavy deal to merge cable mainstay Discovery Inc. — which he’d run since 2006 — with what was then called WarnerMedia. The story he told investors was that the two entities’ diverse array of media assets “are better and more valuable together.” He doesn’t believe that anymore.

The company will split into two separate public companies by the middle of next year. One company, Streaming & Studios, will include the Warner Bros. movie and TV studios along with the recently rebranded HBO Max streaming service, while Global Networks will be made up of WBD's cable channels like TNT, CNN, and the Discovery+ streaming service.