In an internal memo obtained by Deadline on Oct 30, Melissa Zukerman, chief communications officer of merged Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery, revealed the post-merger communications organization — and named the seven people losing their jobs.
The merged company is assembling its leadership one memo at a time. Zukerman, formerly Paramount's CCO, now runs communications for the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery operation. Her memo names the four who stay: Laura Watson, her former deputy; Shannon Buck, from Paramount+; Deborah Marcus, from corporate social responsibility; and Virginia Fout, a fresh hire from her own events firm. Seven are gone, including Joe Libonati, who ran communications through the entire merger, four Warner Bros. Discovery executives, and one each from Paramount and Skydance.
This is how mergers work when the function is "communications." Two press offices get merged, and you can't keep two chief communications officers or two SVPs of corporate comms, so the department whose job is explaining the deal is the first place the deal's math gets applied. The people who wrote the merger talking points are now the merger talking points.
The memo is a masterclass in the genre. It announces the departures in a paragraph that reads like a eulogy: "special thanks to the comms colleagues who are leaving." The same memo promises the new org will "build and honor relationships with journalists" and be "candid" in "telling our own story in our own voice," and launches a "Direct to Market" function to do the telling. A department that just fired seven of its own is telling you it values candor. That's not a promise. That's a press release about a promise.
Buried in the same memo: the co-CEOs' priority to "optimize our highly profitable linear TV portfolio, anchored by CBS." Translation: the old TV business is the part of the machine that actually makes money, and the "premier Hollywood content engine" is the story they're selling it. And the pattern is spreading across the building — a streaming exodus, an international reshuffle, a sports roster. Every department gets a new org chart, and every org chart is a list of names, and some of the names stop being on it. The PR team is just the first to publish theirs.
YOUR TURN: The comms department that just fired seven of its own is now in charge of the company's "candor" and "trust." How long does that last?
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