Season 2 of The Breaker Pod is off and racing, and who better to back up a sporting pun than this week’s co-host, CNBC's Media and Sports Reporter Alex Sherman. Sherman is the author of CNBC’s Sports Newsletter and the host of the CNBC Sports Podcast. When he hasn’t got his eye on the scoreboard, Alex covers corporate drama within major media organizations like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery.

The Pod this week was recorded at Planet Hollywood in Midtown Manhattan (cheers to CEO Robert Earl for inviting us down). It was a fitting location to interview Sherman, who tracks Hollywood moguls as if they were baseball players. 

Our first question to Sherman was who will fill the very big shoes of Disney CEO Bob Iger? Iger has now pushed his retirement back no less than FIVE times, fueling multiple rounds of succession speculation.  “At some point, this guy has to leave, but nobody wants him to leave,” Sherman told us. “He wanted to come back this time around and fix it, and do succession right. The interesting thing about this, I think, though, is that there really is no obvious, clear shining candidate for the job.”

Sherman tells us the solution could come in the form of Co-CEOs, a concept successfully employed at Netflix. Sherman broke the news of the Co-CEO option earlier this week; his pick for the top two contenders is Disney Entertainment co-chairman Dana Walden and Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro. That decision ultimately comes down to the board. 

Another media power player keeping Sherman busy is Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who this week swatted away a $20 per share takeover offer from Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison.

Zaslav, well known for his dealmaking, quickly dismissed the offer, leading Sherman to question his vision for the network. “So I think Zas’s desired end game has always been to auction slash sell Warner Brothers. Discovery to the highest bidder, and he thinks that that highest bidder very well might be a big tech company, that has been his hope. Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, whoever may come in the future.” 

The question remains, however, are any of the big tech firms interested in buying WBD? “Now, what we don't know is, will that bidding war of these tech companies actually ever happen? That may just be wishful thinking, right? I don't know that there's any evidence,” Sherman told us.

Sherman suggests that big tech might be interested in some of the companies, but not in the entire product. “Any tech company is not gonna want the legacy cable assets for sure. So what they would want would be HBO in the studio. Right? But that's the thinking of splitting the company, which is what their stated strategy is. They want to split Warner Bros. Discovery, pushing HBO in the studio to one side and pushing all of the cable networks to the other side, and making two separate companies there.”

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has been on a shopping spree of late, snapping up Paramount in a deal worth $8 billion, The Free Press for $150 million, as well as inking a $7.7 billion agreement for Paramount to become the exclusive U.S. home for the UFC. When asked about Ellison's next move, Sherman speculated, “Well, obviously, like the big next move would be Warner Bros. Discovery. So I would imagine that will take up the bulk of his attention. And then it'll be some sort of other series of acquisitions, whatever that other thing is, I don't really know.”

Acquisitions, mergers, and spinoffs seem to be the ongoing theme of 2025, with Comcast NBCUniversal announcing earlier in the year its intent to create a new publicly traded company, Versant, an announcement that has directly led to extensive layoffs at NBC News. Sherman, however, remains optimistic that the spinoff will create more opportunities at CNBC.

“As an employee of CNBC for many years, the profits that were being generated from CNBC were not reinvested in CNBC necessarily because NBCUniversal was growing a streaming service in Peacock, right? That cost a lot of money.”  

“Those entities will no longer be a part of Versant. So the money again, almost definitionally, has to go back into CNBC. That's exciting as a CNBC employee because it means we're gonna be on the verge of some new opportunities that we've never been a part of before.”

The spinoff also allows Mark Lazarus, the CEO of Versant, to do a little shopping himself. He stated publicly last month that the company will be aggressively pursuing acquisitions; the question now remaining is, which organizations does Lazarus have his eye on? 

“What he will look to buy, I think, are non-legacy media assets because the stated strategy is, you know, we have like 80% revenue today, give or take,” Sherman tells us. “In traditional TV media, 20% of the revenue in digital assets, and Lazarus wants to make that closer to 50. So this idea that he's gonna go out and start to do some sort of like cable network rollup with Versant that doesn't meet that stated strategy.”

Catch all of Alex Sherman’s thoughts on Disney, Iger, Ellison, and more in this week's episode of The Breaker Pod. Make sure you check us out and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods.