Long-time Turner chief to step down amid AT&T’s Time Warner re-org
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Michelle Clancy
| 02 March 2019

Just as AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner appears to be a go, following the US Justice Department’s loss in an appeal designed to block the megamerger, Turner president David Levy has announced that he will be leaving the company.

“[After] a considerable amount of time during the past few months discussing the future landscape and vision of the company with John Stankey and the senior leadership team,” Levy (pictured) said in a memo to employees. “After much consideration and more than 32 years at Turner, the past six years as the president of this great company, I have decided the time is right to leave my role.”

He added, “I feel a great sense of pride in what we have accomplished together. I also want to acknowledge and thank my terrific leadership team.”

However, he told Sports Business Daily that he was leaving because of plans to restructure Turner and other Time Warner properties – collectively to be known as WarnerMedia – in the wake of the acquisition.

“Candidly, my career aspirations weren’t lining up to where the company was going to reorganise,” Levy told the outlet. “My career aspirations are far bigger and wider -- it’s distribution, it’s sales, it’s programming, it’s acquisition, it’s everything across the board. What happened here is that a lot of that is going to be reorganised, and there wasn't going to be a significant role for me.”

Levy oversees Turner’s entertainment channels, ad sales and affiliate sales; he also has been head of Turner Sports since 2003, where he oversaw deals for Bleacher Report and other properties.