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.

Subscribers to the company’s flagship streaming service, Max, watch HBO content, studio movies and older Warner Bros. series — and little else.