Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. was downgraded to junk by Moody’s Ratings, cementing the media giant as a fallen angel just years after it sold one of the biggest high-grade bond deals on record.

Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting into two separate publicly traded companies – one oriented around the HBO Max streaming service and Warner Bros. studio, and the other around CNN and other television networks.

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.