Every media company is facing the three-pronged concerns of a changing media landscape, an uncertain economy and, layered on top of that, the dual writers and actors strikes that have shut down production across Hollywood.

Warner Bros. Discovery arguably has even more to worry about than its competitors. Following last year’s merger of WB and cable giant Discovery, the new entity has experienced notable growing pains, which continued to show up in Thursday’s second quarter earnings results. Global streaming subscriptions were down, as expected, and box office numbers disappointed, thanks largely to some DC universe bombs.

Of course, the big thing everyone wanted to talk about was that third prong, the writers and actors strikes that have been disrupting the industry for months. And Warner Bros. Discovery had more concrete predictions than some other executives so far.

“While we are hoping for a fast resolution [of the strike], our modeling assumes a return to work date in early September,” said Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels on Thursday’s earnings call. “Should the strikes run through the end of the year, I would expect several hundred million dollars upside to our free cash flow and some incremental downside to adjusted EBITDA.

In other words, shutting down productions has saved on operating costs (about $100 million in second quarter), but it also will put studios, networks and streamers low on content as the year progresses. Executives returned to the strike throughout the earnings call.

Chief executive officer David Zaslav sidestepped a question on how far apart the producers, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and the writers (Writers Guild of America) and actors (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) remain on terms. He echoed other recent executive calls for a fair deal for all sides without specifying what that might look like.

“I think all of us in this business are very keen to figure out a solution as quickly as possible,” he said.

Coming into the call, analysts had anticipated seeing losses in advertising and streaming, and those bore out. Zaslav noted the generally soft advertising environment, which has hurt other companies but had an especially big impact on Discovery due to its expansive cable holdings, including TBS, TNT, Discovery Channel, CNN, HGTV and more.

Turmoil at CNN, where Zaslav fired chief Chris Licht following a volatile tenure, and the absence of men’s Final Four programming (it alternates between CBS and Turner properties annually) also played into the ad sales declines.

On the streaming side, global subscribers fell by 1.8 million, to 95.8 million in second quarter, which was also not a surprise. The period included the transition from separate streaming services for HBO Max and Discovery properties to the new Max, which debuted this spring and now houses all Warner Bros. Discovery cable content, including everything from HBO’s And Just Like That… to Discovery’s Shark Week.

The losses came from people eliminating duplicate subscriptions, such as HBO Max and Discovery+.

Warner Bros. Discovery also said on the call that it had paid down $1.6 billion in debt during second quarter. The debt accumulated from last year’s merger has been a concern for investors, and Zaslav said it had a tender offer to take care of another $2.7 billion in debt.

As for other bright spots, the smash Barbie movie will be included in third quarter results, though executives did bring it up whenever possible as an example of its box office potential. Less positive was the actual second quarter box office results, which included two huge DC disappointments, the second Shazam movie and the standalone Flash film.