Warner Bros Discovery wheezed to 97.7 million direct-to-consumer video subscribers as of Q4 2023, only barely better than the 97.6 million reported at the beginning of last year. Excluding WBD’s acquisition of the Turkish SVoD BluTV in late 2023, from which the company inherited 1.3 million D2C subscribers, the company’s core video offerings – Max, discovery+, HBO Max, and premium sports products – are effectively flat for subscribers in the US market, meaning 2023 must go down as a swing and a miss for WBD. To deter investor angst, CEO David Zaslav and his patchwork quilt of executives waxed lyrical about free cash flow, which increased by 33% to $3.3 billion in Q4 2023, totaling $6.2 billion in free cash…