Compounding some tough financial periods, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that longtime senior advertising sales executive Jon Steinlauf is departing.

The company says Steinlauf will remain in that role while WBD seeks a successor.

Steinlauf has been chief U.S. advertising sales officer for Warner Bros. Discovery. Before this he held the same position at Discovery Inc.

Steinlauf joined Discovery in 2018 after Discovery bought Scripps Interactive Networks, where he was president of advertising sales.

In a statement on Friday, Bruce Campbell, WBD’s chief revenue and strategy officer, said: “We are very grateful for all Jon has done for us, and while supportive of his personal desire to seek other directions in his life and career, we will clearly miss him.”

Like many legacy TV media companies, WBD has been subject to declining live, linear TV advertising revenues due to massive cord-cutting by consumers of traditional pay TV network packages. 

For the second quarter, the company reported a 10% decline in advertising revenue to $2.2 billion global. In the U.S. market advertising-sales performance was worse -- down 13% for the same period a year ago.

The picture for the upcoming third quarter doesn’t look much better. 

Michael Morris, media analyst for Guggenheim Securities, wrote in a note recently: “We model a modest sequential worsening down” --down 13.0% versus a 9.6% drop in the second quarter. Core U.S domestic advertising trends are worse, he notes -- estimated to decline 18.0% versus a 12.5% drop in the first quarter.

In part, Morris says this “reflects a weaker sports schedule (no NBA ) and domestic headwind from Olympics on NBC.”

The company -- like many TV network-based media companies -- is looking to find hope in growing streaming businesses. 

WBD's direct-to-consumer business -- primarily from its Max and discovery+ streaming platforms -- have been slow to make up for the company’s linear TV ad sales decline. In the second quarter, D2C ad revenues doubled to $240 million versus the same period a year before.