![]() ![]() “And I know that you will protect its legacy and do all to enhance its future in the years to come.” “We’ve created a great and unique enterprise,” Plepler said in the memo. In a letter to employees on Thursday, 60-year-old Plepler said: “Hard as it is to think about leaving the company I love, and the people I love in it, it is the right time for me to do so. Over the past year, for example, the Big Little Lies star Nicole Kidman recently signed a television production deal at Amazon Studios, while her co-star Reese Witherspoon struck a partnership with Apple. The company had also begun to see new rivals encroach on its relationships with talent in an entertainment industry environment that is beginning to resemble the studio system of the 1930s. In contrast, Netflix plans to spend $8bn on content this year alone. Having had the high-quality TV landscape almost to itself, Plepler’s “bespoke culture” at HBO had to compete with lavishly funded competition from Netflix, Amazon and Apple, which between them have budgeted upwards of $20bn on new series, films and documentaries.Īccording to reports, HBO has a budget of $2bn a year for programming acquisitions and turned in a profit of $6bn over the past three years. Last year, however, HBO tied Netflix for Emmy wins, with each winning 23. The network also netted nine Golden Globe awards. ![]() Still, over the years that Plepler was at New York-based HBO and Cinemax, HBO earned 165 Emmy awards. They wanted to become HBO, FX, Showtime, Nick, Food Network, HGTV, TNT, TBS, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC … faster than those networks could transform into Netflix,” Greenfield wrote. “Netflix did not just want to become HBO. “The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us,” Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos told GQ at the time.įast forward to the end of 2018 and Netflix had over 60 million US subscribers compared to HBO in the mid-to upper-30 millions. But over the past two years, HBO has lost some of it shine as Netflix powered into streaming content with a potent mix of high-quality and mass-audience shows.Īccording to BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield, HBO and Netflix had similar US subscriber bases at the end of 2013 – HBO 30 million and Netflix 33 million. HBO turned from a pay-per-view sporting events giant into an premium channel that, through the late 90s, produced a string of dramatic hits such as Oz, Sex and the City and The Sopranos before powering into the 21st century with The Wire and Game of Thrones.ĭuring Plepler’s tenure as CEO, HBO added 40 million subscribers, including nearly 8 million online. HBO executives had long thought of themselves as curators, orchestrating the creation of high-quality, boutique programming, and the change of focus did not sit well with Plepler, who joined the company in 1992 and became its co-president in 2007 and was accustomed to autonomy within the Time Warner empire. You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes.” ![]() “It’s not hours a week, and it’s not hours a month. ![]() “We need hours a day,” Stankey said, referring to the time viewers spend watching HBO programs. Plepler’s decision to step down comes as WarnerMedia, formerly Time Warner, plans to combine networks such as TNT, TBS and HBO in one division with the aim of turning the quality-conscious HBO into a competitor to the far larger pay-to-stream behemoth Netflix.Įxpectation that the purchase and consolidation of HBO by its new owners would trigger significant executive departures first surfaced last July when the AT&T executive John Stankey told employees the company would not be a passive parent and HBO would need to get bigger and broader to compete. ![]()
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