HBO’s president of global distribution, Bernadette Aulestia, has announced her resignation, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC. Her resignation follows that of HBO CEO Richard Pleper, who stepped down last month after realizing he would no longer have the autonomy to run the premium channel, which is part of Warner Media. Aulestia oversaw both of the company’s streaming services, HBO Now and HBO Go.
HBO Chairman-CEO Richard Plepler just confirmed what had been in the wind for some time: In 2015 a stand-alone over-the-top HBO Go service will launch in the the U.S. There are 80 million homes that do not have HBO, and “we will use all measures to go after them,” Plepler said during his network’s portion of the Time Warner Investor Day underway in New York. He said such a move could produce hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue.
The season finale of the Matthew McConaughey-Woody Harrelson procedural aired on HBO Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET, but viewers hoping to watch it via the network’s online service were out of luck. The live stream crashed shortly after the linear telecast began, and many users took to Twitter to report that the loading screen stalled out altogether.
Exclusives
Access to WatchESPN and HBO GO require a cable subscription and HBO subscription, respectively. Sky News gives cord cutters a 24/7 live news stream for free.
HBO Sports president Ken Hershman, speaking at Harvard Law School’s Sports Law Symposium on Thursday, said the premium network’s HBO Go digital service will feature live sports by the end of 2013. An HBO spokesman, however, said the network has “no immediate plans to offer live boxing on the platform.”
After several months of negotiations, the cable giant — which has 12 million subscribers — has finally reached a deal with HBO to carry its new HBO Go, a service that allows the pay channel’s subscribers access to its content on multiple platforms both inside and outside the home.
Despite promising that a deal is at hand, Time Warner Cable is still haggling with HBO over whether to offer the HBO Go service for Web and mobile viewing to its cable customers. Sources familiar with the talks say Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator, is worried that streaming demand will upend its current pay TV business model and is looking to protect itself from every possible eventuality.
Roku, the box that propels over-the-top TV, said it is offering a less expensive version, while continuing to bulk up its content offerings. Still, the newest content addition carries no risk of cord-cutting for the programmer.
HBO is making nearly all its titles available for its HBO Go service, in a sign that parent Time Warner Inc is escalating the fight against movie renter Netflix. HBO said today it is putting more than 1,400 its shows, including every episode of The Sopranos and True Blood, on the service that lets subscribers to the premium pay channel instantly watch programs through devices with broadband connections. Previously, HBO GO offered about 600 titles.
