Ten months after he chafed under AT&T’s takeover of the network, he reboots himself as a producer in a five-year deal with Apple TV Plus.
From Sex and the City to Game of Thrones, HBO served up several hits under its chief executive, Richard Plepler, who recently stepped down.
Richard Plepler, the gregarious chief executive of HBO and one of the most influential executives in entertainment, abruptly stepped down on Thursday. His decision came eight months after AT&T acquired Time Warner, the network’s corporate home, in an $85.4 billion deal. Plepler found he had less autonomy after the merger, according to two people familiar with his thinking.
HBO, After The Cord-Cutting
HBO CEO Richard Plepler talks about what customers really want and the future of cable in a digital age. He also ponders where HBO might go with its broader freedom, particularly in content. “I want to do a series of minimovies that ultimately aggregate into a larger story. And I want to do it on HBO Now,” he says.
Richard Plepler raps “myopic” distributors, including Comcast, for failing to use HBO Now to drive broadband value.
Exclusives
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.
HBO Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Nelson is retiring after almost 30 years with the pay cable behemoth. Richard Plepler, currently a co-president of HBO, has been tapped to succeed Nelson as chief executive.
