Epix president and CEO Mark Greenberg is departing the network after eight years at the helm.

Greenberg’s departure comes five months after the premium service was acquired by MGM – one of the founding owners of the service along with Lionsgate and Paramount. MGM chairman and chief executive officer Gary Barber announced Greenberg’s departure in a memo sent to staffers this morning.

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“As we have completed the integration of Epix into MGM, Mark Greenberg, the founding CEO of Epix, has decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities in the media and entertainment industry,” Barber said in the memo. “Mark has been a driving force behind the success of the company and a pioneer in TV Everywhere, leading Epix to become the first cross-platform network and overseeing its programming expansion into original scripted series.”

Epix will be lead in the interim by Monty Sarhan, executive vice president, programming, strategy and enterprises.

Greenberg, who has served as Epix's president and CEO since it launched in 2009, said in a statement that this is the “right time to leave.”

“Founding Epix and building it over the past nine years into a thriving and successful business has been one of the great accomplishments of my professional life,” Greenberg said. “With the completion of the integration of Epix into MGM, I have decided that I am ready to move on to other interesting and exciting opportunities in the media and entertainment industry that will allow me to tap into my entrepreneurial spirit and build on my experience at Epix.”

The full internal memo from Gary Barber follows:
When we announced our acquisition of Epix earlier this year, we expressed our excitement about adding the fastest growing premium pay TV network to the MGM family of properties. 

As we have completed the integration of Epix into MGM, Mark Greenberg, the founding CEO of Epix, has decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities in the media and entertainment industry.

Mark has been a driving force behind the success of the company and a pioneer in TV Everywhere, leading Epix to become the first cross platform network and overseeing its programming expansion into original scripted series.

In the interim, Epix will be managed by Monty Sarhan, executive vice president, programming, strategy & enterprises, and its talented operating team that is already in place. He will report to me for the time being with help and assistance from MGM's senior management team including Chris Ottinger, president, worldwide television distribution & acquisitions and Ken Kay, chief financial officer.

In closing, I want to thank Mark for building and leading the business over the last nine years. His dedication and commitment to the company during this integration process has been greatly appreciated. We wish him all the best in his endeavors.

We are confident in the future of Epix and look forward to making significant investments in premium content to further the company’s growth and success.

Seven-year-old premium channel EPIX last year joined rival programmers HBO, Showtime and Starz in the scripted-series arena with the launch of spy drama Berlin Station and political dramedy Graves, starring Nick Nolte. This year, the Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer and Lionsgate-owned EPIX will add a third scripted series to its lineup, a reboot of the 1980s film Get Shorty, starring Chris O’Dowd and Ray Romano. EPIX CEO Mark Greenberg spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the network’s original programming ambitions as well as some of the challenges facing content providers in a multiplatform distribution environment.

MCN:How do you break through the clutter of content out in the television marketplace?
Mark Greenberg: You know it’s a great question, and I think it’s one that we all have to come to terms with. First, being commercial-free, uncut and unedited, I think it is a real advantage versus those that are commercial networks. They have 42-minute hours interspersed with commercials, where I think our storytelling allows us to do things that they can’t. Second, we’ve got great scripts with great casts and great writers, and then we support all of that with an enormous media campaign. I’m a big believer that cream always rises to the top. Berlin Station was written up by the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times as one of the 10 best series of the year. Graves received a Golden Globe nomination for Nick Nolte, so I think the good programming content will always find its audience.

Our first two series performed, in terms of total viewership, no differently than one of our top movies, like Hunger Games or a Star Trek or Bond movie, so it was really great that our audience is finding and seeing it. We’re equally optimistic about taking an intellectual property like Get Shorty that had a big following as a movie. We’ve made it more current, and with Chris O’Dowd and Ray Romano at the head of the cast, you have people who are extremely well-known and who have done a lot of work in the movie and TV business. You know, I believe if you get the right cast the right crew and the right metrics, you will find success.

MCN:Having said that, what’s on the docket for EPIX over the next six months?
MG: My belief is, you build it one block at a time, and I think we’re going to do this smartly. We could have put 20 shows out there to see what sticks. I love what we’ve done so far ... those three shows are the foundations to what we believe our original series will be. We’ve worked with the NHL on The Road to the Winter Classic … it’s our third season of doing that. I think the fans really like it, and because we’re a premium [channel], we can be a little bit edgier in terms of the content, which I think is good for them and good for our brand. I think from a storytelling standpoint, we will continue to do on our documentaries, which will complement what we do on our series, which complements a great line up of movies. We’ll have as many movies in the ecosystem as almost any network that’s out there today.

MCN:As the industry adjusts to ever-evolving shifts in audience viewing, what’s the biggest challenge for EPIX and TV in 2017?
MG: I’ve been on the record this. I think the programmers and the operators have to find a better place with each other. I think over the last several years, the leverage of who beats up on whom is hurting everyone. When I started in the business in 1981 at HBO, we had a much healthier working relationship, and I think that’s a better place for us to be. The question is how can we all work together to really build a better business model? It isn’t about one over the other; I think it’s how we grow the business in a bigger and better way.

I think that’s going be a really big, big challenge for both sides. As the buying and programming power gets bigger and consolidation within the industry continues, I think we have to keep the consumer in mind at the end of the day. Sometimes we forget to use that word enough. I think if we put [the consumer] at the center of our attention and collaborate together on how to make the product better, we can all really do well together.

MCN:Any plans to offer EPIX directly to consumers as an OTT service?
MG: You know, I think we’re over the top with Dish [Network, via Sling TV]. Someone has to explain to me what over-the-top really means. I think it’s a kind of a silly term — they’re digital distributors; they’re using the Internet to distribute content, as opposed to a coaxial wire or a satellite. It’s just content being delivered by different retailers.

Premium Epix is extending its reach this week, debuting on PlayStation Vue, Sony’s new over-the-top multichannel pay TV service.

PS Vue is offering Epix Hits, a new channel that will feature titles such as The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1; “classic” titles from franchises such as Star Trek and James Bond; and EPIX originals. PlayStation Vue subs will also have access to an Epix on-demand library featuring “thousands of titles,” Epix said.

Epix said its service for PlayStation Vue will be offered in a variety of tiers and multipremium packages. PS Vue’s multichannel TV tiers -- Access ($49.99 per month), Core ($59.99/month) and Elite ($69.99/month) -- are currently offered in seven markets: Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Fla; Chicago; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; New York; and San Francisco. Those packages also feature a cloud DVR. PS Vue also features a growing mix of a la carte fare that’s separate from its multichannel offering, including Fox Soccer Plus, Showtime and a new channel from Machinima that will be offered as a standalone or with PS Vue's Elite package. 

PS Vue is currently supported on the PlayStation 4 and PS3, and via an app for the iPad.

“PlayStation has been an outstanding partner since we began working together in 2013,” said Mark Greenberg, Epix president and CEO, in a statement. “We’re excited to continue our partnership to advance the next generation in the evolution of multichannel offerings.”