After a series of widely reported negotiations, former HBO CEO Richard Plepler has agreed to park his production company, Eden Productions, at Apple for the next five years.

According to a statement released Thursday, Eden will supply original series, feature films and documentaries to Apple TV+, the new SVOD service being headed up by Apple’s global video chiefs, former Sony execs Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht.

“I’m excited to work with Zack, Jamie and the standout team at Apple who have been deeply supportive of my vision for Eden from day one,” said Plepler in a statement. “The shows that Zack and Jamie produced, The Crown and Breaking Bad, are among those I most admired. Apple is one of the most creative companies in the world, and the perfect home for my new production company and next chapter.”

Plepler spent 28 years at HBO, taking over a decade ago from Chris Albrecht as the premium network’s chief executive. He departed HBO last February. 

After a series of widely reported negotiations, former HBO CEO Richard Plepler has agreed to park his production company, Eden Productions, at Apple for the next five years. 

According to a statement released Thursday, Eden will supply original series, feature films and documentaries to Apple TV+, the new SVOD service being herded up by Apple’s global video chiefs, former Sony execs Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht. 

“I’m excited to work with Zack, Jamie and the standout team at Apple who have been deeply supportive of my vision for Eden from day one,” said Plepler in a statement. “The shows that Zack and Jamie produced, The Crown and Breaking Bad, are among those I most admired. Apple is one of the most creative companies in the world, and the perfect home for my new production company and next chapter.”

Plepler spent 28 years at HBO, taking over a decade ago from Chris Albrecht as the premium network’s chief executive. He departed HBO last February. 

In the wake of a big regulatory victory clearing its purchase of Time Warner, AT&T unveiled a major restructuring that sent two well-respected executives packing, could lead to “significant layoffs” and sets the media giant on a path lined with uncertainty as it tries to reinvent its content business.

AT&T seemed to close out February on a high note, with a federal appeals court rejecting the Justice Department’s second attempt to block the Time Warner merger on Feb. 26. But by Monday, the company had a new head for its WarnerMedia division, industry veteran Robert Greenblatt, and lost two top executives, HBO CEO Richard Plepler and Turner president David Levy.

A third executive, Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara, who earlier last week was given added responsibilities in the new corporate structure, is on thin ice after a report surfaced that he had conducted an inappropriate sexual relationship with an actress whom he had pressured Warner casting directors to hire. AT&T said it is investigating the allegations.

AT&T made the Greenblatt hire official on March 4, naming him chairman of WarnerMedia and Direct To Consumer. AT&T plans to launch a third direct-to-consumer offering, in addition to DirecTV Now and AT&T Watch, by the end of the year.

AT&T named CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker chairman of WarnerMedia News & Sports, gave added global kids and young adult business responsibilities to Tsujihara and tapped Turner International president Gerhard Zeiler as WarnerMedia’s chief revenue officer.

AT&T Makes Its Mark

The moves were not entirely unexpected. AT&T had been hinting for months after it closed the Time Warner deal in July that its newly acquired content businesses were in need of an overhaul. At a town meeting with HBO employees in June, WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey told workers that the premium channel was in for “a tough year.”

AT&T has said that to compete in the new streaming video, skinny-bundle, on-demand media environment, WarnerMedia needs to drive engagement with consumers. Time Warner should harness the combined power of brands like Turner and HBO under one service to compete on a global scale with the likes of Netflix and Disney. The service, Stankey said, needed hours of engagement per day with consumers, not hours per week.

It will be up to Greenblatt, who has a strong media track record, to bring continuity and stability to the brands. He joined Showtime in 2003 and is credited with bringing in hits like Weeds, Nurse Jackie, Dexter and Shameless, leaving in 2011 to become head of Comcast’s NBC Entertainment. There, Greenblatt inherited a weakened primetime lineup but quickly led a turnaround with hits like The Voice, The Good Place and This Is Us. He left NBC in September.

The departure of Plepler and Levy was nonetheless shocking, given the two executives have had an enviable string of successes at their respective businesses. Plepler, who had been at HBO since 1992, became CEO of the premium channel in 2012 and launched several iconic hits, including Game of Thrones. He has also cultivated a strong relationship with top talent like Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese, The Sopranos creator David Chase, The Wire creator David Simon and GoT writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Losing Plepler could have an impact on HBO’s ability to attract and keep talent.

Levy took the helm of Turner in 2013 after several successful years at Turner Sports, helping to engineer its landmark deal for “March Madness” — the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament — with CBS in 2010.

There are likely to be more defections in the wake of the shakeup and reports said that there will be “significant layoffs” at both HBO and Turner as AT&T tries to lower costs.

In a blog post, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said the changes at AT&T are a double-edged sword. On one hand, both Turner and HBO generated tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in excess costs.

“The glass-half full version is that Time Warner needed to be shaken up,” Moffett wrote.

The glass-half empty view, according to Moffett, is that WarnerMedia has set the stage for a major talent drain at the company, just when experienced hands are needed the most.

A day after reports surfaced that AT&T brass was in advanced talks to bring former NBC Entertainment chief Robert Greenblatt on to run a new unit within its WarnerMedia programming division, HBO CEO Richard Plepler has told the company that he plans to step down.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, WarnerMedia chief John Stankey was in advanced talks with Greenblatt to run a combined unit within the programmer that would include HBO and the Turner networks. While Greenblatt is a well respected executive, his appointment would create a new layer of management between Plepler and Turner honcho David Levy and Stankey. Some had speculated that could cause those executives to look at other opportunities.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Levy also is resigning.

Plepler, who has been with HBO since 1992, has been a driving force in HBO’s success since he took the helm of the premium programmer in 2012. Under his watch, HBO has won a warehouse full of Emmy awards, launched a steady stream of successful and popular original shows — including the iconic Game of Thrones — and launched its standalone streaming service HBO Now.

Related: Making HBO Go 

Sources familiar with the company confirmed a report by CNBC that Plepler was indeed stepping down. In a memo released to employees Thursday, Plepler referenced advice his father gave him in making tough decisions.

“Whenever there was a difficult decision to make, he counseled that since no one could ever have perfect visibility into the future, the best thing you could do was trust your instincts,” Plepler wrote according to CNBC. “...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 years Plepler has cultivated a unique relationship with artists and executives alike. In an email exchange with Game of Thrones writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss last year, the pair saw Plepler as a highly engaged executive who takes his relationship with artists seriously.

“In a business full of smiling windsocks, he is not a windsock,” Benioff and Weiss said in the email exchange. “He doesn't focus test his decisions, he doesn't crowdsource his decisions. Richard's decisions come from Richard, and he stands by them.”  

For the first time, the lights of Broadway will shine on The Cable Center’s newest Cable Hall of Fame class.

Five executives and a groundbreaking television show — AMC’s drug-dealer drama Breaking Bad — will share the stage of New York’s Ziegfeld Ballroom on Wednesday, April 4, for the 2018 Cable Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Lending more star wattage to the festivities will be host Carla Hall, a popular cooking personality from ABC’s The Chew and Bravo’s Top Chef and Top Chef America.

Among the industry figures set to be enshrined are Nomi Bergman, president, Advance/Newhouse; John Bickham, president and chief operating officer, Charter Communications; Balan Nair, president and CEO, Liberty Latin America; Richard Plepler, chairman and CEO, HBO; and Neil Smit, vice chairman, Comcast Corp.

June Travis, a former NCTA executive, will also be presented with the group’s Bresnan Ethics in Business Award. Breaking Bad creator, head writer and executive producer Vince Gilligan will accept Hall of Fame honors on the AMC show’s behalf.

Nomi Bergman
President, Advance/Newhouse

Second-generation cable executive Nomi Bergman didn’t intend to get into the family business. After graduating from the University of Rochester with a degree in statistics and economics, Bergman went to work as a systems consultant in Arthur Andersen & Co.’s consulting division. Bergman’s father, Robert Miron, ran the Newhouse cable companies, and a cousin at parent company Advance/Newhouse encouraged her to join the larger organization’s internal consulting group. As an analyst with Advance/Newhouse, Bergman worked on instituting best practices and operating efficiencies among the company’s publications and cable divisions.

In the late 1980s, her group installed new accounting systems at company properties. Noticing that the various cable operations used a variety of billing systems, she recommended integrating them. She took charge of what would be a two-year project involving 50 system conversions. She became a cable nomad, setting up camp in each Newhouse location to oversee successive rollouts. The odyssey was an immersion in MSO field operations that convinced Bergman to make her professional home in cable at Advance/Newhouse. (The company formed a partnership with Time Warner Cable in 1995.)

Bergman adapted quickly to the architecture side of the cable business. Among her most satisfying achievements was being part of the launch of RoadRunner, Time Warner’s broadband internet service. “Being a part of reinventing the purpose of a cable system … re-architecting service delivery, growing the team, was beyond exciting,” she said.

Bergman helped launch sixth-ranked MSO Bright House Networks in 2003 and served as the company’s president from 2007-16. Today, as senior executive officer with Advance/Newhouse companies, she focuses on corporate development and strategic partnerships.

The busy executive and mother of three daughters has been a force in a number of cable and community support organizations, and she remains actively involved with several. Her work on the board of Adaptive Spirit grew out of a mother-daughter activity that became an annual tradition. “Watching [U.S. Paralympic Ski Team members] embrace their disabilities as their star qualities and become exceptional athletes is incredibly inspiring,” Bergman said. “It’s a powerful metaphor for us all — about how to live our lives and be our best selves.”

She believes in the value of kindness in all aspects of life. “People trust kind and caring leaders,” she said, and feels these qualities helped her to cultivate dedicated fearless, and knowledgeable teams who felt empowered to win.

John Bickham
President and Chief Operating Officer, Charter Communications

John Bickham’s career has taken him from the utility industry in Texas to the cable C-suite in Connecticut. Born in Corpus Christi, he graduated from Texas A&I — now part of the Texas A&M system — but had no idea where he would go from there. He landed at utility holding company Houston Industries, where he helped design and build coal-fired generating stations. In 13 years with the company, he was involved in utility regulation at the national and state levels. In the mid-1980s, the holding company became interested in cable and went into partnership with ATC. Bickham’s accidental entry into the cable business was the start of a long, successful career.

Compared to the staid world of utilities, Bickham found cable “an immature business, unsophisticated from a business planning and construction standpoint. It was different, it was fun, and you were a lot closer to the cash register.” Thirty years ago, “who knew the business was going to be what it is today? Today … we sell services that every home and business needs.” In 1986, he co-founded KBLCOM, a cable company that partnered with ATC and owned cable systems in eight states. He left as president and chief operating officer of KBLCOM to operate Time Warner Cable’s Los Angeles division, and advanced to executive vice president of TWC, overseeing the company’s operations in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

Bickham moved to Cablevision Systems in 2004 as president of cable and communications. He joined Charter as COO in 2012 and added president to his title in 2016 when the company’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks closed. In the cable industry, local operations continue while the owners change; at Charter, Bickham has gotten reacquainted with cable systems that he previously led at KBLCOM.

The father of two grown daughters, Bickham enjoys spending time with his four-year-old grandson. And he travels the world in pursuit of game birds — to England, Spain and South America, as well as in the U.S.

Bickham advises the industry’s future leaders to take every opportunity to learn the different aspects of the business, especially as companies grow and jobs become more tightly focused. “Don’t limit yourself,” he urged. “Don’t ever get bored with what you’re doing. Move around in your company; experience different things.”

Breaking Bad
Television Drama Series, AMC, Vince Gilligan, creator

Only on cable could a series that starts with a cancer diagnosis and continues into the darkest corners of the methamphetamine industry find a home. Breaking Bad broke new ground in television drama and demonstrated the possibilities of innovative storytelling.

The series premiered on AMC in 2008 and ended in 2013. It tells the story of Walter White, a New Mexico chemistry teacher who, with two years left to live and a desire to secure his family’s financial security, becomes a powerful meth manufacturer.

Series creator Vince Gilligan envisioned an approach that had never been tried in series television: a “show about change” that began with a definite end point in view. Gilligan is a TV fan who streams shows from the 1950s and ‘60s and observed, “The thing TV has done very well is tell an indefinite story — a story that can go on for 20 years [a la Gunsmoke or NCIS]. And the way to do that, from a writer’s point of view, is not to put the characters through too many personal changes … I figured stasis had been tried with great success for 50 years, and something more dynamic in terms of character would be interesting. But that meant it couldn’t last indefinitely.” Gilligan was well aware that the concept of a finite series would be difficult to sell. “That’s why I’m still amazed that Sony and AMC signed on. … You don’t want to be told from the get-go, ‘This thing probably won’t last long enough for you to make your money back.’ ”

Not only does Walter White change, but unlike other TV heroes or anti-heroes, he changes for the worse, as the series title suggests. Legend has it that Gilligan pitched his idea to AMC as “turning Mr. Chips into Scarface.” Another unusual approach: in the moral universe of Breaking Bad, actions have consequences. Ultimately, characters reap what they sow, and nobody gets away with anything.

Gilligan believes television drama continues to change, and he hopes it will continue to pursue shows designed for more than the same demographic sweet spot. Above all, he wants writers to be bold. “Don’t copy off your neighbor’s exam,” he said. “Don’t pay too much attention to the stories other folks are telling; tell a story that excites you.”

Balan Nair
President and CEO, Liberty Latin America

“My life is 95% luck,” said Balan Nair. “Making the most of opportunities takes a little bit of skill, but to get those opportunities [takes luck]. I’m a very lucky man.” What Nair calls luck, others might see as destiny.

In his 11 years with Liberty Global, Nair has advocated focusing on software as the driver of cable’s evolution and he’s met the challenge of harmonizing products, services, workforce and networks across multiple countries, languages and regulatory environments. Named CEO of Liberty Latin America late last year, he is now focused on high-potential markets in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Nair grew up in Malaysia, coming to the U.S. in 1985 to study electrical engineering at Iowa State University. He met his wife at Iowa State — an event he believes was the greatest stroke of luck in a fortunate life. He began his career working on high-voltage power transmission, and discovered an aptitude for writing software. His wife worked at telephone company USWest in Iowa, and when she was transferred to Minneapolis, he followed and found work at a power research company. When another USWest transfer came up, this time to Denver, Nair switched from power to telco, and joined USWest himself. In more than 12 years with the company and its successor, Qwest Communications International, he rose up the leadership ladder to become chief information officer and chief technology officer.

With extensive telco experience under his belt, Nair decided to move on to the fast-growing internet world. He joined AOL as chief technology officer, overseeing technology, IT and network operations. The Nairs left Denver for AOL headquarters in Washington, D.C. Given his experience, Nair was well-positioned for an industry that saw its future in both areas. Liberty Global came calling in 2007, and the family happily returned to Denver.

As a cable industry newcomer, Nair saw a huge opportunity. He “immediately saw the advantage cable had over any other telecommunications business. We had better networks, better platforms and we were better suited for the transition to a software world. We also have a perpetual entrepreneurial spirit. The founding members [of the industry] are still involved, and our second-generation managers were trained by founders. That is very special.”

Richard Plepler
Chairman and CEO, HBO

It’s safe to assume that Richard Plepler is the only high-ranking cable executive whose entry into the industry came about through a chance meeting with a U.N. ambassador at a Chinese restaurant. To start at the beginning: Plepler grew up in the ’60s in a politically active home where engaged, informed citizenship was paramount. “At the dinner table, you had to have read The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and you had to be prepared to talk about the world,” he recalled.

After graduating from Franklin & Marshall College, he went to work for Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). From Dodd, he learned about building consensus and the notion that people can disagree without being disagreeable. “I think that informed the way I began to think about business, and I think it informs my leadership style,” Plepler said.

Plepler next went on to work for a small media-consulting firm that specialized in crisis management. After a year, brimming with confidence at 26, he started his own strategy and production firm, RLP International, which would make films to help countries that wanted to improve their images. Cheerfully acknowledging his own youthful hubris, Plepler is quick to point out that he was RLP International’s sole employee.

His big break came at a Chinese restaurant in New York in 1988, where then-Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Benjamin Netanyahu happened to be dining. “I went over to introduce myself, and I said, ‘You have a huge problem in the U.S.’ The first intifada had broken out, and Israel was being viewed negatively. I told Netanyahu, ‘This needs to be put in a larger context, sir, and my company, RLP International, knows how to do that.’ And by some miracle, he said, ‘Come see me.’ ” The result of their subsequent meeting was a well-received documentary for PBS that explained the complexity of Israel’s situation. A call from HBO’s Michael Fuchs soon followed, inviting Plepler to join the network in 1992 as communications chief.

“From my first day [at HBO], I always felt like I was where I belonged,” Plepler said. “The people I’ve observed who have done the best feel they’re in the environment where they’re meant to be. Be in the place where you feel passionate about the work, about the mission.”

Neil Smit
Vice Chairman, Comcast Corp.

Growing up on a farm in Connecticut, Neil Smit didn’t have a clear idea of what he wanted to be when he grew up, but he knew what he didn’t want to do. Farming was at the top of that list; construction was second. “My father was in construction, and I didn’t necessarily want to be the second generation in the construction business,” he said. “I wanted to carve my own path.” He entertained notions of becoming an astronaut, but after graduating from Duke University, he ended up on sea, air and land as a member of the legendary Navy SEALs.

From his five-and-a-half years as a SEAL, Smit learned important lessons that he applied to his subsequent business career. “The first thing you learn in SEAL teams is, it’s all about teams,” he said. “If you’re not pulling together, you’re pulling apart, and you do everything together as a team. The other thing is that you communicate very directly from day one. And finally, you’re always developing your skills, your people, and you have to keep building new capabilities. More than anything, it’s about the teamwork.”

When Smit retired from the Navy as a lieutenant commander, he worked in hostage negotiations before moving into the corporate world. He held leadership roles at Nabisco and Pillsbury, and then moved to AOL and MapQuest. Along the way, he got to know Paul Allen, who invited him to join Charter Communications as CEO in 2005. Cable appealed to him. “The day-to-day diversity of things that we had to deal with was interesting,” he recalled. “We were in the internet business, the phone business, the video business, and it was an ever-changing environment.” Another plus: “The quality of the people was very high; there’s still an entrepreneurial spirit in the industry,” he said.

Smit joined Comcast Cable as president and CEO in 2010. He now serves as a vice chairman of Comcast Corp., working to develop future technology- oriented business opportunities. Active in his community, he recently left the board of trustees of Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, and continues his work with the board of visitors for the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. And his adventurous spirit remains strong. He enjoys boating, water sports and skiing, and recently took up ice driving with his son in northern Canada. “I’ll try about anything,” he said.

Bresnan Award Recipient

June E. Travis

June Travis retired from the cable television industry in late 1999. Since 1994, she had served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the National Cable Television Association, the industry’s principal trade association based in Washington, D.C.

Prior to joining the NCTA, Travis was president and chief operating officer of Rifkin & Associates, a Denver-based cable television operator. Before that, she served in several executive positions at American Television and Communications, the predecessor to Time Warner Cable.

Recalling the days when cable was a much smaller business, Travis said the industry’s ethical core was apparent in the relationships between its leaders. The early entrepreneurs “were very competitive with one another, but if attacked from the outside, they circled the wagons and supported one another. The collegiality was palpable.”

Starting her cable career as a secretary, Travis noted the admirable leadership qualities she saw practiced by industry role models. “I kept thinking, ‘Gee, if I ever get into management, that’s how I would like to manage, that’s how I would like to be involved in the community, that’s how I would like to give back.’ ”

Travis has served as an officer and board member of a number of cable television industry boards, including CommScope, NCTA (now NCTA: The Internet & Television Association), C-SPAN, Cable in the Classroom, TeleCorps and Women in Cable (now Women in Cable Telecommunications). She chaired the industry’s political action committee, CablePAC, for nine years. She said such organizations made a tremendous difference to the industry’s employees.

She has been active in a number of Colorado organizations including the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, the Colorado Forum, the Colorado Women’s Forum, the National Jewish Center, Inter-Faith Community Services, Young Americans Center for Financial Education and the Dumb Friends League. She recently stepped down as chairman of the board of the Daniels Fund but remains on that board and also serves as a trustee for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Travis believes in business leaders’ responsibility to their communities. “It’s huge,” she said. “And it pays back a hundred-fold. If you are genuinely in the community, not for the recognition, but truly caring, and participating, and supporting the community, you can’t buy that kind of customer respect.”

It’s not easy being HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler these days.

Aside from parent Time Warner’s pending $108.7 billion merger with AT&T — a deal he believes will get done despite some regulatory roadblocks — Plepler navigates changing viewer habits and rising competition from giants Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, all while deftly embracing new distribution partners without upsetting the premium programmer’s traditional pay TV partners.

While lesser executives may have thrown in the towel years ago — or started downing sedatives and Pepto-Bismol for breakfast — Plepler responded by creating one of the most popular over-the-top offerings in the industry, HBO Now, and doubling down on cutting edge and thoughtful programming with shows like Girls, Insecure and The Night Of, and leading the pioneering premium channel to what might be its best year ever.

In the third quarter, subscriber revenue at HBO was up 12%, a 13-year high for the channel. And its subscriber rolls are climbing — it reached 34 million domestic customers and another 100 million worldwide in Q3.

Plepler, the Multichannel News 2017 Executive of the Year, may be well-known for his easygoing, personable manner, but beneath that lies an intensely focused, competitive executive.

MCN Executive of the Year | He's GoT That: 'Game of Thrones' co-creators and showrunners David Benioff and D.B Weiss answer our questions about working with Richard Plepler

That focus and intensity was put to the test in 2015, shortly after Time Warner fought off a 2014 hostile takeover attempt from 21st Century Fox that was launched in part because of a perception that the parent company wasn’t taking advantage of HBO’s over-the-top potential.

HBO and Plepler responded by launching HBO Now at an Apple user conference in San Francisco. Later, Plepler was pummeled by questions as to whether HBO was taking the right approach to OTT — offering it to its distribution partners first to market to their broadband-only customers. Plepler saw huge opportunities in those 15 million to 25 million broadband-only customers, but he had to find a way to convince investors and distributors that such a service wouldn’t cannibalize the existing customer base.

Plepler said the problem kept him up nights, and he finally concluded that the traditional path to greater profitability — simply raising prices — wasn’t the way to go. He believed that raising penetration, for both the traditional HBO service and HBO Now, would lead to a classic win-win for both the network and its distributors.

“What we wanted to do is build a structure with our partners whereby penetration and scale became the motivating drivers,” Plepler said. “And by doing so the price would go down.”

It wasn’t an easy sell to operators, but one that resonated over time. And it helped solidify Plepler’s reputation as someone who was willing to go outside of tradition to get things done.

“Richard is an extraordinary leader and a great partner,” said Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson. “His focus on creativity and innovation has enabled HBO to consistently produce incredible content year after year.”

Despite critics that may have scoffed at the strategy, Plepler was convinced that HBO was vastly underpenetrated.

“If you look at the simple fact that we understood how much room for growth there was in the traditional ecosystem and in the new ecosystem, it was a classic opportunity for both our partners and us to grow our business,” Plepler said. “Those are the structures we built, differently in different ways with different partners.”

Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes earned his chops running HBO before ascending to the corner office, so he knows the complexities of the job. “In a time of ever-expanding viewer choice, HBO defines world-class and so does Richard,” Bewkes said. “He and his team are unrivaled in their ability to meld ambitious, breathtaking original programming and Hollywood hits with industry-leading innovations like HBO Now — bringing HBO to its passionate and growing audience in new and exciting ways around the globe.”

But naming Plepler, a former communications chief, to head up the premium programmer was a departure. In the past, HBO honchos either came from the content side or, like Bewkes, the finance side of the house. Plepler was from neither: He joined HBO in 1992 as senior vice president of communications, rising to executive VP in charge of creative aspects before being tapped as co-president of the unit in 2007. He was named chairman and CEO of HBO in 2012, effective in January 2013.

Helping to Find Balance
Telsey Advisory Group media analyst Tom Eagan said the experiment has turned out to be vastly successful. “What he did is help the company find that balance between content and finance,” Eagan said. After former HBO chief Bill Nelson, a finance guy, decided to retire, the worry in the analyst community was whether HBO would focus enough on content, he added.

“The two [content and finance] have really supported each other,” Eagan said. “Having popular and in-demand content has allowed them to ask for higher affiliate rates from the operators and ultimately allowed them to roll out HBO Now.”

While HBO Now has exceeded expectations — it has grown to about 2 million customers — HBO itself, via linear channels, multiplexes, the HBO Go online add-on service and HBO On Demand, continues to keep the competition at bay.

Netflix, once dismissed by cable operators as an upstart, passed HBO in terms of U.S. subscribers in 2013 and has managed to increase its lead over the years, finishing with 52 million U.S. customers at the end of the third quarter. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, Netflix commands global scale with 109 million subscribers around the world; outside the U.S., HBO licenses its content with distribution partners.

In the meantime, Amazon Video has continued to beef up its offerings and Hulu, owned by 21st Century Fox, The Walt Disney Co. and NBCUniversal, launched a live TV service earlier this year.

HBO and Plepler have managed to thrive through a mixture of luck, pluck and good old-fashioned business acumen. HBO invented the premium original programming genre 20 years ago with The Sopranos and, on Plepler’s watch, the awards have piled up. Since 2007, Plepler has continued the winning streak, green-lighting iconic series such as Girls, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, The Newsroom, Game of Thrones and Veep. Along the way, the company has amassed a warehouse full of Emmy Awards — Game of Thrones has 38 statues, the most for a scripted series in Emmy history — a testament to HBO’s commitment to quality and its brand.

To Plepler, the brand is becoming more important than ever as new over-the-top services emerge and choices proliferate. In the past five years, the number of primetime original series available to consumers has grown from 288 in 2012 to 455 in 2016. As more programming choices bombard viewers, being able to associate a particular brand with high quality can be invaluable.

“What you know when you trust a brand is if it delivers on its implicit promise — and our implicit promise is the creation of excellence — is that when you go there, you are going to find a range of things that delight you, entertain you and are engaging in this very, very busy life where you are pulled in a hundred different directions,” he said.

Plepler throws cold water on the notion that viewers increasingly don’t recognize brands, and instead seek individual shows. Most OTT services don’t usually identify a particular show’s network of origin.

“I would rather look at it like this: It is absolutely true that things will be disaggregated and then people will find different programming in different ways,” Plepler said. “And for some people, that will be adequate and satisfactory. It is also true, as we’re seeing, that if you deliver a brand-value proposition for a fair price, and you give people a surfeit of quality and entertainment, to wit: four Hollywood studios; 3,000 hours of library content; the ability to watch their program on whatever device they want whenever they want it and you are constantly true to the promise that you are making to the consumer, there is an enormous amount of growth in our ecosystem. We’re seeing it. We’re living it right now.”

That brand quality and recognition will also lead to deeper penetration rates for the network, Plepler said, adding that while it will never be in 100% of U.S. homes, HBO will “absolutely” get above 50% penetration domestically.

“So let’s define success correctly and say that for HBO, it’s continuing to grow our subscriber base and our penetration above 50% in the country where we’re now somewhere in the mid-30s,” Plepler said. “And we continue to deliver on that brand promise in that clutter, there are at least we think another 20-25 million homes who will be more than excited to come to the harbor of quality that is HBO.”

Critical to that thesis is that a high level of quality is maintained. HBO has consistently offered high quality — it won 29 Emmy Awards in 2017, the most of any network for the 16th consecutive year. In an era when subscription VOD services such as Netflix are spending $7 billion annually on original programming — HBO’s content budget is in the $2 billion range — and others such as Amazon and Hulu continue to open their wallets to finance new shows, could that track record be in danger? Plepler says no.

Plepler argues that throwing money at programming isn’t the solution — it’s attracting the right talent. “Talent wants to be in an environment where they know that from the development end, the marketing end, the promotion end, the experience that talent has at HBO, we believe, is an extraordinary one,” he said.

The number of producers, directors and writers who have continuously worked with the network over the years — especially after they have had big successes — seems to back that up. The list is a long one, with some, like The Wire creator David Simon, nearing the 20-year mark with the network.

Simon’s first project with HBO was in 2000 with The Corner, a miniseries based on his book The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, with Ed Burns. Simon’s next project for HBO was the critically acclaimed series The Wire, which concluded its five-season run in 2008, followed by miniseries Generation Kill, the highly praised Treme (which ended after its fourth season in 2013) and 2015 miniseries Show Me a Hero. This year, he introduced The Deuce, his take, with frequent collaborator writer George Pelecanos, on the Times Square sex trade of the 1970s.

Game of Thrones writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are wrapping up their final year on the George R.R. Martin saga (which has at least five prequels in the works for the network), as well as other projects.

“When talent comes here, they want to come back,” Plepler said. “It’s infectious because talent hears from talent, writers hear from writers, actors hear from actors. They want to be here.”

Benioff and Weiss said they picked HBO for the GoT saga because it was the home of their favorite shows — The Sopranos, Deadwood and The Wire. But it also had a reputation for attracting top-notch talent and providing budgets for cinematic quality productions.

“So once we realized the story of Game of Thrones could only be told in the multiseason format of a television program, HBO felt like the best choice by far,” they said via email from on location in Northern Ireland. “For both of us, this has been the best experience of our working lives.”

They said Plepler has played a big role in shaping that experience. “In a business full of smiling windsocks, he is not a windsock,” Benioff and Weiss said. “He doesn’t focus-test his decisions, he doesn’t crowd-source his decisions. Richard’s decisions come from Richard, and he stands by them.”

Eagan added that keeping content producers happy is simply good business.

“It makes the business affairs side of the equation easier too,” Eagan said. “If you have an existing contract with someone, maybe it’s for three titles, it’s easier to extend that contract for another five titles. It’s easier to extend those same producer deals if you’ve already done work with them. It’s not as easy to start from scratch with a new one.”

Those kinds of intangibles are not only important to talent, they are what drive HBO’s and Plepler’s overall philosophy of picking projects that satisfy business and creative needs.

“That does not mean that more is better; it only means that better is better,” Plepler said.

He credited the corporate culture at HBO. Meanwhile, there has been an avalanche of accusations of assault and misconduct throughout the industry following the expose of sexual assault and rape allegedly committed by former The Weinstein Co. chief Harvey Weinstein. Amazon Studios president Roy Price, House of Cards producer and star Kevin Spacey and comedian Louis C.K. have all been accused of various sexual harassment offenses, among others.

HBO canceled a planned comedy special with Louis C.K., removed him from the lineup of the Nov. 18 Night of Too Many Stars, a special to raise funds for autism, and has taken down his prior comedy series Lucky Louie and standup specials from its on-demand lineup and HBO Go. The network also dropped plans to turn political pundit Mark Halperin’s book on the 2016 presidential election into a movie, after allegations that he sexually harassed five women while working for ABC News several years ago. Plepler called the myriad allegations “repugnant” and “unconscionable,” and added that corporate cultures that turn a “blind eye” to the problems are telling employees that providing a safe environment isn’t a core value.

“There is no ambiguity in this company about what our core values are on diversity, on manners, on how we treat one another,” Plepler said. “I think these issues transcend even the issue of sexual harassment. Just go to our core values as a company and how we interrelate as colleagues.”

For Plepler, it comes down to simple manners, and the way a company conducts itself in interactions inside and outside the organization.

Collegial, but Competitive
“Don’t ever mistake manners inside an institution with an absence of fierce competitiveness,” Plepler said. “I think sometimes people think that manners can be tantamount to softness or somehow an enterprise isn’t as fierce. I think the opposite is true. I think manners enable you to have inter-relationships with your colleagues of mutual respect and it frees and liberates people to speak their mind. And people feel proud of being part of an institution and can operate without fear or favor, say what they want.”

There have been a few misses for HBO — John From Cincinnati, a 2007 allegory written by Deadwood creator David Milch that fell short with viewers and critics; Lucky, a 2012 horse-racing drama from Milch starring Dustin Hoffman, canceled after animal rights activists protested the death of several horses on the set; and 2016 rock ‘n’ roll saga Vinyl. But the successes far outnumber the miscues. Game of Thrones, which debuted in 2010 with an average viewership of 9.3 million, finished its seventh season by growing that mark to 33 million, a record for an HBO original series.

More recently, HBO came under fire for Confederate, an alternative history piece that would be the next offering from Benioff and Weiss. It would depict an America where the Confederacy successfully seceded and slavery continues in modern times.

The announcement of the series created a huge backlash, with several critics calling it wish-fulfillment for white supremacists. Plepler defended the concept, and conceded HBO could have done a better job announcing it to the public with more context.

But he added the series — to be written by African-American writers Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcom Spellman, in addition to Weiss and Benioff — is an important one and one that holds a mirror to what former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden has called the “thin veneer of civilization.”

Plepler said not a single word of Confederate would be written in the next year and a half, because Benioff and Weiss are still working on Game of Thrones. “We’re not going to be trivializing slavery; we’re not going to be creating an overwrought version of the antebellum period,” Plepler said. “It’s much more complicated.”

HBO has been a champion for diversity both in its corporate culture and through its programming, and was honored by the Walter Kaitz Foundation earlier this year. In his acceptance speech, Plepler urged the industry to break the culture of fear and exclusion that is enveloping the country, vowing to continue to present diverse voices and to allow more people across the nation to see other races, cultures and ideas.

HBO has been at the forefront of presenting different views and cultures in its programing and continues to take up the mantle with programming such as Insecure and documentaries such as Baltimore Rising.

As Game of Thrones nears the end of its run, a familiar chorus of questions is erupting from the press and critics: What’s next? It’s a pressure that Plepler is used to, dating back to his first Television Critics Association event in 2007, just as its groundbreaking original series The Sopranos was ending its run. How would HBO ever replicate The Sopranos? His answer was simple: It wouldn’t. “The Sopranos is, you know, a once-in-a-generation show,” he said. “What there will be is the next great shows. And who knows what the next great cultural phenomenon will be. But we are going to focus on working with the best creative talent that we can find.”

Later that year, HBO signed on with director Alan Ball for his new series, a vampire drama called True Blood, presaging a flood of vampire-centric entertainment that followed like Twilight and Vampire Diaries.

“But the answer was we didn’t presage that,” Plepler said. “We bet on Alan Ball, which was a very, very good bet. And then in came [Girls creator] Lena Dunham and in came [Veep creator] Armando Iannucci and in came [Silicon Valley creator] Mike Judge and in came these two guys who had never done a television show in their life, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, pitching George R.R. Martin’s oeuvre A Song of Ice and Fire.”

Plepler said he’s even more excited about the upcoming season with new episodes of prior hits like Westworld, True Detective, Big Little Lies and The Night Of, as well as the Game of Thrones prequels — he said he has read two of the five, and they are “very dynamic” — as well as a new crop of shows. That list includes Succession, a series by U.K. comedy writer Jesse Armstrong about a Canadian media magnate who on his 80th birthday decides to renege on plans to hand over the business to his second eldest son.

“Think of Dynasty for smart people,” Plepler said.

He added that Lovecraft, a horror genre piece with racial overtones set in the 1950s from Get Out writer and director Jordan Peele and Misha Green, “is one of the most arresting scripts that I’ve read in the last 10 years.”

And he also has high hopes for a new Watchman series, loosely based on the movie, from Lost and The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof; Paterno, a biography of the late Penn State football coach starring Al Pacino; and a remake of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, “which I think is quite timely.”

Plepler is optimistic for HBO and the industry. He is most encouraged by the fact that after all these years — HBO debuted in 1972 — artists, writers, actors, directors and just people with ideas continue to flock to the premium channel.

Netflix’s emergence has also inspired and invigorated what is already a highly motivated company. “There is not one scintilla of complacency inside our buildings,” Plepler said. “Feeling like underdogs is not an unreasonable feeling, even as well as we’re doing. … We want to have the insurgent spirit that got us here in the first place, and we don’t want to let up.”

For Plepler, that means HBO won’t stop taking risks and won’t slow down as it winds through the ever-twisting competitive landscape. “Let’s put our foot on the accelerator,” Plepler said, delivering content to audiences that they can’t get anywhere else. “I’ve been here 25 years and I have watched different iterations of our growth and of our evolution,” he continued. “I’m more excited for the future of this company than I’ve ever been because I see the line at the door and I see the opportunity for growth.”

David Benioff and D.B Weiss are near household names today – particularly in homes with well-worn and extensive fantasy novel libraries – but it wasn’t always that way. The two, co-creators and showrunners of HBO’s blockbuster Game of Thrones were just two guys with an idea when they pitched their version of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire to the premium network nearly a decade ago.

Today, GoT has won more Emmy Awards than any other scripted series and in its seventh season attracted an average of 33 million viewers, making it the most popular show in HBO history. Benioff and Weiss, on location in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as they film the final year of the fantasy saga, took some time out to answer a few questions from Multichannel News senior finance editor Mike Farrell via e-mail about the man who helped make it all happen, MCN's Executive of the Year, HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler.

MCN: What is it about HBO that made you want to do your show there? What was your first pitch meeting like?
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss: Well, HBO was the home of our favorite dramas: The Sopranos,Deadwood, The Wire. For most of television’s history it has been considered the bastard younger brother of film, but HBO began to change that perception by attracting top-notch actors, directors and writers, and providing big enough budgets to allow for cinematic production values.

So once we realized the story of Game of Thrones could only be told in the multi-season format of a television program, HBO felt like the best choice by far.

We pitched the show to [former HBO Entertainment president] Carolyn Strauss and [former HBO Entertainment SVP] Gina Balian. We had been warned that Carolyn was a tough pitch and we shouldn’t expect her to laugh at any of our jokes. So when she cracked a smile midway through the meeting we felt like we’d won the golden ticket.

MCN: How supportive is the environment at HBO and is it a company you’d like to continue working for?
Benioff and Weiss: For both of us this has been the best experience of our working lives. Our show started out expensive and has gotten more expensive every year. But while each new season brings some creative haggling, HBO has always provided us with the resources we need to tell the story we want to tell.

Even in the early seasons when the show was more of a niche offering, we were able to communicate with leadership and explain our needs. An example: at the end of Season 2 we shot our first big battle, the Battle of Blackwater Bay. We knew it was going to be expensive, with hundreds of extras, a ship that needed to be built, and a great deal of VFX shots. We didn’t have the money for it so we called the home office and explained why we needed the extra money and how we planned on spending it.

It was a big ask but they listened. They never hung up the phone; they never said, “The budget is the budget.” It took some persuasion, but ultimately they said, “We trust you.”

As to the second part of the question— we’ve said this before but it remains the truth: HBO is the New York Yankees of television. If you have a chance to play in Yankee Stadium, you wear the pinstripes until you can’t play anymore.

MCN: Many entertainment CEOs don’t have relationships with talent. How much interaction do you have with Richard Plepler?
Benioff and Weiss: We talk to Richard a lot, and we see him a lot. One of the reasons he's so good at what he does is that he's in his element with such a broad range of people, including people like us. It's an honest impulse that comes from his genuine and voracious curiosity about the world.

If you're making one of his shows, he wants to know the details. If you're making policy in Washington, he wants to know the details. If you're making his sandwich, he wants to know the details. There's a warmth and ease there that makes you look forward to spending time with him. Conversations with him are energizing, not enervating.

MCN: What about him do you admire?
Benioff and Weiss: Aside from the above? In a business full of smiling windsocks, he is not a windsock. He doesn't focus test his decisions, he doesn't crowdsource his decisions. Richard's decisions come from Richard, and he stands by them.

Our show... It's worked out pretty well so far, but we try to avoid the hindsight fallacy here. In 2010, he ordered a very expensive show set in a genre alien to pay TV, from two guys who had never written or run a show before, and whose first attempts at writing and producing the Game of Thrones pilot had fallen well short of expectations. And knowing all those things, he supported our show, and took a serious, potentially ruinous risk in doing so. Because he believed in it.

It's hard not to admire someone who takes a risk like that. Especially when the risk he took is the reason we're talking to you in the first place.

The Cable Center announced its 2018 Cable Hall of Fame class, a list of industry luminaries from the cable programming and operations  sectors that will be inducted during the 21st annual Cable Hall of Fame celebration on April 4 at New York City’s Ziegfeld Ballroom.

RELATED: Cable Center picks NYC site for Hall of Fame ceremonies

The honorees are: 

• Nomi Bergman, Senior Executive, Advance/Newhouse
• John Bickham, President and Chief Operating Officer, Charter Communications
• Jarl Mohn, President and CEO, NPR
• Richard Plepler, Chairman & CEO, HBO
• Neil Smit, Vice Chairman, Comcast Corporation

The honorees were chosen based on their leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation in media. Since 1998, 127 leaders have been inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame.

“We are thrilled to roll out the red carpet for our 2018 inductees at our first Cable Hall of Fame celebration in New York at the phenomenal Ziegfeld Ballroom,” said Penthera Partners CEO and chairman of The Cable Center’s board of directors Michael Willner in a statement “This year’s honorees are some of the most respected leaders in our industry, and they have helped to shape the face of cable for future generations.”

The ceremony will be held at the recently renovated Ziegfeld Ballroom, which opened this fall in the former Ziegfeld Theater building. The Ziegfeld hosted Hollywood's top blockbuster movie premieres for decades, earning acclaim as one of the most celebrated venues in the world. The Ziegfeld Ballroom will be the home for the Cable Hall of Fame through at least 2020.

“The dedication, hard work and entrepreneurial spirit shown by this year’s inductees has helped to guide the successful development of our industry. We look forward to honoring this stellar class on April 4,” said The Cable Center CEO Jana L. Henthorn in a statement

For more information on the celebration and to secure sponsorships, visit www.cablehalloffame.com, or call 720-502-7513.

New HBO programming head Casey Bloys will shepherd an impressive stable of scripted dramas, comedies, original movies and specials — the envy of most content distributors across virtually all distribution platforms — but he also has some holes to fill going forward.

Bloys replaces former president of programming Michael Lombardo. Under Lombardo, HBO last year racked up the greatest Emmy Awards performance in history, taking home a network record 43 of them in September, including a record haul of 12 for signature series Game of Thrones.

Bloys, who is also overseeing documentaries, films, sports and Cinemax programming, is in command of an upcoming slate HBO hopes will continue to thrive against emerging powers Netf lix, Amazon and Hulu along with more conventionally distributed rivals such as Showtime, Starz and FX.

With Game of Thrones winding down — it’s signed for another season and likely to have an eighth season, too, but showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss intimate the end is near — industry observers have wondered what HBO has cooking in terms of potential replacements.

High-profile springtime newcomer Vinyl, from creators Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese and starring Bobby Cannavale and Ray Romano, failed to live up to the hype, although it will return for one more go-round.

Vinyl averaged 4.3 million viewers across multiple plays and screens, according to HBO. Juggernaut Game of Thrones, by contrast, averaged 7.8 million viewers for its May 22 episode.

Sources close to the network say Bloys — who focused mostly on comedy series, late night and specials projects at HBO before adding drama series when executive vice president Michael Ellenberg left earlier in the year — already has his hands on a number of high-profile projects scheduled for this year. They include 1970s porn-themed The Deuce, from producer David Simon (The Wire, Treme); and an adapation of Westworld from Star Trek and Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams.

Comedies Insecure from Issa Rae and Vice Principals, starring Danny McBride, are also in the queue, and drama series The Leftovers will continue with a third and final season.

Lombardo — credited with reviving HBO after a post-Sopranos creative slump with such shows as Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, True Detective and Girls — moves into a production role and will develop projects for the network.

His departure, after more than 30 years at the Time Warner Inc.-owned programmer, hit the trades the afternoon of Friday, May 20. The appointment of Bloys was announced May 23.

HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler praised Lombardo in a statement: “It goes without saying that Mike’s contributions over these many years, most especially in the last nine as president of programming, have been nothing short of extraordinary.”

Along with Ellenberg’s departure, HBO in December named longtime executive Peter Nelson as executive vice president of HBO Sports, replacing Ken Hershman, who had resigned a month prior.

NEW YORK — It wasn’t high art, but as roasts go, the one for Vice Media founder and CEO Shane Smith during a fundraiser for the Center for Communications Nov. 18 briefly showed a different side of the notorious media bad boy, who was given the Center’s Frank Stanton Award for Excellence in Communication.

Stanton was president of CBS from 1946 to 1971, overseeing the network’s Golden Age for journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. Roasts are notoriously di_ cult to do, and not every joke hit its mark — there were a lot about Smith’s weight and prodigious appetites: he reportedly spent $300,000 on a single dinner with friends in Las Vegas during the International CES in January.

But amid the Sex Pistols intro music (Smith’s favorite band) and the steady stream of F-bombs — even from so-called staid TV executives — former Viacom CEO and current Vice board member Tom Freston offered a peek at a side of Smith most don’t see.

Freston got one of the biggest laughs, reading a list of “poignant” late-night texts he supposedly received from Smith. Examples: “You calm down, you Minnesota dust climber!” and “Cross your balls, we’re going in!”

But Freston also read one that Smith sent to him on Nov. 13, while Freston, HBO chief Richard Plepler (also a presenter) and Time Warner Inc. chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes were having dinner in Paris (they were there for a U2 concert that was later canceled) mere blocks away from the terrorist attacks that night.

“Before we knew what was really going on, I heard a ping and I reached for my iPhone and read this message: ‘F**k dude, get out of there. Come home to me and be safe,’ ” Freston said. “That’s sort of Shane; he’s on all the time.”

— Mike Farrell

Comcast’s Alchin Shares a Coming Out Story at Film Screening

The LGBT community was out in force Nov. 23 for a special Washington, D.C., premiere screening of Comcast’s Focus Features film unit’s The Danish Girl, about Lili Elbe, the first recipient of sexual reassignment surgery.

In attendance were cast members and filmmakers, including director Tom Hooper and co-star Alicia Vikander. Star Eddie Redmayne, who plays Elbe and who won the Best Actor Oscar for Focus’s The Theory of Everything last year, was out of the country, but made apologies via video.

Also on hand at the Burke Theater at the U.S. Navy Memorial were Emmy winner Jeffrey Tambor and Bradley Whitford of Amazon Studios’s Transgender. Tambor also is familiar for a recent DirecTV ad campaign savaging large cable companies.

Introducing Hooper before the film was John Alchin, former co-chief financial officer of Comcast, who noted that the fact he is gay warranted a front-page story in a Philadelphia newspaper two decades ago. He said the reaction from Comcast’s Brian Roberts was, “good,” with him saying Alchin had made the company proud. Alchin said that when he told Brian’s father, Ralph, about his son’s comment, the late Comcast co-founder replied that he wasn’t surprised, as he had taught Brian everything he knew.

Alchin talked about the LGBT community’s progress toward “recognition, equality and inclusion.” But he suggested the fight continues, pointing to Houston, where an anti-discrimination ordinance was recently defeated.

“We still have lots more work to do,” Alchin said.

He also talked about Comcast’s “dedication to featuring diverse and independent voices on film and television” and pointed out that Comcast carries more than 160 independent networks.

Comcast has repeatedly been cited as among the best places to work for LGBT employees by the Human Rights Campaign.

— John Eggerton

Richard Plepler believes that  MVPDs such as Comcast, Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable are missing a chance to make a deeper connection with broadband-only customers by not partnering up to distribute HBO Now, the premium programmer’s stand-alone over-the-top subscription offering.

“This is not exclusive to our new digital partners like Apple and Android and Roku,” Plepler said Tuesday at the WSJD Live event  in Laguna Beach, Calif. “This also can be a tremendous opportunity for our traditional distributors…We’re saying to our partners, ‘Join us’ – our new digital partners and our traditional partners.”

Many of those distributors have yet to get on board.

“If you’re Brian (Roberts) and you have 6 million broadband subs, why would you not bundle HBO and share that revenue with us?,” Plepler asked,  according to Variety. “Why would you give up that real estate and not be paid for it? I don’t understand it.”

He also reiterated his view that HBO Now’s approach does not cannibalize their traditional pay TV businesses, noting that just 1% of HBO Now subscribers were former pay TV customers. HBO has not released subscriber numbers for HBO Now, though the service is expected to generate losses in 2015.

HBO Now went live on April 7, and has managed to strike distribution deals with Apple, Cablevision Systems, and Verizon Communications, among others.

HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler will receive the 2015 International Emmy Directorate Award on Nov. 23 in New York

“Richard Plepler is a dynamic and visionary programmer and strategist,” Bruce L. Paisner, president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, said. “He has masterfully navigated the bridge between old and new media, and today, with HBO Now, he has made HBO one of the preeminent companies in the OTT space.“

Plepler oversees the overall management of HBO and was named its CEO in January 2013. He served as co-president from 2007 to 2012.

“This is a wonderful honor and one that is shared with all my colleagues at HBO,” Plepler said. “This is a team sport, and we are blessed with one of the best teams in the industry, so, on behalf of everyone at HBO, I want to thank the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for this recognition.”   

HBO CEO Richard Plepler doesn’t agree with those who say the premium network’s plan to offer its broadband HBO Go service to non-HBO subscribers will eat into the premium network's subscriber base.

“I don’t think it’s cannibalistic at all,” said Plepler during a session held by the Paley Center for Media as part of its International Council series. “We’re going to have a big business with [MSOs] and we’re going to have a big business with new partners.”

In fact, Plepler argues that since most consumers around the country get their Internet service from their cable companies, those operators would only serve to benefit. “Who controls the broadband pipes in the U.S.? Our distributors,” he said. “There is gold in the hills, lets go get it together… it's your money too.” He estimated there are roughly 10-15 million broadband-only homes.

Read more at B&Chere.