Bob Greeenblatt, a former NBC Entertainment chief, has joined WarnerMedia to run HBO and other channels as part of a sweeping reorganization that gives substantial new turf to CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker and Warner Bros. Chairman Kevin Tsujihara.
The corporate shakeup, announced Monday, comes just eight months after communications giant AT&T spent $85 billion to acquire Time Warner, renaming it WarnerMedia, and one week after the Justice Department conceded defeat in its nearly 16-month campaign to derail the merger that President Trump had criticized as bad for the American public.
Greenblatt, who left NBC in September after nearly eight years, becomes chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment, receiving some of the jewels of the WarnerMedia portfolio: HBO, TNT, TBS and Tru TV. He is stepping into an unfamiliar corporation, and replacing two executives who were instrumental in their networks' success: former HBO chairman Richard Plepler and former Turner president David Levy. Both men, who were in their jobs for about three decades, announced their departures last week.
Greenblatt, a longtime television executive and Broadway producer, will also be responsible for programming for the new streaming service that WarnerMedia plans to launch by the end of the year. The new direct-to-consumer offering is a top priority for John Stankey, a longtime AT&T manager who is now chief executive of WarnerMedia.
Zucker becomes chairman of WarnerMedia News and Sports, and Tsujihara, picks up responsibility for children's and young adult programming.
With the reorganization, Stankey has effectively selected his A-team. Turner International President Gerhard Zeiler is now WarnerMedia's chief revenue officer. Layoffs are expected as part of the restructuring.
"Adding Bob Greenblatt to the WarnerMedia family and expanding the leadership scope and responsibilities of Jeff, Kevin and Gerhard _ who collectively have more than 80 years of global media experience and success _ gives us the right management team to strategically position our leading portfolio of brands, world-class talent and rich library of intellectual property for future growth," Stankey said in a statement announcing the moves.
Tsujihara, who has run the Warner Bros. television and film studio for six years, will continue in his current role, but he also will be in charge of children's programming, including Cartoon Network, gaming and consumer products for the entire company. In 2013, he became the first Asian American to run a major Hollywood studio. He is the grandson of Japanese immigrants and the son of an egg farmer from Northern California.
Zucker, who will continue to run CNN Worldwide, also assumes responsibility for Turner Sports and the AT&T regional sports networks. He will run two areas vital to the company's growth plan. Zucker will manage the company's partnerships with the NBA, NCAA and Major League Baseball. He has experience in that field: Zucker was responsible for NBC's sports franchises when he was chief executive of NBCUniversal more than a decade ago. Zucker grew up in Miami, the son of a physician.
Zucker and Tsujihara are the highest-profile holdovers from the past regime.
Greenblatt, Zucker and Kevin Reilly, who is TBS and TNT president, are all veterans of NBC, which is owned by Comcast Corp. They now make up Stankey's senior management in programming.
Stankey's reorganization of WarnerMedia blurs lines that had existed for decades. Time Warner long operated as a confederation of separate business units, including the Warner Bros. studio, Turner and HBO. That structure was a byproduct of the evolution of Time Warner, which came from consolidating companies _ including Turner Broadcasting and the Warner Bros. studio _ that were once stand-alone entities.
But as media companies continue to consolidate and must compete against larger and better resourced technology companies, including Google and Amazon.com, Stankey was not shy about breaking down old barriers. The consolidation is designed to cut costs and encourage different groups to work together in unison _ rather than being wedded to the previous way of doing business.
AT&T also is known for centralizing business units. When the company took over satellite television service DirecTV in 2015, it moved DirecTV's customer service department into AT&T's so-called shared services unit.
