AT&T-owned WarnerMedia announced this morning that they have reorganized their entertainment unit following the departures of HBO CEO, Richard Plepler, and Turner President, David Levy. The announcement comes less than a week after the DOJ dropped their appeal trying to block AT&T’s $85B acquisition of Time Warner.
WarnerMedia will see the organization split into three divisions, WarnerMedia Entertainment, WarnerMedia News & Sports, and Warner Bros. (Film, Television, and Games) — all reporting to WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey.
The new WarnerMedia Entertainment will be led by Bob Greenblatt, who previously was Chairman for NBC Entertainment and President of Entertainment for Showtime. He will oversee HBO, the linear cable networks TNT, TBS and truTV, and Warner’s upcoming Direct-to-Consumer streaming business.
WarnerMedia News & Sports will be led by CNN President Jeff Zucker in an expanded role. The division will include CNN Worldwide (CNN, CNN.com, CNN International, CNN en Español, HLN, Great Big Story), Turner Sports, Bleacher Report and the AT&T Regional Sports Networks.
Warner Bros. will continue to be overseen by Kevin Tsujihara. The division will include the entire Warner Bros. Film Television, and Gaming unit, as well as a new Global Kids & Young Adults business that brings together the family, kids and animation efforts from across WarnerMedia, including Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang. Additionally, Otter Media, Turner Classic Movies and all activities around licensed consumer products development for WarnerMedia properties will also reside under Tsujihara.
The company is expected to launch a multi-tier SVOD streaming service later this year, which will be part of Greenblatt’s group. This will join AT&T’s already launched streaming service’s — DIRECTV NOW and skinny bundle AT&T WatchTV — which both include Turner live channels (overseen by Zucker), as well as a discounted add-on of HBO.