The Night Is Dark And Full Of Netflix

Can AT&T’s corporate mindset transform HBO, the network behind Game of Thrones, into the king of streaming?

- Felix Gillette

Richard Plepler, the gregarious and perpetually tanned head of Home Box Office Inc., had a saying: HBO is a media company, not a technology company. The statement grew more radical with each passing year as seemingly every other business—car manufacturers, cigarette makers, pizza chains—declared themselves technology companies.

Under Plepler, who became co-president in 2007 and chief executive officer in 2013, HBO didn’t pretend to be a bootstrapping startup; it was a house of art, not science. The network cultivated the top creative minds in TV, racked up Emmys, threw killer cocktail parties, and generated billions of dollars in profit for its corporate parent, Time Warner.

Then, on Feb. 28, what felt like one of the last cultural joyrides in the media business ended, as one might expect, in pools of corporate-acquisition bloodshed. Plepler, 60, announced in a memo to his staffthat he was resigning. AT&T Inc., which had acquired Time Warner Inc. for $85.4 billion, had just beaten back one final antitrust challenge from the U.S. Department of Justice and was preparing to reorganize the assets of what’s now known as WarnerMedia LLC.

Later this year, AT&T executives will introduce a streaming video service featuring WarnerMedia content, which includes brands such as TBS, TNT, and the Warner Bros. studio. HBO will play a crucial, if still uncertain, role as one of AT&T’s keys for unlocking digital fortunes.