Richard Plepler, CEO, HBO

Can the world’s most successful pay TV network move beyond cable? A year following the introduction of HBO NOW, the channel’s highly anticipated standalone premium streaming service, CEO Richard Plepler discussed what its success means for the future of OTT, the value of premium programming, and the network’s 2016 season.

Richard Plepler
Chairman & CEO
HBO

Richard Plepler is Chairman and CEO of Home Box Office, Inc., responsible for the overall management of the world’s most successful pay TV service, which provides the two television networks – HBO and Cinemax – to over 122 million subscribers worldwide.  He was named to this position in January 2013.

Renowned worldwide, the HBO and Cinemax services offer the most popular subscription video-on-demand products, HBO On Demand® and Cinemax On Demand® as well as HBO GO® and MAX GO®, HD feeds and multiplex channels.  In April 2015, HBO NOWSM, the network’s highly anticipated standalone premium streaming service, began providing audiences with instant access to HBO’s acclaimed programming in the U.S.  Internationally, HBO branded television networks, along with the subscription video-on-demand products HBO On Demand and HBO GO, bring HBO services to over 60 countries.  HBO programming is sold into over 150 countries globally.

Under his leadership, HBO's original productions continue to raise the bar with some of the most innovative, honored and critically respected programming on television including two of HBO’s newest shows, the comedy Silicon Valley and the topical talk show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. True Detective, which debuted in early 2014, became the most-watched freshman series in HBO’s history. Now In its fourth season, Game of Thrones is a global juggernaut, watched by nearly 18 million viewers per episode in the U.S. alone.

As co-president from 2007 to 2012, Plepler, in partnership with Michael Lombardo, president, HBO Programming, greenlit some of HBO’s most acclaimed and successful series including True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, The Newsroom and Game of Thrones, which rank among the top programs in the network’s history, as well as first season Emmy® Awards for Girls and Veep. Additional award-winning programs include the miniseries Mildred Pierce, starring Kate Winslet, and The Pacific; HBO Films’ Behind the Candelabra, Too Big to Fail, and Game Change. Plepler and Lombardo also shepherded Cinemax’s first foray into primetime originals with the popular action series Strike Back.

Plepler is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations, where he serves on the President’s Advisory Board, and The Trilateral Commission.  He also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Asia Society and the New York Public Library, and is on the National Advisory Board of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and the Museum of the Moving Image. In 2013, he was inducted into Broadcasting and Cable magazine’s Hall of Fame. In 2014, The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the world's largest and most prestigious annual awards and celebration of creative excellence in advertising and communications, named Plepler Media Person of the Year. Plepler resides in New York City with his wife Lisa and daughter Eden.

Moderated By:

Brian Stelter 
Senior Media Correspondent and Host, Reliable Sources 
CNN
Brian Stelter is the host of "Reliable Sources," which examines the week's top media stories every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. ET on CNN/U.S, and the senior media correspondent for CNN Worldwide. Stelter reports and writes for CNN/U.S., CNN International, CNN.com, and CNNMoney.com on a regular basis.

Prior to joining CNN in November 2013, Stelter was a media reporter at The New York Times. Starting in 2007, he covered television and digital media for the Business Day and Arts section of the newspaper. He was also a lead contributor to the "Media Decoder" blog.

In January 2004, while he was still a freshman in college, Stelter created TV Newser, a blog dedicated to coverage of the television news industry. He sold it to Mediabistro.com in July 2004, but continued to edit and write for the blog during the next three years until he graduated college and joined The New York Times.

Stelter published The New York Times best-selling book, Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV (2013), about the competitive world of morning news shows. He was featured in the 2011 documentary, "Page One: Inside the New York Times", directed by Andrew Rossi. He has been named to Forbes Magazine's "30 Under 30: Media" lists for the past three years.

Stelter graduated with a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications with a concentration in Journalism from Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2007. He is on the board of Baltimore Student Media, a nonprofit that publishes Towson's independent student newspaper, The Towerlight.