WarnerMedia hired Hulu founder and Amazon exec Jason Kilar earlier this year to serve as its CEO, and the company has made no secret of wanting to focus its content on streaming and its first streaming service HBO Max.
Sources tell Vanity Fair‘s Joe Pompeo that Kilar, the streaming guru, “is keen on developing a global direct-to-consumer offering for the network, something he has talked about internally both in group meetings and private conversations with CNN boss Jeff Zucker. “The trick is to create a new product, with all the foundations and brand prestige of CNN that people would be interested in paying money for,” one source told Vanity Fair.
TVNewser reached out to CNN for comment on the VF report, and we will update when we receive a response.
One week ago today, and just three months into his tenure as WarnerMedia chief exec, Kilar shook up the highest levels of the company, ousting WarnerMedia entertainment programming chief Bob Greenblatt (just a year and a half after he joined the company) and Turner programming executive Kevin Reilly.
In the aforementioned reorg, Ann Sarnoff, who’d been running Warner Bros. for the past year, is now in charge of the entire operation—WarnerMedia studios and networks group. HBO programming chief Casey Bloys now adds HBO Max, TNT, TBS, truTV and Otter to his oversight, making him responsible for all of the company’s premium entertainment television in a position reporting to Sarnoff. Andy Forssell, general manager of HBO Max, will report to Bloys.
Reilly joined Turner (now WarnerMedia) in November 2014 as president of TNT and TBS and chief creative officer of Turner Entertainment. He had most recently been running HBO Max, in addition to the aforementioned basic cable networks, and truTV before he and his superior, Greenblatt, were forced out.