Yahoo News Hello, Chief Content Officer. Why the Title Is the New Go-To in Hollywood Executive Shake-Ups
It wasn’t all that long ago that being the CEO of a major media or entertainment company was the top of the heap. The moguls of the day, from Ted Turner and Sumner Redstone to Rupert Murdoch and Steve Ross, dominated the culture — and earned billions in the process.
But the CEO gig ain’t what it used to be. David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, has become public executive enemy No. 1 for many industry workers amid the Writers Guild of America’s ongoing strike.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos is a close second, while Disney chief Bob Iger finds himself back in the CEO seat, but under much more challenging circumstances, all while trying to figure out who, if anyone, has what it takes to succeed him after his predecessor and successor Bob Chapek lasted only two and a half years.
At Apple and Amazon, entertainment is just one corporate tentacle out of many, a division that lives alongside smartphones and software platforms. No CEO necessary there.
And Comcast appears set to join the fray with its latest reorganization, with Comcast president Mike Cavanagh overhauling NBCUniversal into four divisions, and the company opting to not name a new CEO to succeed Jeff Shell, who was fired in April amid a harassment claim leveled against him.
But the biggest move made by Comcast also exemplifies the current moment in time for the entertainment business.
With films back in theaters, streaming still a top corporate priority and profitable TV series a must, most of the companies in the sector have opted to put all their entertainment eggs in one basket, with a single leader to oversee them all: the chief content officer.
At NBCUniversal, the role falls to Donna Langley. The veteran executive on Thursday was tapped as chairman of the NBCUniversal studio group and chief content officer. Langley, who had been running the company’s film businesses, will add oversight of TV and streaming series content, giving her wide leeway over the company’s slate.
But Langley is far from alone.
At Netflix, Bela Bajaria was promoted to chief content officer this year, adding oversight of the streaming giant’s film business.
At Amazon, the veteran TV executive Jen Salke consolidated the tech giant’s entertainment units last year when she gained oversight of MGM, including its film franchises.
At Apple, Jamie Ehrlicht and Zack Van Amburg co-head all of its TV and film properties.
At Disney, Iger elevated veteran TV executive Dana Walden and film chief Alan Bergman to co-chairs of Disney Entertainment in a major reorg earlier this year, giving the pair oversight of the company’s entire entertainment portfolio. The change came after Disney’s former CEO Bob Chapek disintermediated the company’s content studios and the creation of film and TV shows from their revenue by instituting the Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution (DMED) division, a change Iger sought to undo.
To be sure, some companies are sticking with a more traditional structure, but even there, some fractures are showing.
The Murdoch-run Fox isn’t in the movie business anymore, and its TV business — Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Entertainment, streamer Tubi — is a shadow of what it was before it sold its assets to Disney.
At Paramount, a trio of chief content officers mix and match film and TV properties, with Chris McCarthy overseeing the former MTV Networks, Paramount+ and Showtime; Brian Robbins managing the film portfolio and Nickelodeon kids content; and George Cheeks overseeing the CBS-branded content divisions.
And at Warner Bros. Discovery, the main film and TV studios remain stubbornly separated, though recent moves to bring TCM under the film umbrella suggest that there is some fungibility there. And of course Zaslav, who is known for being hands-on and exacting, may well get the last word on any major content decisions.
WBD also has an exception to that rule: Last year, the company moved the film and TV productions of DC Studios under DC co-chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran, betting that a unified approach to the comic-based content would be critical to DC’s success, emulating Kevin Feige’s unified team at Marvel Studios and Kathleen Kennedy’s Lucasfilm empire.
Where the previous leadership had a film version of The Flash and a TV version on The CW, the new regime wants the series and movies to play nice and intertwine.
But the proliferating ranks of chief content officers may also serve a practical corporate purpose: Where these entertainment companies used to be in the film business and the TV business, those universes have become blurrier over time. Yes, films will be released in theaters and scripted series on a streaming service (or, less likely these days, a TV network), but there is demand for a leader to figure out a holistic content strategy: How long should films stay in theaters? Do they go straight to the owned streaming services? Or do they get sold off in windows?
And in a content world still dominated by intellectual property, unifying series and films under one roof can help smooth over any issues that arise when it comes to adapting some of that IP.
Langley in many ways is the perfect example: Known for her management and relationships with talent, and in a company that doesn’t have quite the stacked library of IP as some of its competitors, she may be just the person to help bring some of Universal’s film franchises (think The Fast and the Furious or Jurassic Park) to TV or streaming.
Of course, such moves are not without risk.
Salke has had a mixed track record since assuming total control over Amazon Studios and MGM. Two big-budget series, The Lord of The Rings and Citadel, have not delivered viewership numbers commensurate with their nine-figure costs, and her film strategy at MGM has not yet taken shape.
Disney, likewise, has struggled in recent months, with some of its core franchises like Marvel and Pixar delivering underwhelming results in theaters (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Elemental) and having mixed results on streaming.
It’s a tough job, but in many ways it’s the best job in the business right now: While the CEOs have to figure out how to turn a profit in streaming, as well as manage the decline in pay-TV and an embattled theatrical business, the content chiefs just have to worry about making great series and movies. Of course, handing off all content decisions to a single leader also gives the CEO insulation from the day-to-day drama that can come with the content business, whether it be canceling a popular (or not so popular) series, or a $200 million film bombing on opening weekend.
And with the rise of global streaming services, more people than ever can have access to those shows and films. The hard part is managing the CEOs that are focused on the economics, and the talent that (labor talks aside) wants their life’s work to be seen by as many people as possible.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
