Casey Bloys isn’t ready to reveal details on his future at the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. just yet. But speaking Thursday at the Bloomberg Screentime conference, he didn’t deny expectations that he will continue to run HBO Max and add Paramount+ to the mix once the merger is official.
“I’m not going to get into my job requirements or anything like that. But so here’s what I will say. Obviously, there was news this week,” he said, referring to Paramount streaming boss Cindy Holland announcing her departure. “And obviously there’s news across the board. I will say that the merger is not closed. I believe that David [Ellison] and the team want to announce their leadership structure, it’s not mine to announce. So I don’t have any news to confirm.”
At the same time, Bloys said that he’s had many conversations with Ellison, “and he is very excited, very respectful of what the HBO team has done, not just in my tenure, but the entire history of HBO. All of the owners that we have had, we have had people come in genuinely excited and wanting to maintain what we’ve done. And I really believe that he will do that.”
Bloys wouldn’t comment on how soon HBO Max and Paramount+ might merge, or if a bundle was in the immediate future. But he did note that “the HBO Max Disney bundle has been very successful” and a similar setup would make a lot of sense.
As for the question of whether HBO and Paramount+ programming will mesh, Bloys said: “I’ve had people say to me, ‘OK, so the Taylor Sheridan stuff and HBO,’ it’s a version of what people said to us about HBO and the Warner Bros. library. I go back to people who watch HBO tend to like television tend to be consumers of television, and that doesn’t just mean HBO. We had ‘South Park’ on our platform, one of the one of the big properties at Paramount+. It did so well, we sued them when they when they took it off.”
Bloys noted that he learned a lot when Warner Bros. and Discovery merged, and how it ultimately didn’t make sense to combine Discovery fare with HBO content.
“One of the things we found with Discovery was we’d say, “here’s HBO and the Warner Bros. Library and Pay One Movies, and here’s the Discovery content. And what we found out in the world, and what we found through research with current subscribers, potential subscribers, is they didn’t they didn’t want it. We have a strategy officer who has a good line, ‘you have to give subscribers what they want, not what you own.’ And so what we found very quickly in doing research on Max, subscribers said ‘we want movies, we want HBO, we want drama series, comedy series, documentaries,’ and they just weren’t feeling some of the other stuff. So you have to listen to that, and you have to evolve.”
Asked how he reacted to the idea that Netflix might purchase Warner Bros. Discovery — and oversee HBO — Bloys said he wasn’t shocked at the time. “At this point you have to understand I’ve been through two mergers. In this business, which is clearly being disrupted, and having gone through two mergers I don’t think there’s any announcement that would have shocked me. There was a rumor at some point, somebody said to me, ‘I heard Walmart’s going to buy you guys, and I was like, oh.’ You kind of have to be open to whatever. So I was not shocked.”
Bloys said he still sees Netflix as formidable competitors: “They are obviously the leader in streaming,” he said. “They are so far ahead of everybody else from a technological point of view, and that really helps drive their business. When you talk about engagement or you talk about churn, the things you can do to mitigate it. A lot of them are product or technology related, and they have been in it so long, and they’re just far ahead of us. We’re all catching up. We’re all trying our best to catch up, but they have a real expertise.”
On the programming front, Netflix had its worst Emmys showing in several years; does Bloys think this is a blip or a drought for his rival? “They’ll be fine,” he said. “They’re a media company. They’re doing shows, and it’s very natural to have highs and lows. I don’t think there’s anything unusual about it. As has always been the case, one show, one hit changes the narrative.”
As for Apple TV dominating the Emmys this year, Bloys takes issue with pundits who call Apple “the new HBO.” “I take a long-term view,” he said. “When I first started in 2004, it was HBO versus Showtime, and Showtime was going to eat our lunch. And then for a minute it was Starz. AMC is the new HBO, FX is the new HBO, Netflix, ‘House of Cards’ is the new HBO, Amazon is the new HBO. Now Apple is the new HBO. So the only thing I bring up is the historical context of how many new HBOs there have been. I would like to reframe it a little bit to not, ‘is so and so the new HBO,’ but, ‘how does HBO continue to remain HBO?’ I think is the more relevant question.”
Bloys’ decision to still appear at Bloomberg Screentime and answer questions about the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger — including his still-not-announced role there — surprised some. “Most people in y position, given what’s going on, probably would have canceled on you,” Bloys told moderator Lucas Shaw at the start of the interview.
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