HBO’s CEO on Growth, Sexual Harassment, and Life After ‘Game of Thrones’

Richard Plepler, chairman and chief executive officer of HBO, was interviewed on Nov. 13 in New York by Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Megan Murphy. Following are excerpts from their discussion, which appear in the Nov. 27, 2017, edition of the magazine.

Megan Murphy: HBO is now entering, as you call it, a “golden age” for the brand. Describe what you’re doing.

Richard Plepler: Fortunately, we have a lot of momentum with talent. We have this embarrassment of riches where every Friday in our company we know of something exciting from the creative world that we didn’t know about on Monday. I sometimes say we’re a bit like a great art gallery, and we want the best artists to hang their work inside. If you want to use the art metaphor, you have the grandmasters, you have contemporary painters, you have emerging artists. We want all of those people to think of HBO first and to bring their great work inside the company.

When I was growing up, HBO was one of the few premium outlets where you could go to expect consistently high-quality programming. During the 25 years you’ve been there, and the last five years in particular, the marketplace has added Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and other “over the top” providers. Are you concerned that you’re going to stop getting first dibs on certain projects?