AT&T shifting its focus to streaming

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Now that AT&T’s $81 billion takeover of Time Warner is a done deal , the company is reorganizing its TV and movie businesses to emphasize streaming rather than cable TV networks.

AT&T is bringing in a new executive as longtime HBO and Turner chiefs leave. It’s also consolidating operations for different brands to help generate more video for a new streaming service launching this year. Layoffs are expected in the business now known as WarnerMedia, although the company tried to assuage fears that there will be substantial job cuts.

With the revamp, AT&T is “trying to move the organization to a new business model,” said Michael Smith, a Carnegie Mellon information technology and marketing professor.

AT&T on Monday named former NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt as the chairman of WarnerMedia’s entertainment and streaming businesses. He will run HBO and Turner cable networks TNT, TBS and truTV. HBO and Turner were previously run separately. HBO’s longtime chief, Richard Plepler, resigned last week, as did Turner’s president, David Levy.

AT&T said the reorganization will give it “agility and flexibility” to better coordinate original programming across its brands and distribute them through emerging platforms such as streaming.

The company has been ramping up the streaming services that it sells to customers directly as it tries to maneuver the shift to internet video and reckon with the increasing number of people who don’t want to pay for a $100 cable bundle. It has been losing customers in its DirecTV satellite TV business.

AT&T launched a streaming service with live TV channels, DirecTV Now, in 2016.