Meet Hollywood's Titans Of TV

The glut of content? ‘More is not better. Only better is better,’ says one of Hollywood’s five big deciders driving the industry’s Game of Thrones-style fight for viewers, monetization, innovation — and the bragging rights for being the first to figure it all out.

WHEN NETFLIX’S CHIEF content officer Ted Sarandos and HBO CEO Richard Plepler jovially greeted each other at Highline Stages in New York’s Meatpacking District in late July, gone was the tinge of animosity that once crept into the rivalry between their two companies. After all, “Peak TV,” as the current boom of 400-plus scripted series has come to be called, has been a boon to both. Netflix brought HBO’s model of a premium content outlet (and dozens of Emmy nominations each year) to the web, and HBO promptly mimicked Netflix by launching its own digital streaming service, HBO Now. In fact, Sarandos, 52, rejects fears that Peak TV has led to a content bubble ready to burst. “It’s an analog phrase,” he says. “Everything exists in perpetuity now, so every time we put on a new show, we are competing with everything ever made.” How to stand out in that cluttered TV universe was a recurring theme at THR’s first roundtable gathering of CEO-level television executives. Sarandos and Plepler, 57, were joined by A+E Networks’ Nancy Dubuc, 47, AMC Networks’ Josh Sapan, 65, and NBCUniversal’s Bonnie Hammer, 66, who expressed one of the only sure things in a changing TV business: “The crap is going to fail.”

Ted, Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down is said to have cost you $120 million. He maintained it’s not the most expensive TV series ever, but is that figure accurate?

TED SARANDOS He quickly threw The Crown [an upcoming Netflix drama about the royal family] under the bus. (Laughs.)