{"id":917370,"date":"2026-10-02T03:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T03:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/917370\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T03:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T03:42:09","slug":"hbos-casey-bloys-gets-new-challenge-at-par-wbd-scale-mass-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/917370\/","title":{"rendered":"HBO\u2019s Casey Bloys Gets New Challenge At Par-WBD: Scale & Mass Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA survivor of multiple mergers, Casey Bloys<\/a>, Chairman and CEO of HBO<\/a> and HBO Max Content, looked unfazed during the year-long saga of HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s sale and its many twists and turns. <\/p>\n

\n\tFirst, he had seen this movie before \u2014 Bloys was HBO President of Programming when the network\u2019s parent company Time Warner was acquired by AT&T and Content Chief for both HBO and HBO Max when renamed parent WarnerMedia was acquired by Discovery in 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou have to understand I\u2019ve been through two mergers, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any announcement that would have shocked me,\u201d Bloys said Thursday at Bloomberg\u2019s Screentime when asked whether he was shocked by Netflix\u2019s (ultimately unsuccessful) deal to buy WBD.<\/p>\n

\n\tSecondly, he knew his worth. A 22-year HBO veteran and one of the most universally admired TV executives working today, Bloys has become synonymous with the brand, which is one of WBD\u2019s most valuable assets. <\/p>\n

\n\tHe has a close-knit team of executives, most notably head of drama Francesca Orsi and head of comedy Amy Gravitt who both have been at HBO as long as he has and have been key to its success, developing a string of award-winning hits each. They are expected to make the move to Paramount with him, along with HBO Max\u2019s Sarah Aubrey, who is in charge of Emmy-winning The Pitt and Hacks, the upcoming Harry Potter series and also oversees international. (This past summer, Orsi was approached for a top programming job at Amazon MGM Studios but stayed at HBO, in part because of WBD\u2019s strict contract terms but also as a sign that Bloys and his core team would likely transition to Paramount.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBloys and his team will be ready to move in when the Paramount-WBD merger officially closes Oct. 6 now that his Paramount counterpart, Chair of Direct to Consumer Cindy Holland, exited earlier this week<\/a>, leaving Bloys as the presumed head of the combined streaming operation. (Bloys would not comment Thursday what his position would be exactly but did hint that HBO Max and Paramount+ may be bundled<\/a> vs. merged.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIn getting the yet unspecified job, Bloys had timing on his side too. While the Warner Bros. film studio has stumbled after a banner 2025, HBO\/HBO Max continued to do well throughout the sales process as Paramount CEO was mulling potential post-merger executive appointments. It had strong showings at the 2025 and 2026 Emmys and all of the TV awards races in-between and added several promising new series, GoT prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, It: Welcome To Derry, Rooster, Task, I Love LA and The Chair Company, all of which have been renewed, and Emmy-winning limited series DTF St. Louis.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there was the chatter about Bloys possibly going to Netflix for a job or a deal. It may have been much lunch about nothing \u2014 Bloys\u2019 meal with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos was much-talked in March \u2014 but it underscored the fact that Bloys had options.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked at Screentime yesterday whether there had been talks between Netflix and Bloys, Sarandos skirted the question, calling Bloys \u201ca super talented guy\u201d who \u201cis going to be in a very good position wherever he goes.\u201d Bloys also drew praise from Disney\u2019s President and Chief Creative Officer Dana Walden; she called him \u201can incredibly savvy executive\u201d who \u201chas demonstrated over a long period of disruption at Warner Bros. the ability to not reinvent himself but evolve\u201d at the same event.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, Bloys, whose contract goes through 2027, was Paramount CEO David Ellison<\/a>\u2018s to lose. The contract is said to include a stipulation that he reports to the company\u2019s CEO, and that proved a key condition for Ellison to keep him (and by extension, Bloys\u2019 senior team).<\/p>\n

\n\tWith neither Bloys nor Holland likely to report to the other if and when their platforms were combined, there could be only one, as the saying goes, with Ellison \u201coptimizing for HBO stability,\u201d as Holland put it in the goodbye note to staff, pointing to the choice.<\/p>\n

\n\tBloys made a similar comment Thursday, saying that he believes Ellison will \u201cmaintain what we\u2019ve done\u201d at HBO. (He may get two CEOs for the price of one as Ellison appointed Mattel\u2019s Ynon Kreitz as co-CEO<\/a>, with all businesses supposed to be reporting jointly to both.)<\/p>\n

\t\tBroadening Out The Slate\t<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a decade, Bloys has been the steward of HBO as home of premium storytelling. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are no plans to dilute the HBO brand in favor of increasing volume of programming,\u201d he said in 2018 when the AT&T acquisition was pending, adding that he and his team have plans to do \u201cnothing different than curate excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo mergers later, things have changed. He will preside over a combined streaming slate that mixes HBO\u2019s prestige fare with CBS next-day procedurals and sitcoms as well as Paramount+ mass appeal originals such as the rosters of shows from Taylor Sheridan\/101 Studios (Landman, MobLand) and Tyler Perry (Sistas) as well as UFC.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Bloys, that would be the next step in a conetnt aperture widening that actually started a decade ago.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBack in the 2015 years, the idea that you would take HBO and add the Warner Bros. library was radical, it was \u2018Oh my God, you\u2019re going to have HBO next to Friends and Big Bang Theory and ER, how could you do that?\u2019,\u201d he said Thursday. \u201cA lot of hand wringing, and I would say that was a very successful broadening out of the service.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe process does not always work; adding Discovery content to HBO Max was largely rejected by the audience, Bloys admitted, so there is some caution how Paramount+ and HBO Max lineups would go together (or alongside each other if bundled.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was talking to someone earlier this week who said that HBO and Paramount+ basically have the two most divergent customer bases, that they, in a lot of ways, don\u2019t mesh naturally,\u201d Bloys said. \u201cI\u2019ve had people say to me, \u2018Oh okay, so the Taylor Sheridan stuff and HBO\u2019. It\u2019s a version of what people said to us about HBO and the Warner Bros. library. People who watch HBO tend to like television, tend to be consumers of television, and that doesn\u2019t just mean HBO.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBloys also brought up South Park, which now streams on Paramount+ but had a long and successful run on HBO Max, proving itself compatible on both.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had South Park on our platform, one of the big properties at Paramount+. It did so well, we sued them when they [sent specials to P+],\u201d he said Thursday.<\/p>\n

\n\tBloys has already taken steps in that direction with HBO Max fare, which may provide a blueprint for how he plans to broaden out the HBO brand for the combined streamer. That includes the network-style dramas such as the The Pitt and the upcoming How To Survive Without Me, which are designed to appeal to a wide audience and return annually for 15-episode seasons, and Stuart Fails To Save the Universe a spinoff of one of the biggest sitcoms in network history, CBS\u2019 The Big Bang Theory.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the Discovery content synergy did not work, \u201cI would say a better experiment in terms of broadening out was what we did with The Pitt,\u201d Bloys said. \u201cThat show has been so successful not only in the Emmys and not only in its performance but it has actually broadened out people on HBO Max who tend to watch the library movies or library series [and] are consumers of The Pitt, as well as some HBO subscribers. So you successfully broadened it out, and you haven\u2019t radically changed the value proposition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is some overlap in the two streamer\u2019s original slates too. Many of the Paramount+ series greenlights by Holland\u2019s regime, including Discretion, starring Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning, are considered HBO-like shows that would fit on either brand.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe combination of HBO Max and Paramount+ will bring together the entire Big Bang franchise: Stuart, the libraries of the mothership and spinoff Young Sheldon and next-day episodes of fellow spinoff Georgie & Mandy\u2019s First Marriage, which airs on CBS. And speaking of CBS, Bloys started his career there, and he also worked at HBO Independent Productions during the final stretch of the hit CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, which the unit produced, providing him with some experience in network programming for the masses.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, he had been able to successfully expand his purview and expertise. As a comedy executive, he faced initial skepticism whether he could handle drama when he succeeded Michael Lombardo as HBO President of Programming in 2016. After proving himself there, Bloys overcame similar doubts whether he could adapt to streaming when given the reins of HBO Max, now home of hit originals such as The Pitt and successful acquisitions such as Heated Rivalry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A survivor of multiple mergers, Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max Content, looked unfazed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,133353,18027,75,5862,202615,223500,348],"class_list":["post-917370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-casey-bloys","tag-david-ellison","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-paramount-wb","tag-paramount-wbd","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}