SHIFTING HIERARCHIES
You can’t tell the players without a scorecard. The entertainment industry has been through unprecedented rounds of consolidation, cutbacks and reorganization over the past few years — and it’s surely not done yet. As studio-network conglomerates move aggressively into the directto-consumer business, traditional bedrock operations such as marketing, distribution, aliate sales, physical production and of course, content creation have been reengineered to operate for a very dierent era. In recent months, media giants have undergone some of the most ambitious overhauls in their history as they move toward a future that is becoming ever more digital. The largest players — including Disney, Comcast’s Nbcuniversal and AT&T’S Warnermedia — have taken radical steps to realign businesses that were once heavily siloed. Where decision-making and executive hierarchies were once defined network by network, now the norm is centralized groups to steer development and production for a myriad of potential outlets. Disney, Warnermedia and Nbcuniversal have cleaved TV operations along the lines of distribution and content creation. Film studios have been told to stop thinking purely in terms of theatrical releases and to start pitching ideas to their corporate cousins at Peacock, Disney Plus or HBO Max. That has created new power centers and new power players such as Kareem Daniel, who was elevated last year to lead the revenue-generating distribution side of Disney’s vast TV and streaming operations. The movement at the top has been followed by what has seemed like a musical-chairs environment for midrange executives from departments that may have been eliminated or collapsed as part of larger restructurings. At the same time, a wave of mergers and acquisitions, such as AT&T’S purchase of Timewarner and Disney’s absorption of Fox, have emboldened these companies to make sweeping changes in record time while introducing a new band of decision-makers to the C-suites around Hollywood. Roughly a year ago, Jason Kilar was a brainy former Hulu executive. Now he’s in charge of Warnermedia and tasked with guiding it through the streaming era. The wave of newness to studio org charts has been a challenge for deal-makers and the creative community, particularly at a time of pandemic lockdown and social upheaval. It’s not always clear who to hit up when you’re trying to get that passion project greenlit, or which chit to call in when you need to get your client attached to the next hit franchise. Meanwhile, the disruptive forces of Netflix, Amazon and Apple have seen their media-centric executive ranks grow apace as they expand the scope of their streaming activities. Netflix’s hiring binge over the past few years has had a big impact on the senior and midlevel ranks of the major networks, so much so that it has sparked poaching litigation with the former 21st Century Fox and Viacomcbs. To illustrate the depth of the personnel changes across Hollywood, here’s a look at the top leadership ranks of the industry’s major corporate forces. Note: These org charts focus on content and distribution-related departments and do not include all CEO direct reports.