AT&T's WarnerMedia names Hulu founding figure Jason Kilar as CEO

Ex-Amazon executive and Hulu CEO until 2013 Jason Kilar has now been named the new CEO of WarnerMedia. The news comes months after its previous CEO, John T. Stankey, was promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer at parent company AT&T.

A news post on AT&T's website also reaffirms the launch of HBO Max in May this year, with Kilar's placement as CEO noted as providing WarnerMedia with "the right management team."

Jason Kilar is one of the key executives instrumental in the founding of streaming service Hulu, an ex-Amazon executive, and a member of the DreamWorks board of directors. He will now be reporting to Stankey, who remains COO of AT&T.

In 1989 Kilar attended the University of North Carolina, graduating with a double major in journalism and business administration. Afterwards he went to Harvard Business School in '95, where he later met Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whom he called "the single greatest business leader of the last hundred years" as quoted on Kilar's Founders & Investors page on Harvard's website.

Kilar went on to become one of Hulu's key founding figures in 2007. Now a popular streaming service and Netflix competitor, it was initially established as a joint venture between several mass media conglomerates such as NBC Universal and News Corporation, with The Walt Disney Company joining after. Last year AT&T sold WarnerMedia's 9.5% stake in Hulu and announced plans to launch its own competing streaming service, HBO Max.

HBO Max itself is to include all of HBO's premium TV programming, with WarnerMedia planning to have 10,000 hours of content at its launch.