Ted Sarandos appointed co-CEO of Netflix

Ted Sarandos has been appointed co-CEO of Netflix and also was elected to the board of directors. Sarandos will continue as Chief Content Officer. The company also appointed Greg Peters to Chief Operating Officer, in addition to his role as Chief Product Officer. The announcement was made by Reed Hastings, founder, and CEO of Netflix.

“Ted’s been instrumental to our success as a company. While I saw streaming coming and pushed for it, Ted drove the revolution in our content strategy, which was way ahead of its time and has been key to our continued success. It was typical of his ability to see where the industry – and consumer tastes – are headed. He’s built an extraordinary team, attracting some of the most creative and best entertainment executives from all around the world. In terms of the day-to-day running of Netflix, I do not expect much to change. Our key executive leadership groups are unchanged. So think of Ted’s well-deserved promotion formalizing how we already run the business today,” said Hastings.

These changes are part of a long process of succession planning, added Hastings.

“I’m excited and honored to have been appointed co-CEO of Netflix. When Reed and I first met over 20 years ago, he described Netflix almost exactly as it now works. But at the time, I was skeptical. The Internet was still new and Netflix’s main competitor, Blockbuster, was huge and had completely disrupted the business model of my previous company. Part of Reed’s brilliance is his persistence and so I eventually said yes, back in 1999,” commented Sarandos.