Netflix announced that chief content officer Ted Sarandos has been appointed co-CEO of the company, alongside co-founder Reed Hastings.
Sarandos, who will continue to serve as content chief, joined Netflix over 20 years ago. He’s also been elected to Netflix’s board of directors.
“Ted has been my partner for decades,” Hastings said in announcing the appointment. “This change makes formal what was already informal — that Ted and I share the leadership of Netflix.”
In addition, Greg Peters has been appointed Netflix’s chief operating officer adding to his chief product officer role. “We want Greg to help us stay aligned and effective as we grow so quickly around the world,” said Hastings.
Hastings, in a blog post about the moves, said the changes “are part of a long process of succession planning” — suggesting his stepping aside as the co-CEO at some point. At the same time, Hastings wrote that he is “excited about being at Netflix for the decade ahead.”
“While transitions can be hard, I am optimistic because we have a well-established culture that’s built to be flexible and many years to get good at this,” Hastings wrote.
Hastings, who recalled that he first met Sarandos in October 1999, wrote in a blog post Thursday, “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.”
In terms of Netflix’s day-to-day management, Hastings added, “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.”